Music and Me

So, turns out that I really like to sing along with my music. This is a problem when I'm at work because I have to listen to my music on my ipod, but I still want to sing and dance*. But no one else can hear the music. Luckily, Heartless Siren is the only one who ever sees me dance and sometimes even gets to hear me sing... in soft tones.

I live in fear that I'll start singing out loud and not realize it. That could be really embarrassing. Highly reminiscent of the time that Superman started singing "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic at work. Wow. I will never let him live that down. Now it'll be even worse if I do the same thing.

*dance being defined as swaying my head and sometimes moving my arms to the beat.

Creepy moment of the day

The Heartless Siren was in our back living room this evening when she heard a knock on the window right by her face. Poor girl was scared to death. She looked up, afrightened, to see the silhouette of a person waving at her, but due to it being dark outside and the light on inside, she could not make out who it was. Upon further questioning, she guesses it may have been a girl. Then the suspect ran.

I thought this was strange and a little creepy. I don't like unknown people in my back yard. Good thing we lock our doors.

Later on, I was walking through the kitchen when I smelled the nastiness that has been plaguing our kitchen for days. I had been assuming it was the garbage can as the smell was coming from that general vicinity, but we had taken out the trash twice since the smell began. So, intent upon finding the source, I started sniffing around the kitchen. Finally my smeller landed upon two very disgusting looking onions. I promptly took them outside to the garbage can to rid our house of the awful stench. On my way back in I almost tripped over this:



We assume it was left by the nameless creepy person. We are not eating food left by an unknown creepy person. (Don't worry, Mom. I listened when you taught me not to eat food from strangers. (Well, except that one time when I was a kid and we were at the cemetery, and that one guy gave me a piece of gum. But all the kids were taking some. And he was so nice! And I'm sure that someone there knew who he was. But that's beside the point.)) If anyone knows anything about the origins of this unexpected gift, please, do tell. Also, I would like to know that the creepy person is actually someone I know and not, in fact, some unknown creepy person.

Holi color, Batman!

Today, Heartless Siren, Cold One and I went to the Hare Krishna Festival of Colors. It. Was. Amazing. Really.

At first I felt a little dumb going around and throwing pinches of color on total strangers. I shouldn't have, considering my first encounter with color was a stranger throwing it right into my face. Yup, mouthful of color. Smells good, looks amazing, tastes awful. Claudio and I had talked about trying to find each other in the masses... to see who could hit the other with color first. So the three of us took off, making our way through the massive crowds, throwing color on anyone we could see while trying to find Claudio and Co. We had accidentally gotten in the wrong line and bought the $2/bag color instead of the $1. But by the time we realized it, we had been in line for an hour and had no desire to pick a different line. So we bought the color from India instead of the color made here. I'm totally glad we did, too. Because our color was much brighter and stayed much longer, whereas the other stuff kind of faded and blended together. I ended up with two bags of yellow and one bright pink, so any time I saw anyone looking too dark, faded, or dull, I sprinkled them with the yellow. It was fantastic. I'm super glad I got two of the yellow, because it stood out better than any color. We never did find Claudio, which was a shame, but we had an amazing time anyway.

It was amazing how something like walking around and throwing fistfuls of color on perfect strangers can totally bond everyone in an odd sort of way. Like I said, at first I felt dumb, but by the end, I was throwing color on everyone I could find. And they were saying thank you! And total strangers were throwing color on us and we loved it! Then, we ended up on the side where people were just coming in and didn't have color, so in an effort to help them feel a part of the festivities, we threw color on them. We ended up looking for the less fortunate to sprinkle. It was great fun.

Next year, we will buy more bags of the India color. We will also remember our cameras. And lastly, we will remember to bring towels or bags or something to sit on in the car. (Sorry Cold One's car!)

The sad part is, I can only post a few of the pictures I took since I forgot my camera at home, so all pictures were taken after we got back, so there are no pictures of random strangers covered in color... and it'd be pointless to try to Photoshop paper bags on our heads, since the best pictures are of our faces. However, these three pictures are a great representation of what the rest of us looked like:

When will it stop?!

