On March 13, 2017 at 8:36 pm and 10 seconds

I will be one billion seconds old.

While reviewing my notes for my biology final, I found that note that I wrote in a boring lecture. The time is using Nevada time. Who knows where I'll be living in 8 years.

Last chance stories

Since today is the last time that I'll probably be posting until after finals, I thought I would end with a bunch of stories that I planned on sharing, but didn't get a chance to. These are ideas that I wrote down a while ago that I thought would be good blog topics.

Scar

I think scar stories are the best. I have a little scar on my forehead that's about half a centimeter long. It all starts when I was in first grade...
We lived in El Centro, California at the time. I was six years old and Chris, my brother was eight. We were playing in the backyard. Our backyard was basically a field of dirt, but it has a metal pole sticking out of it. I guess the pole was used to dry clothes on, but I can't remember. Chris and I were playing out there and we decided to have a "gong" contest. We had to find something to hit the pole with and see who could make the loudest gong. I got an aluminum baseball bat and hit it as hard as I could. It was pretty loud and the vibrations hurt my hand. Chris said, "That was nothing. Watch this." He took a PVC pipe and hit the pole has hard as he could. The PVC pipe shattered and a pointy, long shard hit me right in the forehead. I started to bleed pretty bad and Chris went to get Mom. I remember Chris telling me that it took two big towels to soak up the blood, but now that I think about it I think that was an exaggeration. If it took two towels to soak up the blood, I'm pretty sure I would've gotten stitches, which I didn't. I tried to take a picture of the scar for you to see, but the flash washed it out so you couldn't see it, so you can imagine that it looks kind of like this.

Family sayings

We had a lot of things that we said as a family that are inside jokes. And they have been repeated for years. Here is an incomplete list of some of the things you can say and situations in which you would say them:

• "63" (As in "Man, David is so 63 right now.") Use this when someone is all sullen and grumpy.
• "JP" (As in "Nathan looks very JP tonight.") JP stands for Johnny Polite. You say someone is JP when they're dressed up all fancy and speak with a British accent. It helps if you hold your hands like the Van Trapp children and have a part in your hair right down the middle.
• "Edwin Redslob" (As in "Chris looks like Edwin Redslob in many of his school pictures.") I mentioned him before. He is pretty similar to acting JP, but you have to flare your nostrils.

There are others, but I don't have time to explain them all, so I'll just list the rest: flexibles; Austins; buy the mystery by the mystery; family friends; bayer; Aidan; the Lewis family tragedy; and get my wish. Can you think of any others?

Gender

I've been thinking about gender lately. I'm glad we have the Family Proclamation that teaches that gender is an essential characteristic of eternal identity and purpose. Without that knowledge, I think there could be a lot of confusion, especially nowadays. We were learning about all the different types of chromosomes in one of my biology classes and we talked about the different things that could go wrong with the XY chromosomes. It was pretty freaky. I think the weirdest one is this disorder where someone has the XY genotype (meaning they are technically male), but the Y chromosome is repressed so they look exactly like a girl and their body functions as a female body...until they hit puberty. Then the Y chromosome is activated and the girl's body changes into a boy's body. How weird and emotionally challenging would that be? Luckily, this is extremely rare.

And that is it for NaBloPoMo. Whew. I think by November 2010 I'll be ready to do this again. Hopefully I'll be able to think of cool topics by then. Well, depending on your time zone, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.

Katie

Sorry about all of the lame-o posts these past couple of days. I've been enjoying my break. It's so nice to be able to spend the entire day with Katie and Olivia. It feels like a real vacation because I don't have any homework to do, either.
I thought for today's post I would write about how great Katie is.
I've known Katie for over five years. She's my best friend and my favorite person to be around. Here are some reasons why I love her so much.
1) We like the same sort of things. We both like to decorate the apartment in the same sort of way. We both have the same level of acceptability of cleanliness when it comes to our apartment. We both like the same type of music. We enjoy the same type of food. Except tapioca pudding. And white chocolate. She loves that stuff. I don't like it so much.
2) She is really creative. It seems that she is always working on some new project that she finds online. She is always looking for ways to beautify the area around her. She can find solutions to problems really fast. She is an excellent writer and a good drawer, too. She draws little faces and people on my sandwiches baggies for me to find later.
3) She has a contagious laugh. Last night I watched Bourne Ultimatum and it made me think that I had superhuman powers. I tried to flip the light switch off with my foot put I couldn't reach it so I ended up on the floor. Katie laughed for about an hour straight. The thing was that I had to laugh along too. When she laughs so hard you can't help but laugh with her. She finds humor in almost anything.
4) She loves me for who I am. I could spend hours in the library or a bookstore, and Katie lets me when we have time. The other day we were in the library and the baby started to cry really loud and Katie took her and held her so that I could spend time looking for audio books. There are other examples where she does something that she thinks is really boring because she knows that it makes me happy.
Basically, she is the best, and I feel lucky to have her.

!!1!

No time
to post

Cop out post

My favorite Youtube video of all time:

Butterfingers is easy

Gratitude

I decided to make a list of things that I am grateful for that I have never expressly said on Thanksgiving that I was grateful for them.

Free music

Books on CD

Internet

Farmers

Government

My childhood

Plumbing

Cotton

Libraries

Nerds

Immune system

Fingerprints

Flavors

Freckles

Manual labor

Art

The smell of sunscreen

What things haven't you said you are grateful for?

Point of view

I remembered something today that I thought was really enlightening and clever. Many years ago the whole family was riding in the car. I think we were going on vacation somewhere. My mom brought some cookies for everyone, but there was only enough cookies so that everyone could have four cookies. Within the first part of the trip she handed everyone one cookie. A little while later, when she was asleep, I sneaked a cookie. I didn't think she would be able to tell if one was missing, and nobody else noticed. However, when it came time again for the next round of cookies, either she noticed or someone else noticed that there was one missing. I confessed to sneaking one, and as a punishment I only got one more cookie instead of my two that were left for me.

Now, I think most people at this point will feel cheated or a little jealous of my siblings who gloated over their cookies. They had three more to eat and I only had one. But I decided that I would try an experiment. I pretended that there were only two cookies total. I stole the first cookie, and my mom was so proud of me for stealing it that she rewarded me with another cookie. I could just pretend that my siblings didn't get any cookies and that I got two. You see, I get two cookies either way, and whether I'm satisfied with what I have was mostly dependent on how I compared myself with others. It's your whole point of view of the world that makes the difference, not what you actually physically have.