The Pumpkin Massacre of '07

I realized that (shocker) I had no plans on Friday night when I came home but quickly planned to carve pumpkins with Kalli in our garage (the new cool pad). I went to Smiths to buy pumpkins and a Hispanic lady was in the checkout line in front of me. For some reason there was no bagger in this line so the lady had to take her two or three things she bought and place them in her cart herself because it would have been a really awkward reach for the cashier. As she walked away she said in a disturbingly beastly voice, "It would have been nice of you to place these bags in my cart for me!" To which the cashier wittingly replied "I'm sorry I'm not eight feet tall!"
Well the woman demanded to see his manager and as I walked out I heard her saying in a very dramatic voice, "I am not a walking joke!" It seemed like a genuine life crisis to me; someone obviously trying to get through a rather tragic experience from the third grade when she went the whole day with her dress tucked into her underwear in the back without realizing and never had friends again as long as she lived. I hope she survives.
So Kalli and I spent way too much time carving, which was a lot of fun. I actually started scooping the slop from the insides out with my hands and dropping big glops of it into my mouth, which is actually making me feel a bit queasy right now- something I'll surely pay for in the morning and all day at work tomorrow.

The real tragedy struck after the pumpkin carving was completed and I went into the house to put some things away while Kalli straightened up the garage. I returned to the garage to find a very traumatized Kalli, rushing around to pick up all the broken pieces from the pumpkins that had clearly just fallen to their deaths moments before I entered. She then screamed, "NO, DON'T LOOK!!" as if waiting a few more seconds before coming back out would have made the entire experience not happen. Kalli told me right after we picked up the pieces that she had planned on just hiding everything and trying to convince me that we hadn't carved pumpkins in the first place. This made me wonder if I come across as a giant ogre to most people, or someone who would royally freak out because of smashed pumpkins. My coworkers would most definitely agree with this.

The good news is the pumpkins were saved after some maintenance involving toothpicks and, quite innovatively, the world's tiniest stapler.

Twins?

I have been told by about seven different people (people that don't really know each other in most cases) that I look just like this cartoon character you see to the right. So I present this for you to compare. This also gives me the opportunity to finally post my serious pose (left) that Kalli took of me this summer; outside of this blog, I will probably have no other reason to ever use it.

General Conference

General conference weekend was great as always. It was good to hear the prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley speak again. Once again I find myself wanting to be better and completely change my life. Hopefully that lasts longer than four days this time.

I spent the weekend in South Jordan after going to a pretty uneventful and quiet mission reunion. On Saturday night, my four year old niece Kaylee had a sleep over at my parents house and asked if she could sleep in the same room as me.

Knowing very well that that would mean a night of kicking and rolling over and having to get up to go to the bathroom every hour on the hour, I obliged and we turned in around 10:45.

Kaylee asked me to tell stories about when I was "at the mission," which she surprisingly had the attention span for much longer than I ever would have anticipated. I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Ukraine Kyiv mission and returned a little over two years ago. So I told Kaylee about Ukraine and what I did there and after I explained that we went around and knocked on people's doors to talk about Jesus, she asked me over and over to tell her specific stories.

I told her about the first time I ever went door-to-door and an old lady came out and yelled at us and told us that she knew we were really just there to sneak in and turn off her toilet, which Kaylee surprisingly did not find funny but rather was quite concerned. "She probably thought you were robbers," she informed me, after which I commended her intelligence. Then in her four year old wisdom she said quite thoughtfully, "you really should go back and tell her that you're not robbers. Then maybe she'll let you come in and talk about Jesus."

I stayed awake for a while after she fell asleep, partly because no matter how many times I turned her body straight, she always ended up with her feet painfully digging into my side, but also because I couldn't stop thinking about how much I miss the people in Ukraine, even the ones that thought I was just there to turn off toilets. And I wished that I could go back and experience some of the wonderful things I experienced while there. But then I remembered a talk I heard one year ago about embracing the present and that "the best year of your life should be the last one you lived if you're doing things right," and I wondered what I'm doing now that later I'll nostalgically look back on.

I guess I don't really have any type of conclusive ending to tie up all the loose strings of my thoughts tonight. Just some impressions to get me through another week.

Four Things

So I sat down to do homework and then I saw that Alyssa had filled out the four things thing and I just couldn't resist spending the next 20 minutes posting it for myself. Woot.

Four Jobs I've Had:
1. Busser at Grandpa Maddox Restaraunt
2. Telephone surveyer for car dealerships
3. Research Assistant for a history professor
4. Operations Supervisor for Washington Mutual
Four Places I've lived:
1. South Jordan Utah
2. Lewiston Idaho
3. Ukraine
4. Provo Utah
Movies I love:
1. Waiting for Guffman
2. I am Sam
3. Napoleon Dynamite
4. You've Got Mail (secretly of course).
5. Family First. I just have to include it.
Four Favorite Foods:
1. Cheesecake
2. Rassberry Cheesecake
3. Most other Cheesecakes
4. Guacamoli. and cheesecake.
Four Weird Things About Me:
1. I talk to myself more than I talk to anyone else.
2. I explain to innanimate objects before I throw them away why I'm disposing of them so they won't feel bad.
3. I can stand on my toes in freaky freaky ways.
4. I dance like you wouldn't believe. But I hate dancing.
Four Favorite TV Shows:
1. The Office
2. 24
3. Pee Wee's Playhouse (I mostly watch it for the Penny sketches).
4. hmmm
Four Places I'd Rather Be:
1. Wherever I am is the party so there are NO places that I would rather be. But I'm sure all of you would rather be wherever it is I am.

Happy Fakesgiving

Due credit must be given and I cannot claim that anyone pictured here invented Fakesgiving but I will say that each of us, and especially the picture taker, Kalli, perfected the new holiday. It all started a week ago when Quinn and Pam informed me over two freshly baked pumpkin pies that the 4th Sunday of September is fakesgiving but unfortunately I was not invited because "fakesgiving is a family holiday."

So one week later Kalli called me and asked if I wanted to celebrate Fakesgiving a week late; and it all began.

We assigned cooking assignments for all the foods you normally eat on Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving is a holiday in November, not to be confused with Fakesgiving which is not to be confused with Fakesaween which is in September or Fakesmas which falls at the beginning of November). Unfortunately turkeys are a bit rare right now so we had to go with chickens which are now the new traditional Fakesgiving bird. The good thing about creating your own holiday is that you make the traditions and you can totally base them on convenience, which makes me wonder who the heck created having to risk your life every December to put up strings of lights on a slippery roof, because there is nothing convenient about that tradition.

Once the table was set and decorated with green leaves (instead of colored "fall" leaves you often find on Thanksgiving) we each took turns saying what we were fakesful for. Being fakesful for something means that that thing either doesn't exist or it is something that you are not at all thankful for, thus making Fakesgiving a primarily sarcastic holiday (which is why, I'm sure, I enjoy it so much).

Dinner was nice for all of us, except for Jason who ate right before and then wondered, even though we told him no less than three times that day about it, why there was so much prepared food in the kitchen when he got home from church.

We look forward to celebrating next year and invite all of you to join us.