Category: General

Yesterday, I went out to my car and it didn't start.

I put in the key and there was no chime telling me that my seatbelt wasn't fastened.  There were no dashboard lights.  I tried to start the car and there wasn't even a click.  Nothing.  It was DEAD.

I had no idea why.  None.  I called upstairs (I was at work) and asked my brother if he had jumper cables.  Then, remembering that I had class at 5:00 and not wanting to take chances with a vehicle of possibly unknown reliability, I had my brother take me home and I drove our "spare" car back to work.

After class that night, I went back to the car to see if I could figure out what went wrong.  It should have been the first thing I checked:  I had left the lights on.  Oy...

I have an excuse.  This particular vehicle is 14 model years old now.  Sometimes, when you take the key out of the ignition, it sticks and the chime sounds when you open the door because the car thinks the key is still in the ignition.  So when the chime was sounding telling me that my lights were on, I assumed it was the other chime telling me that my key was in my ignition.

Ok, so it's a lame excuse.  I'll pay more attention to the stupid chime next time.

At any rate, a quick jump start got the battery charging again and by the time I got home, it had charged enough because it started right up this morning.

I'm just glad it wasn't something more serious.

My last post was about gaping holes in streets.

This one is about gaping holes in plots.

If you haven't seen the movie "Premonition" (Sandra Bullock), then stop reading now unless you don't care about spoilers.

Most movies, I can enjoy despite plot holes. Really. I watch a movie to be entertained for the 90 minutes or so that the movie runs. I don't expect academy-award-winning films every time. It's just too much to be expected. Generally, I watch a movie, roll my eyes when something is totally outside the realm of reality, laugh when it's funny, and enjoy the film for telling a story and entertaining me.

Spoiler Warning Take 2: If you haven't seen the show, then stop reading unless you want to know too much about it.

Premonition bombed for me. So badly, in fact, that it's been a few days later and I can't quit thinking about the huge, gaping holes in the plot. Seriously. You could drive a tanker truck (the kind that kills the main character's husband in the movie) through these plot holes and still have a couple of road widths of space to drive a couple of more tanker trucks through.

So here's a summary of the things that bugged me about the movie.

1. A completely unnecessary F-bomb. Normally, I don't like these, but this one was one of the worst in recent memory. Bullock's character all but screams the word in the presence of her two young children on the steps of a church on the way to her husband's funeral, right before confronting the funeral director about her husband's corpse.
2. Speaking of the husband's corpse: During this confrontation, the muscle-headed doofuses decided this is the perfect time to remove the casket from the back of the hearse. They, of course, mess this up, dropping the casket, which pops open and the husband's head goes rolling down the street. There are WAY too many things wrong with this. First of all, meat-head one and meat-head two would realize that the altercation was about the body and would leave the hearse door CLOSED until the funeral director calmed the grieving widow down. Second, nowadays, caskets aren't usually carried around. They're rolled out of the hearse onto a cart. This keeps problems like dropped caskets from happening. Third, I'm pretty sure that sealed casket funerals have SEALED caskets that wouldn't pop open. I'm not an expert on caskets though, so I may be wrong here. Fourth, after a guy gets his car run over by a tanker truck, decapitated, and then the tanker explodes and burns, I'm doubting that there would be enough left of the guy to put in an urn, let alone a casket. This whole part of the movie STUNK to high heaven.
3. Mr. Sheriff Guy had the misfortune of having to go to the Bullock character's house and notify her of her husband's untimely demise. This makes sense until the end of the movie where despite the fact that every problem is neatly tied up and resolved, Bullock's character not only watches her husband die in the fiery crash, but was inadvertently the CAUSE of the fiery crash. So other than to tell the viewing audience that her husband really IS dead, why would Mr. Sheriff Guy show up? He would have no reason to notify her that her husband is dead because HE WOULD HAVE TALKED TO HER AT THE SCENE. Ugh.

I can enjoy most any movie, but when one of the early plot points that sets the rest of the movie in motion IS one of the gaping holes in the plot, it just doesn't work for me. For this reason, I'd never, EVER be able to watch this movie again without yelling at the screen when Mr. Sheriff Guy showed up.

You can't get there from here.

No, really.  I'm telling you that you can't get there from here.

Where is "here?"  My house.

Where is "there?" Anywhere else.

The city of Pleasant Grove is doing lots of work getting a pressurized secondary water system up and running.   The good news is that we'll soon have cheaper, secondary water do dump on our lawns instead of the more expensive culinary water.

