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November 30, 2008... Today I am grateful for the broken clock in church. The clock in our chapel has been broken for months it seems. The nice thing about that is that today, I think because of our broken clock, we got out of church 20 minutes early! It was awesome. I think what happened is that the speakers weren't sure of what time it was and they rushed through their talks, not wanting to go over in time (as all good speakers should avoid doing). It was great. I mean I only was at church for two hours and 40 minutes but got credit for three hours! Yay for broken clocks! However, I am glad I'll be out of town next week for Fast and Testimony Meeting. That kind of meeting could be dangerous with broken clock.

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November 29, 2008... Today I am glad that SLC has an Ethiopian restaurant. Even if it is in West Valley City (scary) and has no atmosphere. The food is good and the Ethiopian lady that runs it is super nice. This is a picture of injera. It is what most Ethiopians eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner...literally. It looks really sick but it is actually really good. And it has been said that I am a picky eater...just because I don't like mushrooms, onions, or meats where you can see the fat...I don't think that makes me a picky eater, but whatever. So you can trust me on this injera thing because I don't eat sick stuff. My favorite injera filling is the one with cabbage and carrots and potatoes. I don't know what it is called but it is delish. Especially if you get one of the meat fillings too and can sort of mix them together. Yum. And I especially love that the whole eating with your hands thing is not only okay to do, but it is the way injera is meant to be eaten. And I'm grateful for my brother Ty. He and I went out for injera Saturday night. I am especially glad that he was there since the Ethiopian lady and I had some communication problems and he could step in with his Amharic and help me order. Here's a picture of Ty I took while talking to him on Skype. Ty likes Skype. Ty is a funny kid. He and I talk more and do more together then we used to...since we are both temporarily orphans and temporarily (hopefully) stuck in Utah. And since I've been spending more time with this big little kid lately I have realized how many funny little things he says. I wish I had written them all down. You know how some people have a section for quotes from their kids on their blogs? Well, I'm thinking of adding an area for Ty quotes on mine. Maybe you'd have to know Ty for these quotes to be funny but here are just a few I can think of to share. Tyler to me before eating Sunday dinner at my grandma's house right after I got back from spending most of the summer in South America. Ty: "Hey Becca, guess what?" Me: "What?" Ty: "While you were gone I caught a grape shot out of an airgun in my mouth." Wow, first of all what were my brothers doing shooting grapes out of guns? And second of all I guess Ty almost choked on that grape so I'm glad he thought it was a cool event in his life and one he just couldn't wait to tell me. Congratulations to Tyler on being the only person I know that has caught a grape shot out of an airgun in his mouth. Here's another one. Tyler was telling me about a recent date he went on and how they had gone to see the movie WALL-E. Me: "So, what did you think of the movie?" Ty: "It was okay except for all the propaganda." Me: "What propaganda?" Ty: "The movie was full of propaganda to try and make me do things like recycle and exercise. I didn't like that." And just last night after eating Ethiopian, Ty and I went to JcPenny to get my dad some more short sleeved white shirts. While we were there Tyler was trying on coats and wasn't having much luck since any coat that fits him around has sleeves that are too short and for him to get a coat with sleeves that are long enough he has to buy one or two sizes too big around. After unsuccessfully trying on several coats he turned to me and said, "I guess I'm just a human oddity."

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November 28, 2008

Today I am thankful for a slow day at work. I mean being busy at work is good most of the time because it makes the torture seem to go faster. But sometimes it is nice to not have something to do every single second and have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Today I'm glad that people like to wait until after the holidays to find out what is wrong with them.

