Last Sunday, Ryan, Zack, and I were all assigned to give talks - Ryan and me in Sacrament meeting, Zack in Primary. It was his first talk, and he was excited. We promised him that he could give the talk again for Family Home Evening, but he just couldn't wait until Monday night. I videotaped it, intending for grandparents to be the only ones who cared enough to watch. But it turned out to be unintentionally hilarious, so I'm posting it here. We're all grateful that it went better on Sunday than it did today.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The Stupidest Thing You've Heard All Day
I was talking to a friend last night about intelligence. Her husband has a genius-level IQ, and yet is insecure about his intelligence. So he makes a special point of knowing useless trivia for the purpose of proving to people that he is smart. Here's a man after my own heart - I, too, love useless trivia, enough that I passed the test to be on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I like peppering a conversation with pertinent facts. In high school I was known by my friends for saying, when asked how I knew something random like how many pairs of ruby slippers they made for the Wizard of Oz (at least 5), I frequently replied, "I read a book on it once." I told my friend that I, too, want people to think I'm smart.
But I realized that's not my motivation exactly. In truth, I want people to not think I'm stupid. I think there's a big difference - I'm not looking for people to laud me for an attribute, I want to avoid people thinking I have a lack. I have a very large fear of attempting to say something intelligent, but having people instead think, or worse yet, say, "That was stupid."
Which is not to say that I don't say stupid things. That's kind of the problem - I say stupid things All. The. Time. Usually in a misguided attempt at humor, I make a complete idiot out of myself. For example, making a joke about polygamy to the friend whose husband cheated on her. Not funny. I could tell by the complete and utter silence that followed that the joke was not only not funny, but I was quite stupid for making it.
Or the gym friend who had a baby that I had never seen. We were joking that maybe she just made up that baby as a practical joke, and it was funny until I said, "Well, you wouldn't gain THAT much weight for a practical joke!" Whoops. I thought we were joking! She went from laughing to stony silence in one exercise-heightened heartbeat.
The worst is making a joke while you're giving a talk - that audience is primed for laughter, I tell you, and if your joke bombs, it's a BIG bomb. Although for me, nothing is quite as painful as the time (way back when I was single) that I was listening to the boy I had a massive crush on talking to a group of people. He used some latin word that I thought was a double-entendre, and I burst out laughing at what I thought was his super-intelligent joke. It was not a super-intelligent joke, and no one else laughed. He looked at me and said, "Do you even know what (that word) means?" Alas, I did not. And I felt stupid with a capital Stu.
So I make a concerted effort to know things before I comment on them. If I'm not quite sure what something means, I try to stop myself from spouting an opinion on the subject. That poses a particular challenge, because I can come up with an opinion on just about any subject, whether I know what I'm talking about or not. My modus operandi is to scrape together all of the information I know on a subject, and turn it into an intelligent question, which proves that not only do I know enough to ask a pertinent question, but also lets the other person feel more intelligent than me. So in one fell swoop, I can show off my smarts AND be humble at the same time!
Fortunately, I'm surrounded by people who either a) politely fail to acknowledge when I say something stupid, or b) are willing to put up with the occasional stupidity in hopes that I say something really funny to make up for it. And I'm getting better at evaluating the stupidity-potential of my comments before I let them out of my head. Any intelligence gathering is more to cover up anything stupid that might slip through the filter than to convince people that I'm smart. Maybe if I make it onto Jeopardy someday I could rise to being actually intelligent, provided I don't say something stupid to Alex and blow my cover in front of the entire country. I don't think the filter is ready for that quite yet.
But I realized that's not my motivation exactly. In truth, I want people to not think I'm stupid. I think there's a big difference - I'm not looking for people to laud me for an attribute, I want to avoid people thinking I have a lack. I have a very large fear of attempting to say something intelligent, but having people instead think, or worse yet, say, "That was stupid."
Which is not to say that I don't say stupid things. That's kind of the problem - I say stupid things All. The. Time. Usually in a misguided attempt at humor, I make a complete idiot out of myself. For example, making a joke about polygamy to the friend whose husband cheated on her. Not funny. I could tell by the complete and utter silence that followed that the joke was not only not funny, but I was quite stupid for making it.