But during this construction phase, it's hard to get around town.  To put in the secondary water pipes (big purple PVC jobbies), they have to trench down the middle of about every single street in existence.  On Wednesday, they were working in the 4-way stop intersection just south of my house.  Usually, when they're done for the night, they fill the trenches with gravel so that cars don't get damaged.  They forgot to do that on Wednesday.  Driving my son to church for his Cub Scout meeting was scary, to say the least.  I thought my little Saturn was going to get swallowed up.  Somehow, I made it there and back again.

Additionally, there is construction further down the same street on the way to the freeway AND construction in "downtown" Pleasant Grove" on the way to work, and I feel like I just can't get there from here.

*sigh*

On the bright side, at least they're started.  The sooner they start, the sooner they'll be done with this whole mess.

I start teaching again tonight.

I went to 4 hours of orientation meetings on Monday.  I set up the online portion of my course.  I prepared a syllabus and had it printed.  I even hooked my laptop up to the "Media Enhanced Classroom" stuff to make sure there will be no surprises when I try to project things this evening.  I reviewed the material that I'll be teaching tonight.

I think I'm ready.

When I dropped off the syllabus yesterday, I couldn't believe how young everyone looked.  Then I realized that many of them graduated from High School this year.  That means they were born in 1989 or 1990.  That makes me more than double their age.  They were born while I was a missionary, or even after I came home.

I'm old.

Friday night, we set up a tent in my sister-in-law's back yard to spend the night. They live in Wellsville, Utah, and it's rural-ish there, so we didn't fear for our lives, sleeping in a tent without a large buffer of untamed wilderness surrounding us.

Boy were WE wrong. We SHOULD have been fearing for our lives.

About bedtime, a little thunderstorm rolled through. No big deal. We fell asleep to the pitter-patter of rain on the tent, but it was a warm night and we weren't expecting a major storm to come through.

Around 1:30 in the morning, I was awoken by a (as far as I could tell) simultaneous flash and bang. The thunder had that strange, hollow-sounding echo of a nearby strike. This was the closest strike I can remember. Holy...

Apparently, kids sleep more soundly than adults. There were 5 adults and 8 children (ranging in age from less than a year old to 13 years old) camping out in 3 tents. All of the adults were instantly awake, hearts beating wildly, wondering when the next strike would happen. None of the kids remember the lightning or thunder. Many remember their anxious parents' reactions, but not the actual strike.

It was the one close strike of the night. If there would have been a second, I'm sure there would have been 5 adults and 8 children suddenly camping out in my sister-in-law's living room.

It's interesting to me that the most vivid memories I have are often tied to smells. By the time this post is finished, it's position, directly next to my previous post, will seem ironic.

A couple of weeks ago, someone at work made a mistake. It wasn't a major mistake. It wasn't even work-related. This person decided to pop some popcorn in the microwave. Unfortunately, they fired up the microwave and then forgot about their popcorn until it had passed the brown and stinky stage and had gotten quite a ways into the flaming stage. Without thinking (seems like a trend), this person took their flaming bag of smelly burnt-ness and threw it into the nearby freezer. This turned out to be a big mistake. The freezer sucked in the smoke created by flaming over-buttered popcorn and has since been recycling the stench throughout the refrigerator and freezer.

The microwave was declared a loss and discarded. Soon, we should be getting a new freezer. This turned out to be an expensive mistake. The whole work area was pretty stinky for the remainder of the day. The smoke was pungent in my nose and made my eyes water. The facilities people opened doors and used fans to try to dissapate the odor. It worked pretty well, but the small break room still smelled awful.

Since then, they have been trying different things to remove the smoky smell. One of the attempts at stench removal was installing an air freshener that has been pumping out a somewhat vanilla-scented air. By now, you're probably wondering what memories could POSSIBLY be brought back by the smell of air freshener and burnt popcorn. That "freshened" air, combined with the strong smoky smell is pretty darned close to the smell of Mr. Stadtfeld's pipe tobacco.

Mr. Stadtfeld taught music (assistant to Mr. Grover Peterson, I believe) at Lewis and Clark Junior High while I was there. He was extremely cool--he drove a red Karman Ghia, a sweet little two-seater sports car made in Italy and marketed by Volkswagen. I was often hired to babysit the Stadtfeld's two sons, the oldest of whom was only 2 or 3 years younger than I was at the time. When I say "babysit," I really mean "play Atari 2600 games with" and "make sure they don't do permanent damage to each other or to anything of value." The only alcoholic drink I ever consumed was a tall glass of 7-Up or Sprite, provided by the boys I was babysitting. I took a couple of large gulps (I was thirsty!) before the burn hit my throat and I realized that these two boys couldn't be trusted not to delve into their parents liquor cabinet. They had poured a good amount of schnapps into my 7-up.