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My SWB (Singles' Ward Bishop) challenged us all to write down somewhere one thing we are thankful for each day from Thanksgiving to New Years. And since, as an older single woman, I am now more likely to be killed by a terrorist then have posterity, I figured I wouldn't bother write my thankfulness in a journal (as my journal will most likely end up at DI someday when my great-nieces and nephews find me dead and alone half eaten by wild dogs and clean out my house by calling in the DI truck). So I figured I'd share these things with you now. Although maybe I'll keep a more serious and less sarcastic gratitude list in my journal...you know, just in case somebody does care about my history someday. So here you go...I've got to catch up for the past few days so I'll do several posts today. November 27th, 2008... Today I am grateful for "Thanksgiving in a Box." Because when you have to be working at a job you hate instead of eating yummy food with a family you love at least there is Thanksgiving in a Box. Seriously, Marie Callender covered all the basics...except pumpkin pie of course (which is funny because I thought she was way famous for her pies). I'm sure I can survive one year of my life without pumpkin pie though.

And honestly, for a TV dinner, it wasn't too bad. It tasted better than it looks.

Chris Martin is a Runt!

Last Saturday night Lee, Kim, Ty, and I went to the Coldplay concert. I LOVE Coldplay. They are probably in my top 10 favorite bands. I just love their music. In the past several years they have almost become too popular for their own artistic good, but I still had to go to their concert when I heard they were coming to SLC. I can't remember a time when I didn't love Coldplay but I do remember when I really fell in love with their music. It was the summer of 2003. I purchased their album A Rush of Blood to the Head right before my friend Cindy and I headed on an adventure to Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico with BYU Travel Studies. This was a year or so before I bought my first iPod so I was sporting this awesome travel CD player (with 40 second skip protection, a must have for Central American roads). Pretty much everyone on the trip (except me and two other people) got Montezuma's Revenge right off. So I spent the majority of the bus rides just looking out the window of the bus and listening to my CD player since all the sick people were either doped up on medicine or up front puking all over each other. I must have listened to the album A Rush of Blood to the Head literally a hundred times on that trip. I was just at a point in my life where I needed to start over and as I rode the bus through the jungles of Central America listening to that Coldplay album over and over I felt like the long jungle drives and awesome Coldplay music helped purge me from the events of the past year and helped me feel like I could start all over again. Oh, the power of good music. Anyway, I just really like Coldplay and feel like so many of their songs just resonate with me. HOWEVER, now that I've seen them in concert I'm pretty sure that I am much more in love with the music of Coldplay then I am with the band because: 1) Chris Martin (lead singer) is a little runt who wears those super tight, hardly stay up on you girls' pants. And I'm sorry...I know those kinds of pants are way in style, but HELLO Chris, you are in your 30's now(and have two kids)...time to lose the girly teenage pants. 2) Lee just about ruined the concert for me when he told me right before it started that Chris Martin is a big Obama fan and prior to the elections made a big deal about Obama before the start of his concerts. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion I guess (even if you aren't an American...Chris Martin is a Brit...okay he might have duel citizenship due to his marriage to Gwenneth Paltrow, but still...) but I'm not a big fan of celebrity endorsements...for either a Republican or Democratic candidate. Elections are supposed to be elections, not popularity contests. But I guess even since the days of student council elections and promises to bring more vending machines to the school we've all known that elections mostly are popularity contests. Either that or evil conspiracies to buy people's votes. I'm guilty of it myself. When I ran for Student Council in high school I bought the cowboy vote by helping the "head cowboy" with his algebra homework. And I won the stoner vote by giving them helium balloons from the election assembly so they could suck out the helium. 3) Really, although I still LOVE, LOVE, LOVE their music I feel like I've been to concerts where the musicians put on a better show. Like the awesome Arcade Fire concert I went to a couple of years ago or the Trans Siberian Orchestra (aka Forgotten Carols on crack) concert that Ty and I went to a few weeks ago. So, in conclusion it was a good concert but for the price we paid for the tickets I shouldn't have had to watch 31 year-old Chris Martin pull up his girly pants the whole time. We went out to eat right before the show with Kim's sister and her friends. We went to an Italian restaurant in the Gateway. I can't remember what it was called but the food was good and there was a very cute waiter there.

Ty and I at the concert.