Or the gym friend who had a baby that I had never seen. We were joking that maybe she just made up that baby as a practical joke, and it was funny until I said, "Well, you wouldn't gain THAT much weight for a practical joke!" Whoops. I thought we were joking! She went from laughing to stony silence in one exercise-heightened heartbeat.
The worst is making a joke while you're giving a talk - that audience is primed for laughter, I tell you, and if your joke bombs, it's a BIG bomb. Although for me, nothing is quite as painful as the time (way back when I was single) that I was listening to the boy I had a massive crush on talking to a group of people. He used some latin word that I thought was a double-entendre, and I burst out laughing at what I thought was his super-intelligent joke. It was not a super-intelligent joke, and no one else laughed. He looked at me and said, "Do you even know what (that word) means?" Alas, I did not. And I felt stupid with a capital Stu.
So I make a concerted effort to know things before I comment on them. If I'm not quite sure what something means, I try to stop myself from spouting an opinion on the subject. That poses a particular challenge, because I can come up with an opinion on just about any subject, whether I know what I'm talking about or not. My modus operandi is to scrape together all of the information I know on a subject, and turn it into an intelligent question, which proves that not only do I know enough to ask a pertinent question, but also lets the other person feel more intelligent than me. So in one fell swoop, I can show off my smarts AND be humble at the same time!
Fortunately, I'm surrounded by people who either a) politely fail to acknowledge when I say something stupid, or b) are willing to put up with the occasional stupidity in hopes that I say something really funny to make up for it. And I'm getting better at evaluating the stupidity-potential of my comments before I let them out of my head. Any intelligence gathering is more to cover up anything stupid that might slip through the filter than to convince people that I'm smart. Maybe if I make it onto Jeopardy someday I could rise to being actually intelligent, provided I don't say something stupid to Alex and blow my cover in front of the entire country. I don't think the filter is ready for that quite yet.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Mothers Of The World, Unite!
I am finding it increasingly difficult to continue cooking dinner for these chuckleheads who call me Mom.
Tonight's dinner has earned me an approval rating of 12%, which is close to, but not, the all-time low. I made Salad Capriciosa from Rachel Ray's cookbook "365:No Repeats." This one for sure is not going to be repeated.
In case you're wondering, here's how the Approval Rates get calculated:
I have 5 constituents who each contribute up to 20 percent, with a possible total of 100% Approval. I don't count myself, because just like the President, I automatically approve of anything I do. (Although there's a chance that Pres. Bush was counting himself towards the end there, since his approval ratings were about as low as mine.)
If the constituent eats the dinner, he can rate it on a scale of one to ten. Then I double that number, and add it to the rest of the family's scores in order to get the Approval Rate.
For example, here's the scoring breakdown from tonight's dinner.
Darcey - threw a tantrum for undisclosed reasons, watched Blue's Clues instead of eating - 0 points
Zack - ate one piece of lettuce and one very small slice of bread, announced he was "full" and went to play outside - 0 points
Noah - moved the dinner table while I was pouring Zack a cup of milk, causing me to pour it on the table, after being told not to move the table; when asked to clean up the spill, yelled "I'm not eating!" and stormed outside - 0 points
Brad - initially "wasn't hungry" (could see friends waiting outside - coincidence?? Yeah right.) Ate several bites, rearranged food on plate to appear emptier, gave the meal a 5 but dropped it to a 3 when I said he didn't have to worry about hurting my feelings - 6 points
Ryan - ate his entire bowl, said he liked it but found the dressing to be too sour (which I agree with), also gave it a 3 - 6 points.
Grand Total - 12 points, for a 12% Approval Rating.
If there had been scintillating conversation during the failed meal, I wouldn't count this a failure at all. But 3 out of 4 children were screaming/sulking/crying before they even took one bite, and then scattered. We've lost control of something here, and I'm not sure what's wrong. I feel like, in order to be a "good mom" or to "do my job" properly, I need to cook good food. For me, that means to make food that tastes good, that's moderately healthy, and above all, that they'll eat. I can hit two of these, but not all three.