Wednesday I had a bloody nose at work. Thursday I got another bloody nose. This morning I got another bloody nose around 8:30. It's now after 1 pm, and I still have a bloody nose.

This is getting ridiculous.

Good or bad?

Yesterday was a very... interesting day. It wasn't a bad day by any means. Rather, I was in a quite fantastic mood. But the symptoms of a good day and a bad day were both very prevelant.

The day started when The Cold One couldn't start her car. The battery was dead. (Turned out to be worse than even that... corrodedness and such.) I gave her a ride to campus for class, then came home and took my time getting ready, called the dealership and set up an appointment for her, then picked her up when she was done. We then went to jump her car and found out that when I got my oil changed last time, they had done a fabulous job of pulling my hood cable back into my car. [sigh] So we couldn't use my car to jump it. I went to the neighbors' house... no answer. Off to the girls' house on the corner. One came over and jumped the car, then The Cold One and I sat there discussing if she should go to the dealership or Checkers. So she called Checkers and they wouldn't be able to install her battery for her. So we called AutoZone. They said they were empty and could install it. So she went on her way and I headed to work. (Turns out, AutoZone was busy when she got there, so she just went to the dealership instead, which ended up being a very good thing with all the corrodedness and such that had to be fixed as well.)

On my way to work I saw two people in my ward walking to campus, so I gave them a ride. The girl pronounced blessings upon my head for such a good deed. I accepted them gratefully. I dropped them off, then realized I had left my access badge at home, so I had to turn back. [sigh] So much for blessings. But then I got to work and miraculously found an amazing parking spot! I was well pleased.

Work went well for quite awhile until one of the missionaries decided to read The Elders Journal while she waited for a book to load and promptly found 7 missing pages. Not what I wanted to hear. So I came back and asked the Heartless Siren (who was in SLC) if she could find the harddrives that the images were on. Of course, they were nowhere to be found in my cubicle. After a few frantic emails and searches, I was petrified--I had lost months worth of work. A huge project. My first real project. Fear was boiling up in my insides. Then one well-placed chat later, the drives were found. We had put them somewhere for "safekeeping." You know, one of those places you'll put things in order not to lose them. [rolls eyes]

Then I looked at our stats for this month thus far, and got really giddy. So my attention was diverted to making a report in Access to show how many books have been loaded every month for each site since we started our current process. It was lots of fun, except I'm not very Access-savvy quite yet. So Heartless helped me until she couldn't figure it out anymore, then we took it over to Yellow and he fixed it for us. Much Access learning for Dragon Lady yesterday.

Oh, and somewhere in there, I got a bloody nose. I never get bloody noses. I don't even remember the last time I got one.

Then it was time for Enrichment. Following tradition, I announced one time in church and sent out an email with a different time. I lose. [rolls eyes] But, we had a decent turn out (considering our last several Enrichments and the size of the place). And I bought pizza for everyone. And we had raspberry cheesecake which was made with pudding and really, really good. And I made four adorable Thank You cards. And then, it went late. So I was late for my bowling league. And then I got there to find out that this year they decided to do a tournament and only the top 16 teams got to bowl in it. And we were #17. (Due largely to the fact that we haven't showed up many, many times.) So instead of letting it ruin our night, Coworker K ran home (or rather, drove) and got August Rush and brought it back to my house where we ate leftover pizza and popcorn while watching the movie. It was quite fun.

I was in a very energetic mood, apparently. And I got rather emotionally involved with this movie. It also helped that I was surrounded with other people who hadn't seen it and were willing to gasp and moan and groan and cheer at the same parts I did. So I didn't feel dumb doing it by myself. Coworker K was particularly entertained by my grabbing my hair/head, flailing my arms, and pulling up my legs to hug them. It was rather kind of fun. It reminded me a lot of the day that Heartless and I watched John Q. But that one was much more intense. We were both screaming and yelling and shaking our fists and curling up in terror... the entire movie. It was great. Anyway, back to last night. Yeah, I would definitely recommend August Rush. I didn't get into it at first... it was kind of strange seeing Robin Williams as the creepy guy. And yeah, it could be considered rather hoky. But overall, I rather liked it. Mom and Sister, I think you'd both enjoy it. (Also, it's PG.) Also, I want to buy the soundtrack. It was really fun.