Lee and Kim mocking the couple in their 50's sitting a couple of rows in front of us. The lady was sitting on the guy's lap for awhile. If my mom sat on my dad's lap at a concert as 50 year-olds, I'd have to punch them both in the face.

We were up pretty high but still payed way too much for our tickets.

When we got back to our car this little pile of clothes (including a headband???) was on the lawn near our car. I don't even want to know...

The end.

The Engaged Committee

Okay, okay, everybody has been asking me about this "Engaged Committee" I mentioned a couple of posts back. I'm not engaged and never have been (except for a fun little two month FAKE engagement one summer at BYU). So because I'm not engaged I have no idea what engaged people do. I do know however that the committee is real. I have been in Sacrament Meetings where people have been sustained as members of the Engaged Committee. No kidding.

I'll do a little research on Sunday at church about the committee and I'll let you know if I find out anything more, but here's what I know for now. Basically as soon as someone in our ward gets engaged they get released from their current calling in the ward and get put on the Engaged Committee. This is probably due to the fact that we all know that people that are engaged to be married are no good to anyone except for the person they are marrying. So I think they just put them on the Engaged Committee so that 1)they can not feel bad about not contributing anything to the ward and 2) other people won't be stuck working in callings with engaged people who aren't doing their calling because they are engaged.

I think they maybe encourage the engaged people to go on double dates and do activities with some of the other engaged couples in the ward...probably just to try to keep them out of trouble. Other than that I don't think they do anything except that they aren't taking up a place in a calling that they wouldn't be doing anyway.

So no, it isn't some committee you can join when you feel you are ready to get married and hoping to be engaged soon. If that were the case I think that every girl in the ward would be on the committee and not a single guy would be. And no, it isn't some committee where matchmaking takes place or anything like that. You have to get yourself engaged and then it is sort of like the retirement home of the Singles' Ward because you have made it to the ultimate goal of all Singles' Wards and you can therefore retire for awhile.

So there you have it. That's all I know for now and I think that is really all there is to it. If my research on Sunday gives me any new info I'll let you all know.

Google Game

Okay this is supposed to be an image tag. Basically you use Google Image Search to find images to answer the questions...without using words except for the questions you are supposed to answer. But, anyone that knows me at all knows that I can't really do anything without words. So I'm going to cheat and do it my own way. But, if you want to really see how this tag is supposed to be done you can go here to see it done right. Oh, and I tag my MOM, my Aunt Nancy, the Battskies, my cousin Crystal, and anyone else who wants to do it. But go to Geri's Blog first so that you can do it right and not follow my wordy example.

Hello, my name is Becca and I am... years old.

This is a map of the places I've been...

This is a place I really want to go...ANTARCTICA. But it is so cold there and so expensive to go that I'm having a hard time finding anyone to go with me. So, if any of you out there want to go to Antarctica with me, let me know...

Jerusalem is one of my favorite places in the world. I would live there if I 1)spoke Hebrew or Arabic 2)had a job there 3)could convince my family to live there and 4)wasn't afraid of getting bombed on a bus. I LOVE Jerusalem despite all its problems. There is just a very cool feeling in that city. Can't really explain it...just love it. I'm sure those of you who have been there know what I'm talking about.

My favorite object is...a FRESH Sharpie. There's nothing better in life than an assortment of colors of fresh Sharpies.

My favorite food (right now) is homemade chicken noodle soup. Maybe it is just because I am really craving my MOM's cooking...or anything homemade for that matter. Now that I don't have my own house I never cook anymore...and I mean never.

My favorite animal is a Suffolk Sheep. I'm not a big animal fan period, but since I grew up with sheep I like them. I also wouldn't mind having a few beautiful horses running wild around my house...but only if I was rich enough to have someone else take care of them and I could just ride them like once a month or something.

My favorite color is SEA FOAM GREEN...at least that's what I think you call this color. I love everything this color...clothes, dishes, purses, towels, etc. I love the car in this picture too.