A couple of years ago, I actually went to a psychologist to ask specifically how to get Noah to eat his dinner. What I was told was that the conflict was not about Noah eating, but about me taking it personally that Noah was not doing what I wanted. Well, it's been almost two years and I still can't seem to detach myself. If my kids eat fish sticks and mac n cheese from a box for dinner every night, then YES, I do think that reflects poorly on me as a mother. I DO take it personally. It's my job to make these kids dinner, and if they consistently refuse to eat what I've cooked, it becomes personal. Seriously, if you worked at a job and your boss hated every memo you wrote, or thought every report you turned in was crap, you wouldn't put up with it. If every idea you volunteered at a meeting was met with groans and whines about "I HATE that idea! We had that idea last week and I don't want it again! Do we have to have that idea?" you'd quit. (Okay, I don't know if that translated too well to the business world, but you get the idea.)
Mothers have completely rotten working conditions. Someone needs to report my children to OSHA. Or maybe us mothers should form a union, then we could go on strike. They couldn't pay someone enough to break our picket lines and do our jobs! The laundry would pile up until the kids were covered in filth, they'd eat cold cereal for every meal, they'd never remember when it was their turn to bring the snack to preschool, they'd see just how difficult life is without us! Let them turn their noses up at our dinners, we'll see how they like it without us!
Clearly, I'm taking this wayyyy too personally, and it's possible that after a few deep breaths I can come up with a logical way to handle dinner time again. But the subversive side of me is sorely tempted by the idea of sticking it to the man, or the kid in this case. I think Mothers' Rights is a cause I can really get behind. And besides, walking a picket line with no kids around, that sounds like a vacation to me.
Tonight's dinner has earned me an approval rating of 12%, which is close to, but not, the all-time low. I made Salad Capriciosa from Rachel Ray's cookbook "365:No Repeats." This one for sure is not going to be repeated.
In case you're wondering, here's how the Approval Rates get calculated:
I have 5 constituents who each contribute up to 20 percent, with a possible total of 100% Approval. I don't count myself, because just like the President, I automatically approve of anything I do. (Although there's a chance that Pres. Bush was counting himself towards the end there, since his approval ratings were about as low as mine.)
If the constituent eats the dinner, he can rate it on a scale of one to ten. Then I double that number, and add it to the rest of the family's scores in order to get the Approval Rate.
For example, here's the scoring breakdown from tonight's dinner.
Darcey - threw a tantrum for undisclosed reasons, watched Blue's Clues instead of eating - 0 points
Zack - ate one piece of lettuce and one very small slice of bread, announced he was "full" and went to play outside - 0 points
Noah - moved the dinner table while I was pouring Zack a cup of milk, causing me to pour it on the table, after being told not to move the table; when asked to clean up the spill, yelled "I'm not eating!" and stormed outside - 0 points
Brad - initially "wasn't hungry" (could see friends waiting outside - coincidence?? Yeah right.) Ate several bites, rearranged food on plate to appear emptier, gave the meal a 5 but dropped it to a 3 when I said he didn't have to worry about hurting my feelings - 6 points
Ryan - ate his entire bowl, said he liked it but found the dressing to be too sour (which I agree with), also gave it a 3 - 6 points.
Grand Total - 12 points, for a 12% Approval Rating.
If there had been scintillating conversation during the failed meal, I wouldn't count this a failure at all. But 3 out of 4 children were screaming/sulking/crying before they even took one bite, and then scattered. We've lost control of something here, and I'm not sure what's wrong. I feel like, in order to be a "good mom" or to "do my job" properly, I need to cook good food. For me, that means to make food that tastes good, that's moderately healthy, and above all, that they'll eat. I can hit two of these, but not all three.
A couple of years ago, I actually went to a psychologist to ask specifically how to get Noah to eat his dinner. What I was told was that the conflict was not about Noah eating, but about me taking it personally that Noah was not doing what I wanted. Well, it's been almost two years and I still can't seem to detach myself. If my kids eat fish sticks and mac n cheese from a box for dinner every night, then YES, I do think that reflects poorly on me as a mother. I DO take it personally. It's my job to make these kids dinner, and if they consistently refuse to eat what I've cooked, it becomes personal. Seriously, if you worked at a job and your boss hated every memo you wrote, or thought every report you turned in was crap, you wouldn't put up with it. If every idea you volunteered at a meeting was met with groans and whines about "I HATE that idea! We had that idea last week and I don't want it again! Do we have to have that idea?" you'd quit. (Okay, I don't know if that translated too well to the business world, but you get the idea.)