So good and bad things all day. I'm glad I was in such a good mood that the night was able to end in pure happiness, despite all the dumb things that happened throughout the day. I definitely fell asleep with a smile on my face.

Harry Potter and theology

The other day, Niffler answered this question about religion in Harry Potter. Today I found this article about religion in Harry Potter. Random.

The first part of the article is kind of cool. It's all about this lady who is teaching a class at Yale Divinity School called "Christian Theology and Harry Potter." What an interesting class. The last part of the article, however, is rubbish. Complete rubbish. It's all the Christians who claim that Harry Potter is evil and satanic and anti-Christian and blah blah blah.

Sometimes, you just have to ask

Once upon a time I was sitting at the kitchen table, poking around in a bowl of heart-shaped Red Hots. I didn't like cinnamon candy, but it looked so good. I was mourning my dislike of the candy and the unfairness of it all, so I asked Mom, "Mom, why don't I like cinnamon candies? Everyone else likes them." Now, I didn't actually expect an answer to this question. I was mostly just venting. Imagine my shock when Mom replied with, "What? You don't know?" "No. Should I?" She looked shocked and dumbfounded that I didn't know, which I thought was silly, because why should I know why I didn't like a particular food besides the fact that it tastes gross? She then proceeded to tell me the following story.


I was still young enough to sit contentedly in my car seat on the floor while Mom went about her business. This particular day, she and one of her friends were making suckers. The smell was pretty strong, so they stuck me in the next room where they could still hear me. The distance was perfect, until they decided to pull out the cinnamon flavoring. The smell filled the room with its potency. Suddenly, Mom heard me gasp, so she came running in to see if I was ok, only to see me not breathing and turning blue. The smell was too strong and I couldn’t breathe. Thankfully, she suspected the problem and quickly ran me out to fresh air. What a relief! I immediately started breathing and was soon content once again. The only scar I carry from the event is not caring much for cinnamon; I can only imagine how traumatic that had to be for my poor mother.


Who knew that there was actually a story? Mom, can you tell me any other stories about my past that I don't remember and haven't heard a billion times?

Failed logic

I grew up with the mountains directly east of me. (They were nothing to Utah mountains, but they were my mountains, nonetheless.) (Also, let me take this moment to say that I love words that are really three words smooshed together and grammatically acceptable as opposed to my made up ones such as jussasec.) The mountains seemed to be a cap on top of the geography of my home. We rarely traveled through those mountains to get anything. Sure, if we wanted to go up into the mountains to the reservoir or to get square ice cream cones, we'd head that way. But if we ever went anywhere else, we traveled west--the exact opposite direction.

Now, if someone were to ask me which way Utah was, I would have said South. New York? East. Most anywhere in the US? East. (There is plenty still West of us, but the majority is East.) However, in my head, when actually outside and looking at the world, if you were to ask me which way was New York, I probably would have pointed south, perhaps a little southwest. The mountains were the cap! There was nothing that way but mountains. Thus, that must be north. If we went to Utah, we went the opposite direction! Since Utah is south, this confirmed to me that the mountains must be north! If we went to Washington, which is west, we started out heading what is really north, but if the mountains were north, we would have been traveling west--which is the direction of Washington.

I always knew the mountains were east. If you asked me what direction we were facing, I could have accurately told you. However, actual direction and the location of places were two separate things in my head.

You can see how my poor little brain got confused.

I remember the day that I actually stopped and looked at the mountains and thought, "The mountains are east. New York is east. New York is on the other side of those mountains." The thought befuddled me. But... but... that can't be true! There was nothing past those mountains! The majority of the US just can't be over there! I remember asking my mom why we drove west to get to Utah which was southeast from us. She told me simply, "The freeway is west. Once we get on that, then we go southeast."