I Fo Fo Falls (that's how I used to say Idaho Falls) is where I was born. Not at the Temple or in the river or anything but somewhere near there. I think in an old hospital that now no longer exists.

I currently reside in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hopefully not for the rest of my life though. I mean it is okay here, but it isn't Idaho.

My current pet is NONE...and most likely always will be NONE. I'm not a big pet person. And hey, I don't even want to hear it about this dead dog picture. I didn't 1)kill the dog or 2)take the picture. I just found it on Google Images. And just because I don't want a pet doesn't mean I'm into animal cruelty or anything. Just ask my cousin Garrett who I almost stabbed with spear after he stabbed a bunch of frogs with a spear when we were kids. I love animals. I just don't want them near me.

Pistachio frozen yogurt mixed with white chocolate almond frozen yogurt with cookie dough mixed in is my PAST LOVE as it is no longer available. Oh how I miss it. My heart is broken.

My best friend is ZERO...NON-EXISTANT...NADA...NINGUNO. It is just too much work to make BEST FRIENDS and then lose them to marriage and have to start all over. Putting all your eggs in one basket with one best friend is just too dangerous. Unless of course you are married to them so they are stuck with you forever. So I have decided that best friends are overrated and just to stick to having good friends...and to try to have LOTS of them. Like my Spinster travel buddies spread all over the world and my family and extended family. Oh, and the picture of my family wasn't from google images. I cheated yet again.

My nickname is...

But my REAL name is...

My first job was at...

And this...

is what I'm doing right now.

The end.

Polygamy or Inactivity...my moral dilemma on Sunday mornings

Today I woke up and started getting ready for church and thought to myself, 'what am I going to wear to church today?' YUCK. I hate deciding what to wear to church especially right now as I am at an all time low on clothes I like...especially church clothes. And I really do not like shopping for clothes...especially now that my best clothes shopping partner (aka MOM) is living in Brazil right now. I mean, I have enough money and there are sales EVERYWHERE thanks to the recession or depression or whatever we're in right now, but I cannot get myself to go shopping...at least for clothes. I am fine shopping for luggage or for makeup or for purses, but for some reason I have never enjoyed clothes shopping. The main reason is probably honestly that my hair does not fair well after trying on a lot of clothes...and there's nothing worse for you self-esteem then walking around by yourself at the mall on a Friday night with BAD hair. So I just don't clothes shop. But then I wake up on Sunday morning and sometimes wish I were either 1)inactive or 2)polygamist. Inactive because then I wouldn't need any church clothes or Polygamist because then I would just have some plain, homespun, uniform-like, pioneer church dress to wear every Sunday and I wouldn't really have any need to look cute or make a decision about what to wear. My only decisions would be...light blue pioneer dress or light purple one?...and hair in bun or hair in ringlets? EASY. Besides if you are a polygamist woman there isn't really a need to be all hot looking, cute, and trendy. I mean when 5 or 10 of you can marry the same guy it really takes away the whole competition thing...unless of course you are competing for favorite wife, but that's a whole other story. So here is what I think wards need to do to prevent non-shoppers from either 1)going inactive or 2) going Polygamist. Have a SHOPPING COMMITTEE! They have committees for everything else (they even have an ENGAGED COMMITTEE in my ward so that engaged people can at least feel good about themselves while they contribute nothing to society), so why not a shopping committee where people who don't like to shop can give their money to those who do and have them shop for them? BRILLIANT. The shopaholics will get to get some of their need for too much shopping out of their systems, possibly saving them from bankruptcy, ruined marriages, etc., and the non-shoppers will have cute, stylish clothes to wear each Sunday with little to no effort. Maybe I'll bring it up with the Bishopric...it never hurts to try, right?