Mothers have completely rotten working conditions. Someone needs to report my children to OSHA. Or maybe us mothers should form a union, then we could go on strike. They couldn't pay someone enough to break our picket lines and do our jobs! The laundry would pile up until the kids were covered in filth, they'd eat cold cereal for every meal, they'd never remember when it was their turn to bring the snack to preschool, they'd see just how difficult life is without us! Let them turn their noses up at our dinners, we'll see how they like it without us!
Clearly, I'm taking this wayyyy too personally, and it's possible that after a few deep breaths I can come up with a logical way to handle dinner time again. But the subversive side of me is sorely tempted by the idea of sticking it to the man, or the kid in this case. I think Mothers' Rights is a cause I can really get behind. And besides, walking a picket line with no kids around, that sounds like a vacation to me.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Gym Thoughts From a Pro
My parents are excellent gym-goers. They started going a few years back, when they decided to lose some weight before my brother Drew's wedding, and they both look fantastic! My dad is my guest blogger for today, so let's look at going to the gym from his point of view:
I love going to the gym.
I feel all pumped and ready to get on with life.
I've got my gym fantasies and they are:
1. Using the new cross trainer that has a Ipod attachment that will play all ipod realated stuff, video, music, podcasts and can display the video full screen, all the while charging the device! How much better does it get than that?
2. Getting more than the 30 minutes which the gym rules allow. The my inner-econ major has to say here, for the record, that this is supply and demand. It costs nothing to use a really good gym hence everyone wants to use it. Also, in the Obama era, when the tax (30 minute time limit) is too high (I'm stretching here but it might be interesting) people are encouraged to cheat. Because of these concepts, I, for instance, get there at 9:01 sign up for from 9:15 to 9:45, everything after 9:45 is like gold in my mind!
3. An empty room and a near endless array of equipment to use. I often try to go when I do a 11am shift so I can go at 9, get a good sweat going, then a shower, and off to work!
Here's what yesterday brought in a painful kind of order:
1. Its school break (my better half pointed out that its indeed not school break so the gym was freakishly quiet) so fantasy gym experience #3 is in order, generally mom's drop off their kids at school and stop in to work out, talk loudly or more correctly yell at each other quietly. But with school break it's different, their are all gone to various destinations around Europe and doing vacation things.
2. I'm there at roughly 9:05 and can look forward to a near-felonious 55 minutes on one machine.
3. My favorite cross trainer, is being cleaned up by some stranger. In my tiny reptilian mind I'm thinking... "hmmm, he's new, fat and must be done with the machine so I should be good?" No, he's indeed new to the place as I've never seen him in these parts before, chubby so this is just a guilt trip for him and will not darken the gym's door again anytime soon, and is he cleaning the equipment to be kind to the next user or a germ freak who wants to clean it up for himself? As I know the answer I saddle up on an alternative cross trainer, of course they are all available. They suck compared to the Cadillac of cross trainers. So I squint at the tiny ipod video screen (I love it but love it even more with a big display) and look longingly over my shoulder to see if the ONLY OTHER PERSON in the gym is still using my favorite machine. Of course he is and continues until after felony time is done at roughly 09:19... Then he can't waddle out of the place fast enough.
I love going to the gym.
I feel all pumped and ready to get on with life.
I've got my gym fantasies and they are:
1. Using the new cross trainer that has a Ipod attachment that will play all ipod realated stuff, video, music, podcasts and can display the video full screen, all the while charging the device! How much better does it get than that?
2. Getting more than the 30 minutes which the gym rules allow. The my inner-econ major has to say here, for the record, that this is supply and demand. It costs nothing to use a really good gym hence everyone wants to use it. Also, in the Obama era, when the tax (30 minute time limit) is too high (I'm stretching here but it might be interesting) people are encouraged to cheat. Because of these concepts, I, for instance, get there at 9:01 sign up for from 9:15 to 9:45, everything after 9:45 is like gold in my mind!
3. An empty room and a near endless array of equipment to use. I often try to go when I do a 11am shift so I can go at 9, get a good sweat going, then a shower, and off to work!
