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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.