Me Jane...You Tarzan

So I still haven't gotten around to posting any pictures from Costa Rica...and I need to soon! But in the meantime here are a few video clips that I STOLE from my friend Kate's blog. Sorry Kate, I owe you one. Here's me in a bright orange jumpsuit swinging off the Tarzan rope in the Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. It was just a little bonus part to our zip-lining adventure. I wish I had the zip-lining filmed because it was AMAZING. I definitely want to go again. I'm sure you are wondering why I am sporting that awesome convict-like orange jump suit. It was due to the rain...although it didn't really rain on us at all so we didn't need the suits anyway...and they had that "kid coming in from recess in the winter" smell if you know what I mean. Yuck! But it was so much fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun it made it way worth the wet sweat smell. And here's Kate doing the same. We had technical difficulties with the video of Christa doing it too, but I promise she did. On our way up to Monteverde we got stuck in the mud for quite awhile and had to walk up a hill barefoot in mud up to our shins...uphill, both ways! It was actually a fun little adventure. Here's a little video of a couple of minutes of the hour or so we were trying to get out. Actually our van got unstuck and up the hill in about 15 minutes but then our driver (who we called Evel Knievel) was the only driver brave enough/good enough at driving to get out and so he helped like 8 other vans get up the hill too. That's what took so long. Thank you Kate for the great background music! I'm so glad I went to Costa Rica with friends that can see the adventure in everything with me. It was sort of a crazy trip but we had SO MUCH FUN!

How Black is Black? / I Hate America Right Now

I'm speechless (okay not really, I never am). Is America really that dumb? Barf on toast. Do the people who voted for Obama even know what he stands for? Or are they just voting for "Change" and for the first "Black President." And yes I did purposely put "black president" in quotes because here is my question to the world...how black is black anyway? If my calculations are right Barak Hussein Mohammed Obama (that's his real name according to the Internet) is exactly 50% black and 50% white. So why is everyone saying that he is the first black president? He is (or will be in January) the first HALF BLACK PRESIDENT. I don't know why the technicality bothers me but it does. I mean, that would be like a hermaphrodite running for president and when she/he won everybody saying, "Oh yay, we have our first WOMAN president." NOT SO I say. Half and Half isn't whole. Now if somehow Barak was 51% black then I guess we could call him black...but since we all know that 23 chromosomes came from his Black Daddy and 23 came from his whiter then White Mommy...that he is only Half a Black (and half white). So I could have just as easily voted for him based up on the fact that he is White...but I didn't. And not that I'm in love with McCain either, but sometimes you just have to choose the lesser of two evils. Am I against the idea of having a black president? NO. In fact I think that black guy who played the President of the United States on the show 24 and is also in a lot of Allstate commercials would make a great black president just based upon his looks and commanding voice. I'm not against a black candidate for any office...or an Asian, or Native American, or Hispanic or whatever. However I still believe that someone should not win an election based on their color and not on their qualifications...and that goes for white folk too...they shouldn't just win because they are white either...the best person should win. Same with jobs, scholarships, medical school placement, etc. But I guess the world isn't the fair place I want it to be. Shame shame. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

At least he looks semi-decent in a swimming suit. So maybe if they make a calendar of Presidents, Kings and Dictators of the World our little Baraky will maybe even make the cover. I still hate how it looks like he's always wearing lip liner though. He should get that fixed. He has the money. And now he has all of our money too, so he has no excuse for weird lip coloration. Okay, that's all for this installment of "Becca's non-factually based arguments and opinions." Until next time...which may be soon unless our new Half-Black President gives hope to all the hopeless and gives people confidence in America and suddenly our economy recovers. And then I won't rant and rave anymore because I'll be HAPPIER and closer to my retirement to the island of Aruba. I still won't like Barak but I might like America a little more. The end!

Happy Election Day Everybody!

My cousin Lucy sent me this cartoon today and since she doesn't have a blog of her own I thought I'd post it because I think it is HILARIOUS and oh so true.

Who Took the Indians Out of Thanksgiving?

The other night my brothers and Kim and I were talking about how America is heading towards Socialism...with the government bailing out banks and with stupid people out there supporting a presidential candidate who supports socialised medicine, etc (I won't name any names since tomorrow is election day and I don't want to even mention his name and give him any free advertisement.)