Although I accepted this as truth, it never actually fit in my head. The mountains were the cap. There is nothing past the mountains. I know this to be false, but sometimes, logic doesn't win. I guess this belief has followed me through the years. Utah is easy to figure out. The mountains are east; the lake is west. I can typically tell you which direction we are going. But I looked at the mountains the other day and it hit me--New York is that way. It is as strange to me now as it was as a child.

I really need to move somewhere that has mountains on the north.

Shattered Dreams

This morning, I was rudely awakened by my phone ringing. It was the Goblin King. (I find this highly entertaining as I just watched The Labyrinth last night.)

Q. Why didn't I return her call last night?
A. I didn't think she wanted a phone call at 2:30 am.

Q. 2:30?! What were you doing that you didn't get my message until 2:30!?
A. No. I got it much earlier. But I thought it would be quite rude to call back in the middle of dinner with friends when I knew we would talk. We've been best friends since 5th grade. Of course we'll talk.

Q. You sound like I woke you up. Did I wake you up?
A. Yes, yes you did.
Response. Good. I've still got it in me.

She then claimed that by waking me up after only 6.5 hours of sleep, she was considered charming. I tried to convince her that nothing she did this morning was in the definition of charming.

Conversation no one else cares about.

(Sidenote to mention that the italics feature in blogger is ridiculous. I am just glad that I know the teeniest bit of html so that I could actually get this paragraph to not be italicized. )

GK: Well, I'll let you get back to sleep. If you can. [maniacal laughter]
DL: If I can't fall back to sleep, I totally blame you.
GK: I will happily take that blame.
(Yes, she is cruel.)

I shut my phone and attempted to go back to sleep. Tragically, I have a room corner with two windows, one facing east, one facing south. The morning sun is quite bright in my room. Also, I have very light blue walls (which actually look more like primer than paint... I should ask my landlord if I could paint this summer) which lends itself well to making for a bright room. I was too hot and stuffy to pull my denim blanket over my head, so I just closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I never made it to sleep... I was in that half-asleep, half-conscious state where the conscious part is mummified so you know you're awake, but you're fully engulfed in dream anyway. I had the most incredible dream and the conscious part of my brain was thinking, "I have to blog about this when I get up." I even remember composing the first paragraph of this post.

I would love to follow through with that and blog about my dream, but it was interrupted
by a loud pounding on the front door, which just happens to be right next to my bedroom. Frightened out of my bed (I have this talent to answer doors and phones before I fully wake up. I simply can't allow them to go unanswered--my subconscious simply will not allow it), I woke up enough to realize that my pajamas were probably not appropriate to answer the door in. So on my way out of the bedroom, I stopped by my closet and frantically grabbed a tshirt, putting it on as I fled out of my room. I opened the door to find two teenage boys telling me (for the second time in a week!) that they were doing a Young Men's project of airerating (I slaughtered that, I know) lawns, then looked back at the sorry state of our lawn and asked if we'd like ours done. For the second time in a week I informed them that we were renting and didn't make those decisions. (We have someone who supposedly will take care of our lawn again this year. At least, he promised that we would have a lawn this year.) They thanked me, then turned and left.

I went back to bed for the second time this morning (this has to be some sort of sin on a Saturday morning) and officially couldn't fall back to sleep. So I decided to blog! And realized that those silly boys had driven my wonderful dream from my mind. Despite my desperate attempts to remember it, all I can remember is thinking about one of my plants sitting on my dresser. Pretty sure that wasn't it. Sorry folks, no dream for you. If I have to be left disappointed, so should you.

Goblin King, I blame you.

Little Victories

I have a silent battle going on with the janitor in Orem. Every day, I get to work to find my garbage can by the door--as far away from my computer as you can get. Every day, I grab that garbage can and put it next to my chair. Every night, the janitor picks it up from next to my chair, empties my banana peels, granola bar wrappers, and Subway sandwich remains, then puts it back next to my door.

If you were to draw a line between where I want my garbage can and where the janitor apparently wants my garbage can, you could place where I found it today slightly more than halfway towards where I want it.

I am winning.