One of the perks of babysitting for the Stadtfelds was an occaisional trip to the nearby ski resort for a day of skiing. All the way up and all the way back (about an hour each direction), Mr. Stadtfeld would smoke his pipe. He was courteous enough to open his window a crack to keep the entire car from filling up with smoke. But I'll never forget the sweet, smoky smell of Mr. Stadtfeld's pipe tobacco.

Tobacco smoke is something I smelled a lot when I was growing up. I found out that there are a ton of different "flavors" of cigarette smoke, most of which, to me, smell nasty. A couple of varieties didn't turn my stomach as much as the others, but I'd never seek out the smell of cigarette smoke. Even worse is cigar smoke, especially the smoke from cheap cigars they give out in Vegas casinos. It's a smoke that I cannot stomach at all. But pipe tobacco isn't as harsh as cigarette smoke or as nauseating as cigar smoke. It was something that, although I didn't seek it out, I could handle having around so long as it didn't get too strong. It is a smell that instantly brings back vivid memories of nights babysitting for the Stadtfelds.

I recently read an article that listed the "Top 10 money drains" that people have. The first three were very interesting to me.

1. Coffee
2. Cigarettes
3. Alcohol

The article went on to list how much people spend on these items. Buying a cup of coffee on the way to work each day costs an average of $360 per year. Pack-a-day smokers spend about $1,660 per year. A couple of beers a day (at a bar) will run $3,650 per year. So by not drinking my coffee every morning, smoking all day long, and then winding down with a couple of beers on the way home, I'm not spending $5,670 each year. Sure, these figures assume Starbucks coffee and $5 bottles of beer at bars, but regardless, I'm saving quite a bit of money by not having these vices.

I have friends that tell me that it's worth the expense. Isn't that what we all do with our money anyway? We decide whether the perceived benefit of an expenditure is worth the tradeoff of the money spent. We look at the opportunity cost of spending that money on different available options and pick the one that is most beneficial.

The most interesting thing to me is the reason behind why I don't spend money on alcohol, tobacco, or coffee. In February, 1833 (yes, almost 200 years ago), a young man "inquired of the Lord concerning" the use of tobacco. The result of that inquiry was a revalation--a "principle with a promise" that has become known as The Word of Wisdom.

Many people continue to debate whether or not this Word of Wisdom is actually revalation. Medical science continues to change its opinion concerning the various benefits and adverse effects of the substances described in the Word of Wisdom. Even those that believe that this revalation came from God through His prophet continue to debate exactly what is meant by various passages. (Don't bring up caffeinated soft drinks in an LDS Sunday School meeting for example.) Yet like it or not, believe it or not, agree with all of it not, there is an underlying wisdom in the text known as the Word of Wisdom.

The addictive effects of alcohol and tobacco use are widely accepted as fact by medical experts. The adverse effects of alcholism and long-term tobacco use are devastating and deadly. None of this was known in the 1830's, so the prohibition of the use of these substances is at the very least, interesting, and at most, truly a revalation.

More "debatable" is the prohibition of the use of coffee and tea. I haven't heard of anyone dying from coffee or tea poisoning, yet addiction to coffee and/or tea is also well documented, and anything that takes away one's choice, even partially, would be against God's plan that gave us agency.

Less-often discussed are the Word of Wisdom's admonitions to use meat sparingly and to enjoy grains and fruits, the former being called "the staff of life." I could probably eat less meat and more vegetables and I have little doubt that I would be healthier if I did so.

The bottom line for me is that I believe that this Word of Wisdom is revalation given by God through his prophet in 1833. Therefore, whether or not every last bit of it makes 100% logical sense (though most of it DOES make sense logically), it is my obligation to follow its precepts. To act otherwise would be to act against what I believe to be the will of God.

So I'll continue to try to live by this "principle with a promise," believing that I will be given the blessings promised by the Lord:

And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones; And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures; And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint;

I've seen many of these blessings in my life, and now, in addition, I'll smile as I remember the $5,000 per year I'm not spending. There's a little treasure of knowledge right there.

Well, I did it. I finished the ULCER this year without major incident.

It was actually fun to ride around Utah Lake this year. Last year, because of problems on the west side of the lake, the entire ride was on the east side of the lake.

I rode with a group of poeple: a friend that works at Symantec in the Altiris Business Unit with me and a friend that we worked with in the (now defunct) American Fork office. Both of them invited a couple of friends, so it all, we had seven riders.

