Most Recent Life: Fort, Spark

I've had a few recent blog realizations. One, I'm a little more interested in my blog again. Two, I don't have particularly interesting things to blog about. Three, I really enjoy reading other people's blogs, even if they are just about every-day stuff.

So, I'm blogging about some kind of mundane stuff.

The Fort.
So my roommates and I got a group date together. There was much deliberation about what we would do for this date (which gave me a new respect for guys who plan dates). After much discussion, we decided to build a fort. In our living room.

The fort wasn't looking to be very exciting until one of the guys suggested we turn the couch on end. We did that, and put a chair on the table, strung sheets off the ceiling and from the door and the refrigerator, put all the couch cushions on the ground and had a picnic in the fort. The picture hopefully gives you some idea of how it all went down. Spark.
My friend Jessica gave me a Groupon to Spark Restaurant Lounge for my birthday. I went there Friday night with some friends (the group would have included Jessica, except she lives in Salt Lake, not Provo, the location of Spark Restaurant Lounge and of me). It's quite the place. I was going to lift a picture of someone's Flickr photostream, but I'll just let you click the link. They set our places at the end of a long, black table. Kind of like medieval dining. We all felt chic. My friend Natalie got a Shirley Temple. It was described in the menu as having a "cotton candy cap." We all wondered what on earth this meant, until she got it. Basically, it's what it sounds like. There was fluffy cotton candy on a stick stuck in the drink like a flag. Quite the garnish.

Home Again, Redbox, Halloween

I got home last night from a Church history trip to Palmyra, New York, Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois. It was a wonderful trip. I wanted to blog while I was gone but then I forgot my camera cable...so I'll post about it--with pictures!--real soon. I feel so cheerful since getting back. It was so good to have in the middle of a hard semester.

I used Redbox for the first time in my life tonight. It just blew me away. I think it's pretty much space-age. Technology in general is just amazing me particularly lately. Maybe the Church history tour helped with this--hearing lots of stories and reading about a time when communication was hard, transportation was hard. Now there are cell phones, computer models of buildings, instant publications, airplanes...and Redbox. The video comes out in a little case. It really is like something out of a movie. Seriously.

Today was Halloween on campus--the day closest to it that people could dress up for. This just delights me. I saw a black cat and a couple of wizards. There was the Queen of Hearts with a full Elizabethan collar. I saw a Miss Frizzle with red curly hair piled up, and a dress made out of planet fabric. I had two favorites, though. One was a girl dressed up as an old person. This itself is not that creative. What made me smile was that she was on her own, but still walking with her cane using little shuffles. She was on her cell phone, telling the person on the other end in a grandma voice, "no, today my name is Granny Granger, and that's what I made my second-graders call me." She carried on the voice and the shuffle for as long as I could see or hear her. The second favorite was when I went up to the video section of the library on campus. They keep the videos behind a big desk, and employees have to go get them for you. I was asking about one when all of a sudden Charlie Chaplin walked out from the shelves of videos. I was severely disappointed when he started talking to someone.

html

A professor in the French department just emailed me and offered me a job--making some Word documents html compatible.

So I'm trying to figure this out.




That should be four spaces and
a new line.

Yes! It worked.

and this should make italics

So far so good.

Do'es this make an apostrophe? What abo't that?

Can I put it in the center?
How about italics in the center?

And this way?

Meta-blogging

I feel like writing, but I don't really have anything to write about.

The reason I started the blog in the first place was so that my family could see what I was doing while I was in Europe for the summer. And that was pretty good blogging. I wanted to put a map or something on the page: "where am I now?" My little icon would have jumped between Switzerland and around France. Now, though, my theoretical icon would just sit in Utah. Which is great, just not as interesting for the blog as constant traveling is. I get to go to California in a couple of weeks, though. That is neat. And I just got research accepted to an on-campus student research conference, which I am excited about.

Yep, that's all I have to say. Here's a picture of my hip nephew.