Simplicities

There are some things I keep meaning to do, but keep putting them off. Then I finally do them and think, Wow. That was easy. Why didn't I do it sooner?

I should stop doing that.

IKEA

The Heartless Siren and I love IKEA. Like... a lot. So when this Board Question was asked, I couldn't help but take the opportunity to make another trip to IKEA. Besides, I wanted a bookcase and a watering can anyway. There's a reason why we love this store so much... it's just so much fun! And to prove it, I submit to you a collection of photos from this latest adventure:

We'll start with the furniture portion. First, chairs:


Here we have "de boffus" (that was for you, Optimistic.) sitting on some of the most fantastic chairs at IKEA. There is a black leather one sitting on a pedestal further down the path. Bonus points to anyone who sends me a picture of them sitting in it.

Here is Heartless sitting in a wicker chair that she loved. It was not my favorite, I'll be honest. I had to steal a pillow from the bed it was sitting next to in order to make it comfortable.

This chair has an amazing story behind it. Or rather, an amazing picture. However, I didn't think that I could Photoshop a paper bag onto Heartless' head and do it justice. Thus, you just get two pictures of me in the chair. Let's suffice it to say that this is dubbed the Magic Chair because in it, even Heartless would pose for a picture. This is, by far, Heartless' favorite chair. And trust me when I say she would know—she has sat in most of them.

This is Heartless' other favorite chair. I would say it's just the netting that covers it, but she loved that setup for a chair every time we saw one.

And... back to the Magic Chair. This is me pondering in it. This is the picture I first learned I could do an fairly accurate job of drawing faces on paper bags. Thank goodness for Photoshop. (Please note how high the back of the chair goes. Is it any wonder that it is so comfortable?)

Welcome to the Chair of Enlightenment. This wins the Dragon Lady Favorite Chair award. I would not turn down a gift of this chair. It is oozing with comfort.

I do believe that by the time both of received enlightenment on this chair, people were starting to think us rather odd. Neither of us care. We would definitely relive this experience.


Next, beds:

This wins the Heartless Favorite Bed Award. Again with the netting. (Curse you and your netting, Heartless! Photoshopping behind netting is a royal pain.) Although this one made me feel like I was sleeping under mosquito netting, I must admit that it was incredibly comfortable. I wouldn't mind sleeping in it. Another bonus... we're pretty sure that it is long enough (or rather, the diameter is large enough) that Heartless could lay across it without hanging off.

This wins Dragon Lady's Favorite Bed. It's the same bed that Azriel posted about in the Board question. I could have slept here all day. It's on this bed that I squished Yellow's effigy.


And now for the non-furniture section:

This frog is fantastic. You can't tell here, but he's actually a frog prince. Actually, you can see the crown in this picture. But that's not the amazing part. That resides in the fact that here his mouth is open...

... and now is zippered shut! What more can you ask for in a perfect prince? (I so wish you could see the smirk on Heartless' face here. Photoshop did not do it justice at all.)

To accommodate the international consumer base, they decided not to bias us by putting a language on this keyboard... all the buttons are blank.

They use this heart with hands in pictures and signs everywhere to say, "Don't worry! You can bring it back!" Every time I go there, I say I want to buy this pillow.

See! Isn't it just so lovable? Besides, if Heartless is willing to pose for a picture with it, this must be a Magic Pillow. Needless to say, this trip I caved. It now resides on our couch and is known as the Boyless Pillow. If you don't have a boy and just need a hug or need to hold hands, this pillow can provide. (It has also been learned that the arms can reach around your neck, link fingers with themselves, and become a heart-shaped cape. It's quite fantastic.)

Someday, I will have my own house. In this house of mine, I will have something like this. Organized containers. Can you imagine opening a drawer to find your flower, sugar, brown sugar, cocoa (yes, I plan on buying cocoa in bulk someday), etc. all in one place? Just the very thought giddies me.