Here's what yesterday brought in a painful kind of order:
1. Its school break (my better half pointed out that its indeed not school break so the gym was freakishly quiet) so fantasy gym experience #3 is in order, generally mom's drop off their kids at school and stop in to work out, talk loudly or more correctly yell at each other quietly. But with school break it's different, their are all gone to various destinations around Europe and doing vacation things.
2. I'm there at roughly 9:05 and can look forward to a near-felonious 55 minutes on one machine.
3. My favorite cross trainer, is being cleaned up by some stranger. In my tiny reptilian mind I'm thinking... "hmmm, he's new, fat and must be done with the machine so I should be good?" No, he's indeed new to the place as I've never seen him in these parts before, chubby so this is just a guilt trip for him and will not darken the gym's door again anytime soon, and is he cleaning the equipment to be kind to the next user or a germ freak who wants to clean it up for himself? As I know the answer I saddle up on an alternative cross trainer, of course they are all available. They suck compared to the Cadillac of cross trainers. So I squint at the tiny ipod video screen (I love it but love it even more with a big display) and look longingly over my shoulder to see if the ONLY OTHER PERSON in the gym is still using my favorite machine. Of course he is and continues until after felony time is done at roughly 09:19... Then he can't waddle out of the place fast enough.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Books Are Making Me Burn
Tomorrow I take my only final, then I get two weeks off until the summer semester starts. I went to the bookstore last night to get the required texts for the two classes I'm registered for, and you know what that means.
That's right, folks, it's time for my Once-A-Semester Rant Against High Textbook Prices!!
Apoplectic rage does not even begin to describe how I feel when I have to pay these exorbitant prices for books. My Weather Studies text and workbook was $120 - the workbook changes every year, the textbook does not, however the only way to buy the workbook is bundled with the text, so you can't resell the textbook. (Okay, you can if you don't use the workbook and resell them directly to another student, but NOT if, like me, you're taking it during the summer, because the new workbook/textbook Ripoff Combo goes on sale for the fall semester.) The textbook ends up being completely worthless without the workbook. I used the Ocean Studies set a couple of years ago, and it was the same - at the end of the semester I THREW IT AWAY. These books are produced by the American Meteorological Society, a group that studies, among other things, the causes of global warming. You can read their global warming statement here. What you cannot read there is how many trees they kill to produce their wasteful text, the text which taught me that deforestation is one of the major causes of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So greedy textbook publishers are causing global warming.
But if you think the Weather Studies Ripoff Combo was the greatest source of outrage, think again. That's the book I actually bought. The one I left on the shelf was the text for my Business Communications class - a regular looking textbook, no value-added CD, no special workbook, no access code for their super-exclusive website, no pages made of solid gold. Which is why I was completely aghast at the price: $152. One hundred and fifty two dollars for A BOOK. If this were Hogwarts I was attending, and the book was actually alive and tried to bite me, then I would consider paying $152 for a book. But this book only bites figuratively.
A student in my class (where I began this rant, last night) said that the reason the book costs so much is that the class is an online class, so the book has to do all of the teaching. I was polite enough not to rip this theory to shreds in front of her, but since she's not here to defend herself, it's fair game. That is a ridiculous idea. What she's basically saying is that this text alone is going to teach me, and the instruction is worth the $152. If that is the case, why then am I also paying tuition, some of which is paying for the professor's salary, which he clearly doesn't need if a $152 textbook can teach me without his help. Alternatively, the student was saying that the $152 has better content than the Business Communications text that the non-online class buys (a bargain at only $64). But if books were sold based on content, why on earth is a Business Communications text worth more than, say, the Bible?? Which I can get for free in any hotel in the country! Could learning the proper way to format an email really be more valuable than the life-affirming truths taught by God Himself? The real fact of the matter is that God isn't around to collect royalties on his Word, which you can't say about the textbook author.
The proof that textbooks are priced above the market value for them is the thriving resale market. In fact, most of the students in my class last night had the same sentiment: Buy it online, used, and you won't have to pay $152. Of course I'm not going to pay full retail for the book - only really stupid or really desperate people do that. Or really lazy, I suppose. Or really spending their parents money, not their own. Okay, so lots of people probably buy the text brand-new, but that doesn't stop those wily book publishers from trying to foil us. They release new editions every few years, in the name of providing up-to-date research and information. But the last time I checked, introductory Algebra isn't experiencing a new wave of innovation. Neither is Shakespeare, which some fellow students paid a huge pile of money for a book of collected works last semester, only to be told in class that the text of all the plays are online.
