The Vegetable of Masochists

I finished my finals on Wednesday and am home for a few days before I head back to school for Spring term. I was rummaging around for something for lunch, and came across some soup...and a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts.

My mom never served Brussels sprouts as I was growing up. I noticed how often they were bemoaned by our culture, but, not having first hand experience with them, I thought surely they couldn't be as bad as that. I've always loved vegetables, and I always thought Brussels sprouts were such beautiful ones.

So I steamed some of them with some salt and pepper and lime juice, and then tried them.

They were awful. Suddenly, I realized why people speak so poorly of the Brussels sprout. I realized where it had found its bad reputation. This beautiful vegetable--a vegetable--had deceived me.

My mom told me I couldn't give up on them until I tried them fresh. Maybe there's still hope.

You Can Do That Anywhere

I was talking to my friend Caroline about my job at the BYU laundry, and she said her grandpa said it was a useful skill--the kind of thing you can do anywhere. It's interesting to see how industrial strength laundry works. That's one thing I enjoy about only being qualified for low-end jobs. You get to see the back side of things. You get to see how things work that you would never learn about otherwise. I told Caroline I'd post some pictures.The jacket is going down to assembly hanging from one branch of a whole system of lines that transports clothes from one part of the laundry to another--for dry cleaning items, it takes them from the dry cleaning machines to the presses to assembly. The clothing items moving along the line makes me think of that hanging-door-chase scene in Monsters, Inc.
A giant press that I've only seen used once (besides being a warm spot for drying things flat) and the front desk.
The dry cleaning machines. They're like giant wash machines. You can see the clothes going round and round and some chemicals sloshing. It smells really...chemical.
The mangle, used to press and fold sheets. I think. I don't work with the mangle or anything, but I think it's fantastic how huge it is and what a menacing name it has.
The pants press, where I spend most of my time. It's a two-step process--pants go on the dummy first, which is to get the pleats nice and pressed. Then you put them on the press you see to the right. It really scared me when I started working here--I had seen a movie where some poor Asian immigrant is using one and burns her arm, but she has to keep working to meet quota. I've never gotten burned, though, and I don't have a quota.

Meets The Beatles

I listen to a lot of podcasts: with working part time at the laundry and living a twenty-five minute walk away from campus, I get through a bunch of them in a week.

Last week I was listening to an episode of WNYC's Soundcheck, where the topic was: Who was the better Beatle, John or Paul? (A lot of the callers voted for Ringo). After it was over, I listened to the Beatles for the rest of my shift. I was surprised at how many memories came to me as I listened.

The songs are part of our culture--a lot of them I first heard from places other than the Beatles themselves. My uncle taught me "I'll Follow the Sun" so I could sing it with him as he played it on his guitar, and the first time I heard "Eleanor Rigby" was when I played the cello in Olympus Junior High's orchestra. The director chose it for our springtime "Concert in the Park," which we would play on the school's lawn under big trees. We had been rehearsing it for a few days already when Mr. Nelson brought in a recording. It was so haunting. I quoted lines from it to my mom in the car that afternoon. The "face" "in a jar by the door" especially got to me.

"Can't Buy Me Love" was on my early-morning playlist during my first semester of college. I had a 7:00 Spanish class every morning, and I would set my iPod's alarm and fall asleep with the earphones on so that I wouldn't wake up my roommate. It was dark when I would walk to campus in the morning, and I was groggy--and I wanted upbeat songs to get me going. "Can't Buy Me Love" got stuck in my head one weekend. I remember singing it as my two good friends from that semester and I walked up the hill between the dorms and campus one weekend night. "I don't care too much for money. Money can't buy me love."

I remember, when I was little, walking through the halls of Holladay Elementary school meditating on what "A hard day's night" meant, and my friend Caroline had a sweatshirt that said "Strawberry Fields Forever," with the "strawberry" replaced with a little pink drawing.

I went to Concordia Language Villages while I was in high school for a four week session in their French immersion program. They have lots of other languages, including English. One day during the session, all of the language villages get together. One of the activities was a peace ceremony. The English language village--full of rich European and Asian kids--sang "Let It Be" as part of the ceremony. They had a hand-written poster with the words, and someone played the guitar.

During the Fête de la musique in France, Jennifer and I wandered around Duclair to hear the different bands set up. Outside the cafe styled in '50s Americana, a classic rock band was playing "I've Got a Feeling" with their speakers turned up loud and glasses of beer sitting near them. The whole town was out.

For a long time I thought "Hey Jude" was talking about Jews. I had seen pictures of the yellow Star of Davids that German Jews wore under Hitler's regime, and they had "Jude" written on them. I didn't know "Jude" really was a name. Besides, in German it would be pronounced 'youdeh'. I also thought "Blackbird" was a song for racial equality--is that one true?

I think my favorite Beatles song, though, is "Rocky Raccoon." I like how it's calm with a good level of twang. But I love the story, and I love the way it rhymes.

The Wedding Continued

Decoration progression...





And the festivities:
It was windy. Cold, cold wind.


All the bridesmaids getting dressed and getting their hair done in the girl's bathroom at the reception site made me think of when I used to do dance meets.

Sneaking out to decorate the car. The sight of all of us jaywalking in our matching pinks was impressive.
I lead everyone the wrong way to where the car was parked. We climbed.

The whole night, my nephew Gabe would run to the stage whenever someone wasn't holding him--my brother-in-law was on keyboard and Gabe loves drum sets. He also liked the paper lanterns--he would grab three at a time and run yelling, "Balloons! Pink balloons!"


Our handiwork. Christian was really worried about his car, and he and Dagny sat down with my sister Emmy and I the night before and made us agree to a few car-decorating stipulations. One of those was that we weren't supposed to let friends come--Dagny was scared about how imaginative they would be. So I saw this group of friends in the photo as we were leaving to decorate but didn't invite them to come. Ironically, the two groomsmen who did come help broke most of the agreed-upon stipulations, and the feared friends who weren't invited helped them clean it off so they could drive away.

Wedding Photos: I

I'm studying for the stats midterm I have tomorrow (or maybe, at nearly midnight the night before, this would qualify as cramming), but between z-tests and t-tests, I needed to share some photos. It's the first round of two, I think. I'll post the others soon; for now, I need to get back to my formulas.

Final dress fitting the day before


The rehearsal dinner: My sister, her fiancé, and my grandmother. (One of my cousins who was a bridesmaid--she isn't Mormon--said the best part about the rehearsal dinner was that there was no rehearsal.)


Hair started at 7:30 that morning.


Decorating for the reception started at 8:00.