Perhaps it's not good for me to go to IKEA. Every time I do, I start planning out my future home. I need to hurry and get rich so that I can just build my ideal home and get planning now. Actually... no. I should live in a couple of starter homes first, so that I can really get a real-life feel for what I like and what I don't. Then I can be that much more ready to design, build, and furnish my own home. Heartless and I decided that if we both end up being old maids, we are going to buy a house and furnish it solely with items purchased at IKEA. Do you think that IKEA would sponsor us? At least give us 30% off everything or something? We would advertise far and wide for them. I think it's a good plan.


Things learned in the making of this post:

1. Opacity and I are definitely friends.
2. When I get tired, my Photoshop drawing skills go down the drain.
3. I am awful at drawing using a track pad
4. Brother has amazing tools that could have solved my drawing woes, if only I had asked.
5. Ofttimes, real faces land on the bottom third of a paper bag. Get over it.
6. Finding paper bags on a person's head on Google is ridiculously hard. I only ever found one.
7. I want to go back to IKEA. But this is really a surprise to no one.
8. Photoshopping this many pictures takes a long time.
   

unnecessary, esp. through being more than enough

Today I was sitting in line in the McDonalds parking lot (yes, I feel shame for admitting to that... but for unknown reasons, I have been craving McDonalds lately. I think I've been cursed.) and saw the license plate of the car behind me in my rear view mirror. PFU. Hmmm... what word could I make out of PFU? Perfunctory. Yes. That's a good word. Except, it followed my bad habit of using words that I know work, but not really having any idea of what it means. (For the record, perfunctory is an adjective meaning, "(of an action or gesture) carried out with a minimum of effort or reflection : he gave a perfunctory nod.") Also, if I'm just sitting around, I like to see if I can come up with more than one word. Hmmm... Superfluous. Yeah, that was a good word. Not thinking I could come up with another off the top of my head (for the record, there are 399 more words that fit, some you would recognize like hopeful, others that are silly like bishopful, and unrecognizable cool ones like opsoniferous), I looked forward and realized I could see the license plate of the car in front of me. UFU. Another Superfluous. How strange. How likely is it to be surrounded with two cars of the same word? Seems a little superfluous to me...

An effigy to avenge

I've already discussed the history behind "SLAY HIM TO DEFEND OUR HONOR" so I shall skip that today. However, I did want to tell about the next time it (or rather, a slight variation) was used.

Yellow and Claudio are both Super Smash Brothers fans. Yellow, however, has more experience (he owns the game) and is thus, better. Claudio doesn't like this fact and has been very excited for the new version, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl to come out so that he and Yellow can challenge each other, and for the first time, be on equal footing. Yesterday, Yellow was on Gmail chat with the status: "Has played Super Smash Brothers." The following conversation ensued between Claudio and myself:

Claudio: I am outraged that he broke our gentlemans' agreement.
Dragon Lady: he didn't wait for you to play together?
Claudio: Indeed!
(I can't blame him. I'd have done the same thing.)
(still)
YOU MUST SLAY HIM TO AVENGE MY HONOR.
Dragon Lady: I....
I....
I don't know what to say to that
you want me to slay my friend
Claudio: HONOR!

I promptly went to my chat with Yellow and informed him of my dilemma. I didn't want to slay Yellow. He is my very good friend. However, this was HONOR! His suggestion? "Well, how's this. You can slay an effigy of me. Preferably a two-dimensional stick figure effigy to be slain my means of tearing the paper in half."

I suggested this to Claudio who first pondered the compromise, but then decided that since it was a first offense, it would suffice. While Claudio was pondering, The Heartless Siren and I had already found a yellow piece of paper and scissors. Heartless was in the middle of cutting out a paper doll when Claudio agreed to the terms. It was a good thing he did, because by that point, he really had no choice in the matter. Heartless and I were being crafty. (Laser Jock pointed out that in the situation, the word had a double meaning.)

The effigy Yellow didn't want to be slain, however, and was killed in many different ways before slaying was even possible. For you, my dear readers, we documented all of the different ways of death that Yellow's effigy died yesterday. Please enjoy the following selection of photos for your viewing pleasure.


This is Yellow's effigy, unscathed. Please note the Game Cube controller in his hand.