Anyway, someone brought up the fact that when the the United States was first settled, in Jamestown or maybe one of the other early settlements, they tried out Socialism. They gave everybody a plot of land to farm and then had everyone bring in their harvests to be shared by all. Within just a couple of years the system fell apart because some people just didn't work as hard in their fields knowing that they could survive because of the hard work of others in the settlement. ANYWAY, soon thereafter they just went back to everybody just living off the harvest from their own piece of land and all of a sudden the lazy people disappeared. Now this isn't the point of this post...this is just a little side note to show you that Socialism does not work and that we've already tried it here in the US...so we have proof. (Although I don't have the facts to back up our conversation on the Pilgrims and Socialism.)

Anyway talking about the Pilgrims brought Thanksgiving to my mind. And not just any old Thanksgiving but that first Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims and Indians (now known as Native Americans) got together and ate a big feast. See picture below for details...

And then all of a sudden it hit me...who took the Indians out of Thanksgiving? I mean, really, after that first Thanksgiving you never heard of us White folk inviting over the Indians anymore. Were they bad guests? Did they not BTOM (Bring their own meat) or something? Were their table manners below par? Whatever happened to Thanksgiving being a holiday where Caucasians and Native Americans got together to share some grub?

My family all laughed at me quite a bit when I suggested this idea, but in my defense aren't holidays meant to commemorate whatever we started the holiday for? I mean, is it weird that I think it is weird that my family has NEVER had any Indians over for Thanksgiving dinner?

Anyway, I just think this is something we all should think about. I know I am. Since my parents are in a foreign land my family probably won't be celebrating Thanksgiving this year (or I guess for the next three years), but if I was going to have a Thanksgiving dinner I would sure think seriously about finding some Indians to invite.

It will just be my little brother and I spending this Thanksgiving together and I just don't think that cooking a turkey for two is really worth it...especially since I don't really cook anymore. So, due to our lack of desire to make a big meal together we are thinking of going to a Homeless Shelter in SLC and helping serve Thanksgiving dinner. Either that or we might go to NYC for the long weekend. We are undecided.

But, if we do end up serving the homeless I will probably get to share my Thanksgiving dinner with at least one Native American because there is one that I always see at Pioneer Park so I'm betting he'll show up for dinner. If so, I'll be sure to share a blogpost on "My first REAL Thanksgiving." Stay tuned...

Oh, and this post isn't meant to be racist...it is just meant to give you something to think about. I mean, I love Indians. Well, actually I don't know any. But if I did I would love them and I would invite them over for Thanksgiving...so there!

When Tragedy Strikes...

Seriously, I thought I had reached rock bottom...until today. I'm up in Idaho this weekend and as I usually do today I went to Millhollow in Rexburg for my favorite Pistachio frozen yogurt mixed with White Chocolate Almond frozen yogurt with cookie dough mixed in. I know it sounds gross, but it is not. It is amazing. It is one of the few joys in my life. I mean... I am homeless, parentless, live in a country well on its way to Socialism (which is only good news for the lazy people), I HATE my job, my financial future is looking pretty bleak, I am one-third of the way done with a Masters' Degree that at the rate I'm going I may never finish...and after all that I'm going through right now I find out today that Millhollow is no longer carrying Pistachio frozen yogurt. SERIOUSLY? So I'm just trying to carry on, realizing that my whole world is crumbling around me. Can't I have that one little joy in life, can't I? And why now? So if any of you know the owners of Millhollow please beg them to reconsider. Because until they get pistachio back I won't be back at Millhollow or back in Rexburg (since frozen yogurt is my only reason for visiting Rexburg). And if any of you have any suggestions of something that can replace the hole in my heart left by my new lack of pistachio frozen yogurt please let me know. Until then I'll just try to carry on and will try to put my life back together. Maybe I'll have to move to Idaho and open my own frozen yogurt store. Wouldn't that be awesome?