Why isn't there more outrage at textbook prices? Why do students (and their parents, ostensibly) accept this fleecing every semester with nary a peep? Why hasn't there been a revolution yet? Why aren't there protests in front of school bookstores across the country every fall and spring? What happened to the student protests of yesteryear - are we so collectively wealthy that we can be asked to pay an additional 25% of our already exorbitant tuition and we won't even flinch? Am I the only voice of reason left on campus? I'M FED UP AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! Join with me, Utah Valley University students! Let's organize a sit-in at the bookstore, we can chain ourselves together and sing revolutionary songs and Kum-Ba-Ya and chant about the capitalist pigs and their greed! Then we can have an over-priced textbook burning on the quad! We can go on a reading strike! No More Teachers, No More Books! No More Publishers, They're Dirty Crooks!
Except. That I need this class to graduate. And it's more convenient to take it online. And our vacation to Disney World would be in serious jeopardy if I was handcuffed to the wolverine statue on campus. So I'll buy the stupid book online and resent the crap out of the entire semester. But you better believe that I'll use my new-found Business Communication skills to write a particularly well-worded letter to President Obama, asking him to do something about greedy textbook publishers who are single-handedly destroying our environment. That letter will be $152 worth of genius and persuasion. And possibly, it will bite.
That's right, folks, it's time for my Once-A-Semester Rant Against High Textbook Prices!!
Apoplectic rage does not even begin to describe how I feel when I have to pay these exorbitant prices for books. My Weather Studies text and workbook was $120 - the workbook changes every year, the textbook does not, however the only way to buy the workbook is bundled with the text, so you can't resell the textbook. (Okay, you can if you don't use the workbook and resell them directly to another student, but NOT if, like me, you're taking it during the summer, because the new workbook/textbook Ripoff Combo goes on sale for the fall semester.) The textbook ends up being completely worthless without the workbook. I used the Ocean Studies set a couple of years ago, and it was the same - at the end of the semester I THREW IT AWAY. These books are produced by the American Meteorological Society, a group that studies, among other things, the causes of global warming. You can read their global warming statement here. What you cannot read there is how many trees they kill to produce their wasteful text, the text which taught me that deforestation is one of the major causes of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So greedy textbook publishers are causing global warming.
But if you think the Weather Studies Ripoff Combo was the greatest source of outrage, think again. That's the book I actually bought. The one I left on the shelf was the text for my Business Communications class - a regular looking textbook, no value-added CD, no special workbook, no access code for their super-exclusive website, no pages made of solid gold. Which is why I was completely aghast at the price: $152. One hundred and fifty two dollars for A BOOK. If this were Hogwarts I was attending, and the book was actually alive and tried to bite me, then I would consider paying $152 for a book. But this book only bites figuratively.
A student in my class (where I began this rant, last night) said that the reason the book costs so much is that the class is an online class, so the book has to do all of the teaching. I was polite enough not to rip this theory to shreds in front of her, but since she's not here to defend herself, it's fair game. That is a ridiculous idea. What she's basically saying is that this text alone is going to teach me, and the instruction is worth the $152. If that is the case, why then am I also paying tuition, some of which is paying for the professor's salary, which he clearly doesn't need if a $152 textbook can teach me without his help. Alternatively, the student was saying that the $152 has better content than the Business Communications text that the non-online class buys (a bargain at only $64). But if books were sold based on content, why on earth is a Business Communications text worth more than, say, the Bible?? Which I can get for free in any hotel in the country! Could learning the proper way to format an email really be more valuable than the life-affirming truths taught by God Himself? The real fact of the matter is that God isn't around to collect royalties on his Word, which you can't say about the textbook author.