Only Time (alt. title: The Worst Video Quality That Could Possibly Exist)

My friend Natalie and "Only Time" by Magnetic Fields

This looked a whole lot better in iMovie than it does here. But I spent such a ridiculous amount of time on it that I am posting it. It looks awful. Take it as visible evidence of my technological incompetence.

Church-Sponsored Activities

Sunday was a great big church meeting. I went with my roommates, and we found a parking spot on the top level of the small parking structure near where we were meeting. Everyone else found a parking spot in the small parking structure, too, and the top level is, of course, the last to get down to the bottom level.

We sat in the car, engine running. Sat and waited. It had snowed the night before, and I noticed hands coming out of another car, reaching up to get the snow off the top of the car, and…soon, there was a full-blown snowball fight in the parking garage.


Tonight was Family Home Evening, which, when we’re all single and somewhat family-less, means we meet together and do things we probably wouldn’t do otherwise. Tonight was FHE FearFactor, and the “weaksauce” event was swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon.

Four people volunteered—big smiles, scooped their spoonful of cinnamon. Someone counted down and the full spoonful went into each mouth. Next, soft puffs of cinnamon clouds started coming out of them, giving the room a pleasant holiday smell as each of them rushed to the sink or garbage to spit it out and drink large amounts of water to cleanse their throats. One of them, coughing and sputtering between gulping milk and blowing her nose said simply, “That wasn’t a very good idea.”

The cinnamon smell went away later when three people raced in transporting frozen peas, sardines, and sauerkraut in their mouth from one plate to another.

Numbers

Age in months of my nephew: 17
Number of times I’ve changed my major: 1
Number of bedrooms I’ve had: 6
Number of siblings: 2
Books I’ve completed since the third grade: 393
Months since I’ve seen my sister: 15
Number of photos on my computer: 3,766









Foreign language dictionaries, print and electronic, I own: 6
Number of pens I’ve used up this semester: 2
Hours spent in foreign language classes: 1,272


Hours slept last night: 3.5
Percent of my life spent in Sunday church services: 1.6
Paris of shoes that I own: 12
Number of roommates I’ve had: 17

Doodle

I have had a hard time of late staying captivated by my classes. Particularly with all the observing I have been doing for my education class. This is the third week of sitting in on two block-schedule foreign language classes a day at a high school or junior high. The novelty is wearing off a little (though there are always things to learn).

So I have increased my resolve to improve my doodling skills. Here are my best examples.


This is inspired by the necklace my classmate was wearing.

I am also working on fancy handwriting.

I forgot what inspired this one.

This wasn't actually in class, but when I was trying to avoid writing my French paper.

Utah is attempting a new approach to the social welfare of its residents.

Today was my first day of observation for my education class. We were a group of five, and went to a junior high nearby and watched two Spanish classes. After, I had a bunch of questions for one of the teachers, and I asked them as the rest of the group kind of hung back waiting for me. I’m a geek about languages even among other people studying to be language teachers.

Tonight there was an evening church activity. I went with some people from my apartment complex. Two of them are in this picture. I met one of them a couple of days ago, and he told me his name. Dan. Then I saw him again yesterday, and said, “it’s Dan, right?” It turns out it wasn’t really Dan. It was a whole different person. So anyway, this is a picture of the two of them, plus Dan’s twin brother.

The Toilets of France

I have been meaning to post these pictures. It was after the second Turkish toilet during my France stay that I decided I needed to document the toilets of France.


Rouen.

The toilet in the sewer museum in Paris really should have been part of an exhibit.

It is within the last year, I believe, that the public toilets in Paris have been made free of charge.

At the sculpture workshop in Jumiège, housed in a nineteenth-century stone barn

A shopping center in downtown Rouen. Cost: 50 centimes.

The bathroom of my host family (Rouen). I always found it disconcerting that there were large holes in the door.

Cherbourg, near the sea.

