Lightrail Revelations

I was riding Trax today, and a woman asked if she "could please use anyone's cell phone?" Yesterday someone let me borrow their phone, so I figured it was only fair, and I dug mine out of my bag and handed it to her. She made her phone call as I read my book, and handed it back to me: "Thank you." 

"You're welcome." 

I turned back to my book, but after a minute or two, she was thanking me again--she had been desperate. "I understand," I said, as I realized we were entering the full-blown small talk phase of the conversation where it would be awkward for me to just start reading again. We kept going as I hoped she would get off soon so I could get back to my book, and before I knew it she was writing her name on the back of a brochure for Prepaid Legal and expressing her amazement that I was twenty years old but had never heard of it. She got up to go, and I felt used. 

And then it hit me: that's what I'll be doing for the next eighteen months. 

I have been thinking recently about the odd vocation that is the full-time missionary. It seems to me that missionaries often preceded or accompanied colonists--in Africa, South America...and in Korea. And what they did certainly wasn't always positive. Considering that heritage, it feels like a somewhat antiquated vocation. 

I have cousins who are full-time missionaries, though (and not Mormon ones). And I typed "missionary" into Google and pulled up some tips for open-air street preaching. So evidently they are alive and well, these missionaries of the world, and of the world's religions. Today on the train, though, after that woman left, it felt like she had only talked to me to try to get a new client. I just hope the people I meet don't feel like that. But then hopefully I don't act quite like that, either. 

The Ministry of...oh. Wait.

It seems like I relate many things in life to Harry Potter. But it just makes them more magical and less mundane if I do. I think my next-door neighbor looks like Sirius Black. Or, for another example, BYU has a huge testing center where you go take exams instead of doing them during class time. It is one big room with rows and rows of desks, everyone silent and scratching away. And it makes me think of Harry Potter--of their final exams all lined up in the Great Hall. Magical final exams.

Well, today I went in to the Missionary Department at the church office building. I've had some issues with my knees in the past, and my mission president asked the Missionary Department to look into it, saying that there are lots of stairs and such in the Korea Seoul West mission. So an orthopedic surgeon who volunteers for the church asked me to come in.

He explained I would need security clearance, but to just go to the front desk and they would print me a badge. I took Trax downtown, and as I walked in the huge church office building, it felt like I was going to the Ministry of Magic--people hurrying around talking about different topics, banks of elevators and "restricted entrance" signs, the fact that it is the headquarters for something huge, the paper airplane memos flying around....

And I went up to the Missionary Department on the third floor, where my papers were sent and reviewed. The doctor who wanted to talk to me had a copy of them, and let me look over the notes that were added after I submitted them (nothing too interesting, though--my bishop and stake president had written how I wanted to get back in time to start school again, and there was a note about the address debacle). I met a few of the contact points over different areas of the world, who coordinate mission presidents and the doctors and other personnel in the department. And I got to see the rows and rows of desks and people busy at them. It was an adventure.

(And my knees passed.)

Ogden Photowalk

My friend Jessica invited me to a photowalk put on by Flickr group Photowalking Utah that we went to last week. It was up in Ogden; we took the bus, Trax, and Frontrunner up and met up with the group. The group tries to do something once a month--for September, they've been invited to check out a new state-of-the-art photo studio on the twentieth. I leave on the tenth--maybe it can be something I can get more involved with when I get back.

The* New Kitchen

My last day working as a cook at the Cannon Center was Wednesday, but I took the pictures and so I'm writing the post. The new facilities were beautiful. New walk-in lockers, with windows--so you could locate something before you walked in (the new freezer was so cold, too, at 9 degrees). The kitchen area was a little small, but they're still figuring out who does what where.





I was kind of sad to leave the job. The old building had one buffet line where you would get a choice of two meal options, plus a salad bar, fruit bar, pasta/soup/leftover bar, and desserts. The new building has a completely new system, with five or so different areas each serving different meals. Expo has oatmeal in the morning, then soups. Fusion does made-to-order omelets (I subbed there one day, and now I know how to make a good looking omelet). The Grill has hamburgers and things, and Euro has fancy stuff like a giant tandoori oven (it's made out of stone, and they cook naan by throwing it against the sides).

I worked in the back prep kitchen. With the new system, they start things a day ahead. I got to do things that were a lot more interesting than scrambled eggs every morning. It was a lot of fun to work in a professional kitchen--it was a good summer job.



*According to the professor of my medieval manuscripts class, "ye" as in "ye old kitchen" was a not matter of orthography, just of handwriting. What looked like a "y" might have been an abbreviation for "th" (I know it sounds crazy, but if you've seen crazy manuscript writing, you'd believe it). So probably no one walked around saying things like "ye old kitchen."

Jamberry!

I'm not quite sure how the idea got into my head...I think it was a combination of walking past two full plum trees on the way to campus every day...my parents talking about freezer jam...my cousin's blog entry about homemade apricot fruit leather, jelly, and juice...staying on campus late one day, hungry, and getting distracted looking up recipes for plums, and stumbling on inevitable recipes for jam and jelly.

So I made last Saturday Jam Day. And goodness, it took all day.

I had never made jam or jelly before, except for helping my grandma make wild plum jelly one summer when I was maybe eight, during my pioneer phase (I dressed up in my pioneer clothes for the event). After tasting what we had created, I decided wild plum jelly was one of the most divine things on earth, and on Saturday I was pleased to discover that domesticated plum jelly has a similar taste.

I started at about 7:30 in the morning by going across the street with a bucket and filling it with plums. I probably should have asked. I didn't. Then I spent a long time cutting them up. I messed a few things up, but I was pretty pleased with myself in the end. Especially since I didn't have fancy jar-grabbers, and the biggest pot in the apartment definitely did not fit one to two inches of water above the jars, but all of them sealed anyway.

I finally finished late. It was hot and I was sweaty. There wasn't a open space on table, counter, or top of refrigerator in the teeny-tiny kitchen. I had succeeded in making two whole batches of jelly and jam, and I realized I was now the proud owner of more of it than I think I have consumed in my entire life.