The proof that textbooks are priced above the market value for them is the thriving resale market. In fact, most of the students in my class last night had the same sentiment: Buy it online, used, and you won't have to pay $152. Of course I'm not going to pay full retail for the book - only really stupid or really desperate people do that. Or really lazy, I suppose. Or really spending their parents money, not their own. Okay, so lots of people probably buy the text brand-new, but that doesn't stop those wily book publishers from trying to foil us. They release new editions every few years, in the name of providing up-to-date research and information. But the last time I checked, introductory Algebra isn't experiencing a new wave of innovation. Neither is Shakespeare, which some fellow students paid a huge pile of money for a book of collected works last semester, only to be told in class that the text of all the plays are online.
Why isn't there more outrage at textbook prices? Why do students (and their parents, ostensibly) accept this fleecing every semester with nary a peep? Why hasn't there been a revolution yet? Why aren't there protests in front of school bookstores across the country every fall and spring? What happened to the student protests of yesteryear - are we so collectively wealthy that we can be asked to pay an additional 25% of our already exorbitant tuition and we won't even flinch? Am I the only voice of reason left on campus? I'M FED UP AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! Join with me, Utah Valley University students! Let's organize a sit-in at the bookstore, we can chain ourselves together and sing revolutionary songs and Kum-Ba-Ya and chant about the capitalist pigs and their greed! Then we can have an over-priced textbook burning on the quad! We can go on a reading strike! No More Teachers, No More Books! No More Publishers, They're Dirty Crooks!
Except. That I need this class to graduate. And it's more convenient to take it online. And our vacation to Disney World would be in serious jeopardy if I was handcuffed to the wolverine statue on campus. So I'll buy the stupid book online and resent the crap out of the entire semester. But you better believe that I'll use my new-found Business Communication skills to write a particularly well-worded letter to President Obama, asking him to do something about greedy textbook publishers who are single-handedly destroying our environment. That letter will be $152 worth of genius and persuasion. And possibly, it will bite.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Weighty Matters
I'm attempting to get back on the wagon this week, and it sure is hard when the wagon keeps moving. I stopped going to the gym about a month ago when I got the Devil's Cold that plagued our family for weeks. Last week was the kids' spring break, and getting into a routine when you've temporarily got four kids home all day (all of whom, I might add, were instantly bored and in some cases, incredibly whiny. Spring break is for teachers, not kids.)
So today is the first day of the rest of my life. I love that phrase for the implied melodrama, but really all I want to do is get back into the habit of going to the gym every day. I had been so good for months and months, and I need to prove that it was a lifestyle change that suffered a temporary setback, not just a fluke. I want to be a daily exerciser, the kind of person that goes to the gym without fail, it's expected to happen just like eating breakfast or taking a shower.
Facing the prospect of dieting is not as easy a decision. I still seem to be scraping the bottom of an empty willpower barrel whenever I think about restricting what I eat. I've come to a conclusion - it has to be easier to lose a lot of weight than it is to lose a little. If I lost 15 pounds, I'd be satisfied, 20 would put me over the moon, and 25, well, I don't even consider that a possibility anymore. But it's hard to be motivated to diet when you don't have much to lose, because it doesn't seem to come off. The last six months of serious exercise (but no dieting) have kept me exactly at the same weight. But for some reason, I can't get up the motivation to sacrifice in order to see these last pounds fall off. That's not to say I don't try - I can get myself completely psyched up in the morning that today is going to be different, but by 2 pm I'll be scrounging around the house, eating whatever junk I can come up with. And then I feel defeated, so the next time I psych myself up, I start convinced that I'm going to fail. It doesn't help that Ryan and another friend of mine are both in the same boat - the two of them both diet with single-minded intensity, and exercise to boot, but aren't losing. It reinforces the idea that why should I even try? I'd rather eat, drink, and feel guilty.
I'd love to see The Biggest Loser deal with people like us. We don't have such a fractured life that eating has driven us to severe obesity. We are willing to exercise. We have gotten down to to our goal weights before, but see pounds creeping back on. We eat out, but not a ton. We don't usually drink soda, we eat fruits and vegetables, avoid pasta and load up on fiber. In short, we're doing most things that we're supposed to. In order to diet at this point would mean cutting out every single bad thing we've ever thought about eating, and I for one haven't been able to do it. So could Bob and Jillian could whip us into shape, exercise us to death to beat the 15 pounds off of us? I'd do it if I could. But I don't believe it would work.