The effigy burning and also hanging. Apparently Yellow's effigy isn't as good at spelling. He lost an arm trying to spell "Brail" (which in and of itself is misspelled) instead of the obvious word, "Brawl."

Here we have the effigy drowning. Then we have him after he was pushed off a "roof."

Next he got run over and then eaten by a sea monster.

Here he gets stabbed with a letter opener (which is close to being slain). And also is being suffocated inside a Tupperware-ish container.

To follow the kitchen theme, he is being boiled alive. Next he's getting smothered by a pillow.

Here we found him pretending to be dead by laying inside a chalk outline. (I told you he wasn't as smart as the real Yellow. We can tell that chalk outline wasn't drawn for him.) At this point, I was exhausted so I took a nap. I woke up to find that I had squished him. I was very sad. (It's a tragedy I had to put on a paper bag. I had quite the incredible pout in this picture.)

After recovering from the smooshing, he got strangled. Then squished between two bowling balls.

He must have had it after that. He relinquished his Game Cube controller and all we found was this paper outline of him on the floor... a much more believable chalk outline.


Claudio, I believe I have avenged your HONOR.

Happy Surprises

Today I left work just after 6:00. I walked outside expecting it to be dark, or at least getting dark. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was still brilliantly bright outside. And still warm enough to not have to wear my coat.

I love Spring.

Chaos Cloud

A chaos cloud has followed me for the past 26 hours. It started when I almost died twice driving to work. It continued through work when everything that could go wrong, did. Both the Heartless Siren and I had massive drama projects lingering in front of us that needed our great attention. Every time I touched my database, something else burst into flames. For every I got, I had to send five to fix/answer it. For every email I sent, I got three back. You do the math. Every time I tried to fix a problem, I found another one. I had sent this amazing report of a huge problem we've been having to the vendor responsible the other day and got the most ridiculous email in return that was supposed to fix it. Kreacher, the BYU programmer I work with, actually called me, laughing so hard I could almost hear the tears, wondering if I was suffering from hysterical fits of laughter as well. It got to the point that I was laughing to keep from crying. And there was much laughter. I realized later that I was actually entertained. I was laughing just because I thought it was funny. Towards the end of the day, when I didn't think I could take any more, every time Heartless Siren would say something, I would pull my blanket up into a ball on my lap and bury my face in it, then tell her to bring it on.

On the way home, we decided to cash in a coupon I had for a free car wash. Out of pure luck and Heartless Siren's good eye, we were able to breeze past the ginormous line at the Parkway exit and turn right to find the correct Chevron. I got the code for the coupon, then drove over to the carwash... only to find out it was a do-it-yourself carwash. Are you kidding me? I was in a dress, and the chaos cloud was looming over me. You think I'm going to wash my car by hand? Pshhha. So we left. But traffic was horrible, and any way out, I had to turn left. It wasn't gonna happen, so I turned right. At the next drive on my left, I planned on doing a U-turn. But, of course, my car has a horrible turning radius (though, much better than my last car) and I had to pull in. Tragically, it was a UTA only driveway. I got turned around and left. As we were turning the corner back around the Chevron, Heartless Siren noticed an automatic car wash that we had somehow missed. But the line of cars in the other lane was staggeringly long, so I couldn't have turned left into the Chevron had I tried. Besides, I didn't want to try to get out of there again.

Mom had told me that after a day like this, we deserved ice cream. So we stopped at the mall. Probably the most chaos-free part of the day. After finding a fantastic parking spot, we entered the mall and decided we wanted dinner. After eating Chick-fil-A and eavesdropping on a fantastically entertaining conversation about returned missionaries (you don't want them too weird because that's just annoying, but you want them somewhat weird so that you know they learned something on their mission) and watching this dad whip a huge knife out of his pocket in front of his children for no apparent reason (which became apparent after a moment when he started cutting his daughter's pizza), we headed over to Radio Shack. I am now the happy new owner of an AV cable that allows me to plug my iPod directly into my car radio. Last stop, Coldstone. I was incredibly full and had actually considered not getting any ice cream, but then I decided I could always take it home and put it in the freezer to eat later. One taste of dark chocolate peppermint ice cream later, there was no way it would ever make it to the freezer. Adding raspberries to it just sealed the deal.