At the Caen train station. This whole room was tiled, and jets of water would come out of the walls and wash the entire floor. 30 centimes.

SNCF train, somewhere between Cherbourg and Caen.

Bayeux. I have never seen fancier.

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

Cody the Giant German Shepherd

I’m working part time at my parents’ veterinary clinic while I’m home for the month, before I start back at school in September. Both my parents are veterinarians, and I had a brief veterinarian phase myself, followed by a neurologist phase and a little later by the longer lasting foreign language teacher phase that has coincided with my major at school. I have realized a taste for things medical has remained, though.

The other day my mom showed me how to intubate a dog--stick a tube down its trachea. The word “intubate” I learned from watching “ER” (which went with an emergency-room physician phase), but it turns out that’s really what it’s called. Anyway, once the intubated dog was out and my mom started doing the dental, I moved on to clipping its toenails. I cut one too close and it started to bleed. I stopped it by dipping it in some powder, as shown, then Stephanie asked me to go get a dog from the kennels that needed to be prepared for surgery--to be neutered.

“Its name is Cody,” Stephanie said. “It’s a 116-pound German shepherd, you’ll be able to find it no problem.”

“Isn’t he mean?” asked my mom.

“Yeah,” said Stephanie. “She can handle it. Can’t you, Carrie?”

“Yes,” I said. Automatically. Without thinking.

It was as I was walking out to the kennel to get Cody the 116-pound German shepherd that I realized what I was doing. Going out to find giant dog. A German shepherd, the kind of dog that rips the arms of criminals. He would probably smell the blood on my hands from the dental’s toenails, and then that would be it.

Cody was nice enough, though. A little overweight. Not an attack dog after all.

A Few Thoughts

This is a picture of the church in Duclair. And the clouds of Normandy. The clouds here are beautiful.

Today is my last full day at the MJC in Duclair, I think. I have three more weeks in France. A lot of the internship has been...well, not what I expected. "Expected" namely being that I expected to have a defined role--ie something to do. Even so, there is a lot to look back on and it has been a good experience.

The plan the MJC people came up with to occupy me for the next three weeks is the next week off (except Wednesday evening, which is an apero and a barbeque), then for two weeks I am going to participate in a sculpture workshop. I don't really want to participate in a sculpture workshop. I don't know why I have such a bad attitude about it. It really will be interesting, I imagine. And how could I participate and not learn things?

Last night, the mother of Jennifer's host family, Caroline, showed us how to make crepes. While we were making them, Caroline talked about how she thinks it's important to travel. She spent two and a half months in Boston when she was twenty-two. Her son is that age now, and is looking at starting a job. She thinks it's too soon for him to settle down like that.

The family is doing some work on their garage, and they found a German rifle from WWII hidden in the wall. A few weeks ago, a woman who used to live in the house visited them. There were Germans in the house and in surrounding houses during the war, and the woman thinks it was her father that hid the when they left.

Wednseday night, Christine Rolland, the internship coordinator, had Jennifer and I to dinner. There, much of the conversation was on the horror of the newer laws that prevent restaurants preparing their own sauces (must be prepackaged) and that the milk in cheese had to be pasturied. Christine and her husband insisted that it was to boister industry at the detriment of small business and flavor. Personally, I've had a few I'm-going-to-die-of-food-poisioning moments. Well, I exagerate. But things like how leftovers are often left on the stove rather than in the fridge. Food service people take money and prepare food without gloves or soap in between, and food items are often stored at room temperature here, too. There was a barbeque a few weeks ago at the MJC, and the raw sausages came strait out of a plastic grocery sack. So I think restaurants not being able to prepare their own mayo (doesn't mayo have raw egg?) has more of a reason behind it that to insult the taste buds.

Snow in April

Freak snowstorm. It is beautiful.

One Post

I should be sleeping, or at least working on the questionnaire on autonomous learning that I stayed up to finish. Instead, I chose to share a few images of my apartment.