So my current theory is this: I'm going to keep exercising every day. I'm going to drink more water, which I'm really bad about. I'm going to work on eating a healthy lunch every day, because that's the point at which my eating goes haywire. And I'm going to buy some new jeans that fit me at this weight, because that seems the surest way to tempt fate into making me lose a few pounds. And even if taunting Murphy's Law doesn't work, I'll feel better about myself if I look good, no matter what weight I am.
So today is the first day of the rest of my life. I love that phrase for the implied melodrama, but really all I want to do is get back into the habit of going to the gym every day. I had been so good for months and months, and I need to prove that it was a lifestyle change that suffered a temporary setback, not just a fluke. I want to be a daily exerciser, the kind of person that goes to the gym without fail, it's expected to happen just like eating breakfast or taking a shower.
Facing the prospect of dieting is not as easy a decision. I still seem to be scraping the bottom of an empty willpower barrel whenever I think about restricting what I eat. I've come to a conclusion - it has to be easier to lose a lot of weight than it is to lose a little. If I lost 15 pounds, I'd be satisfied, 20 would put me over the moon, and 25, well, I don't even consider that a possibility anymore. But it's hard to be motivated to diet when you don't have much to lose, because it doesn't seem to come off. The last six months of serious exercise (but no dieting) have kept me exactly at the same weight. But for some reason, I can't get up the motivation to sacrifice in order to see these last pounds fall off. That's not to say I don't try - I can get myself completely psyched up in the morning that today is going to be different, but by 2 pm I'll be scrounging around the house, eating whatever junk I can come up with. And then I feel defeated, so the next time I psych myself up, I start convinced that I'm going to fail. It doesn't help that Ryan and another friend of mine are both in the same boat - the two of them both diet with single-minded intensity, and exercise to boot, but aren't losing. It reinforces the idea that why should I even try? I'd rather eat, drink, and feel guilty.
I'd love to see The Biggest Loser deal with people like us. We don't have such a fractured life that eating has driven us to severe obesity. We are willing to exercise. We have gotten down to to our goal weights before, but see pounds creeping back on. We eat out, but not a ton. We don't usually drink soda, we eat fruits and vegetables, avoid pasta and load up on fiber. In short, we're doing most things that we're supposed to. In order to diet at this point would mean cutting out every single bad thing we've ever thought about eating, and I for one haven't been able to do it. So could Bob and Jillian could whip us into shape, exercise us to death to beat the 15 pounds off of us? I'd do it if I could. But I don't believe it would work.
So my current theory is this: I'm going to keep exercising every day. I'm going to drink more water, which I'm really bad about. I'm going to work on eating a healthy lunch every day, because that's the point at which my eating goes haywire. And I'm going to buy some new jeans that fit me at this weight, because that seems the surest way to tempt fate into making me lose a few pounds. And even if taunting Murphy's Law doesn't work, I'll feel better about myself if I look good, no matter what weight I am.
Friday, April 10, 2009
A Ninja Fight in 10 Acts
Noah and his friend Daniel created a super-special Ninja fight, which they announced via hand-made invitations that they passed out to the neighborhood. I saw them practicing yesterday, although I didn't realize it was "practice" and therefore almost ruined the whole thing by taking their sticks away. (I have a strict no-kids-with-sticks policy. It's just a bad idea, generally.) They choreographed the whole thing, and even dressed in special costumes of all black, including their black church shoes.
The invitation read:
Ninja Fight Act.
Date Apr 10
Place Smith house
time 4:00
There are 10 acts. But we have a special act. Noah and Daneil will do the special act.
P.S. The special act will be fighting.
Ryan, Brad, and Zack were the only ones there for the first performance. The second one starts in 15 minutes, so they're hoping for a better turnout. Just in case no one shows, though, I'm posting it here. After all, that's what the internet is for, right?
Hope you enjoy it.
The invitation read:
Ninja Fight Act.
Date Apr 10
Place Smith house
time 4:00
There are 10 acts. But we have a special act. Noah and Daneil will do the special act.
P.S. The special act will be fighting.
Ryan, Brad, and Zack were the only ones there for the first performance. The second one starts in 15 minutes, so they're hoping for a better turnout. Just in case no one shows, though, I'm posting it here. After all, that's what the internet is for, right?
Hope you enjoy it.
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