We decided the evening would be spent at home at a movie night with some girls in the ward in our pajamas and not leaving at all. So, of course, that's not at all what happened. I forgot and changed into jeans, but promised to change into pjs when I finished answering the Board question I was working on. But before I finished, we were invited over to Yellow's house to play Sonic. So we went. I stayed in jeans because his apartment tends to be cold, but Heartless Siren stayed in her pjs. Sonic was fun. I had only ever played once and it was Heartless Siren's first time. Yellow told us there was a way we could play cooperatively, and started us on a competitive level. After gaming chaos, we moved on to other games in the Sonic game. Having no idea what the grey blocks were in the Tetris-like game (or rather, where they came from... anyone? anyone?) we moved on to Lego Star wars. It had to be highly entertaining to watch. Heartless Siren and I didn't play nice together... I'm not sure we were meant to play cooperative games. She kept trying to go forward while I was trying to stay back and explore and she kept killing me on accident and I kept doing useless things like using the force to blow flowers up to get coins. (Useless because we weren't saving our game.) At one point, I pulled on my controller and pulled it out of the game cube. I put it back in, but alas, it no longer wanted to recognize it. much chaos later where they kept killing me to try to make me move and also lost control of Heartless' controller, we discovered that position 1 and 2 had switched to 3 and 4 and we were able to play again. We got to a flying/racing level and I knew we were in trouble. I'm awful at racing. Even better, we had to fly together. We could kill each other... and believe me, we did. We finally made it through... to find it was only the first of 3 laps. I think Yellow and Hoday were slightly annoyed and us continually making the same mistakes and dying over and over again (Yellow actually flew for me for awhile when Heartless Siren was dropped out of the game so she could put on chapstick) but we were having a lot of fun. What is gaming chaos compared to work chaos? We'll take this any day. We were probably on the racing portion for near an hour... we had one section left--a section we did easily the previous two times--when the game froze and emitted an awful buzzing noise. We took that as our cue to go home. Oh, and sometime during the evening, Heartless Siren broke her compact... the lid snapped right off.

This morning I was about to leave for work in Orem and glanced back and noticed Heartless' light wasn't on, but her car was there. Sure enough, she was still asleep. So I woke her up and told her it was ridiculous to go to SLC, so just to come to Orem, then I left. I got to work, determined to fight the chaos cloud, and was overwhelmed by emails, phone calls, and the fax machine. (Ironically, it turns out that Optimistic. had taken Heartless Siren's brain and gave it back this morning, but warned that it may have been damaged over the fax machine transfer.)

Heartless Siren just walked into my cubicle and we realized more chaos had just ensued regarding loading books. (Oh, I musn't forget that this relates to her big chaos problem from yesterday which is also the project I talked about in this post. She read it last night and was laughing so hard that there were tears. Particularly about the line, "Maybe because I just know that she'll do a good job") Of course another problem would creep up as I'm writing about chaos. We have determined that it is no longer a chaos cloud. It's a chaos inversion. There's no telling when it'll leave. Pray for us.

Oh, and my thumb still hurts from the Game Cube last night. But that's totally worth it.

Let's celebrate!

This was supposed to be my 100th blog post... but it got shafted when doctor's visits came in to play. So, in honor of this pretending to be my 100th blog post (though really my 102nd), I've decided to celebrate with Harry Potter. What better way to celebrate?

Besides, this Lego Harry Potter 5 video is fantastic.

The results are in...

Diagnosis: My MCL was slightly torn. It will heal on its own. My meniscus was not torn, but had pulled slightly away from the bone. It will also heal on its own. No surgery needed. MRIs can be wrong, however, so if it still hurts in 6 weeks, come back

Sorry, Chillylint... this did not live up to your high expectations in humor. I beg your deepest forgiveness, but really--how much humor can be had from a phone call while driving down 400 S on my way home from work?