The first hour and a half was FAST. We rode from Thanksgiving point to the library in Springville in only 90 minutes. It wasn't a direct shot. We rode 33 miles in that time, including a 10-minute stop in a park in Vineyard.

From there, we climbed up out of Springville to Spanish Fork and that's where the troubles began. Today's troubles came in two forms: heat and wind.

The wind was blowing hard right in our faces, and when it wasn't in our faces, it was a pretty strong crosswind. We had to deal with this wind almost all the way to the marina on the southwest of Utah Lake, and the wind hit us in the face again and blew against us through Genola and all the way to the lunch stop in Goshen. I opted not to stop at the rest stop at the marina since I had lost the rest of the group I was with and thought that they were WAY ahead of me. This wasn't a smart choice, becuase I started running out of steam.  Food at the rest stop would have been a good idea.  However, we were all surprised when I showed up at the lunch stop before the rest of my group.  I passed the group while they were stopped at the marina rest stop.

After lunch, we dealt with the strong crosswind until we finally turned north and it became a very favorable tailwind. But at this point, the heat began to be oppressive. I had two water bottles and if I didn't fill them COMPLETELY with ice before adding water, they were very warm...almost hot within 10 miles.

I lost my group again with only about 21 miles left to ride. I was wearing out and couldn't stick with them. But taking into account that my longest ride so far this year was under 32 miles, it was actually pretty amazing that I was able to ride as hard as I did for as long as I did.

I ended up back at Thanksgiving Point just under 7 hours after I left. Acutal moving time was just over 6 hours, which isn't too bad at all. I only came in a few minutes later than the rest of my group.

It was a hot, windy day, but I'm glad I rode.

I don't think I'll be able to sit for any length of time for at least a week!

Some friendly advice:

If you're going to put EVERY SINGLE CALL YOU GET on speaker phone, please do the world a favor and close your office door. If you don't have an office, then don't put calls on speaker phone unless they're work-related AND you have more than one person that needs to hear/participate in the call.

If you don't do this, sooner or later, someone is going to say something that will cause general ridicule throughout the office.

Someone with an office near my cubicle does this. He never picks up his telephone handset. He always uses the speaker phone. This morning, it led to many snickers and smatterings of laughter from nearby cubicles as he took a phone call that went something like this:

Office Guy: Hi.

Angry-sounding Lady: WHERE IS THE GAMEBOY?

OG: What? (Editorial: This wasn't a "What? I didn't hear you ." Because the entire office heard her. This was a "I'll say 'What?' so that I have a moment to think about why I'm getting yelled at.")

AL: WHERE DID YOU PUT THE GAMEBOY?!?!?!

OG: I don't know where it is.

AL: HE DIDN'T PLAY GAMEBOY ALL DAY YESTERDAY. WHERE IS THE GAMEBOY?

OG: I hid it. (Snickers and chuckles from nearby cubicles)

AL: WHERE?

OG: He's still not allowed to play it.

AL: BUT HE DIDN'T PLAY IT ALL DAY YESTERDAY!!!! WHERE IS IT??

OG: (Describes where he hid it)

AL: THAT WAS VERY RUDE. (General laughter from the cubicle farm)

OG: What? (See editorial above.)

AL: THAT WAS VERY RUDE. GOODBYE. (No more laughter. There is no angry lady voice to cover it)

Smart thing #1 that should have been done, but wasn't: He should have picked up the handset.

Smart thing #2 that should have been done, but wasn't: After hearing an angry voice on the other side of the conversation, he should have picked up the handset.

Smart thing #3 that should be done, but won't be: He should learn to pick up the handset.

Smart thing #4 that should be done, but won't be: He should invest in a hands-free headset.

Any of those things could have saved him from the ridicule that he received today, but will probably never know about. Maybe nothing would have saved him from the abuse dished out by the angry-sounding lady, but picking up the handset would have kept that abuse from being speaker phone abuse.

I've been going to the dentist faithfully every six months for the previous several years now.  It's been a very good thing.  I can tell that my teeth are in better shape than they've been in my life.

However...

It's the old dental work that is causing problems.  The root canal earlier this year?  It was previous dental work that ended up "causing" it.  And now I get to go back to the dentist and have my last amalgam filling replaced.  It was put in well over 20 years ago, so it's done well.  But I still HATE to have novocaine and the associated ache and headache for the rest of the day.  Ugh.

I don't like dentists.  Nobody does.  But everyone goes to them.  So I guess we SAY that we don't like dentists, but life would suck without them, especially when things started hurting.