Catching up, I suppose

Dear all,

I apologize for the long absence in posting, but, alas, life continues to plod along like the proverbial sands through the ever-so-proverbial hourglass, and there isn't terribly much to report.

Don't get me wrong--things are going quite well. Our new (for three months, at least) condo is helping my health, and I'm feeling much better. (Actually, as a corollary to that idea, a new couple just moved into the ward, and, when I asked where they were living--and the husband of the family said that they were living in Clover Creek Apartments--I just cringed; sure enough, they're in our old place. I debated whether I should tell them or not--I mean, maybe they're like M., and they won't be bothered by the mold--but, in the end, I did. It was the right choice, since, when we got into Elder's Quorum, one of the brethren shouted out, "Isn't that the apartment with the BLACK MOLD?!?" when the new brother introduced himself and his address. I'm glad that it didn't look like I was withholding information or something.) Also, I'm running quite a bit now, since it's finally warm in Salt Lake City, and that makes me feel good, if sore. My tibias are screaming at me this morning, but, hey, let them scream. It's worth it.

M. and I (I'm still using the ultra-secret name protection method invented by some relative--I forget who, exactly...probably because the ultra-secret name protection method works so well...) went hiking up in Big Cottonwood Canyon last Saturday with M.'s cousin, J., and her husband, D., and their baby (wait for this one) M.J., who I will refer to as "The World's Most Well-Behaved Baby," because she is, and because M. and J. are already taken. So, yeah, we tried hiking to Donut Falls, this nifty waterfall that falls through a little ring/tunnel thing (hence the name) of its own creation. Problem was, there was still tons of snow up there, so we couldn't go all the way to the actual waterfall. It was still really pretty, though, and the air was pristine. I've become a connoisseur of good air, ever since the mold thing happened.

We're still working on getting the move to Mississippi squared away, and the first item on our agenda is learning how to speak with a Mississippi dialect. I've been told that locals pronounce Mississippi like, "Mizz-zippy," so I'm working on it, but it still feels foreign.

Anyway, there you go.

Oh, take me down South...

Dear all,

Hallelujah--our prayers have been answered.

And, judging by the response, we'll be saying, "Hallelujah!" a lot more, because M. and I are moving to MISSISSIPPI.

That's right--sing it with me, now--"Oh, take me down South [and you've got to capitalize "The South"] to the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten!"

I will be earning my PhD at The University of Southern Mississippi. Woot. Woot.

I'm rewarding myself

Dear all,

Well, I just got grades in for my BYU classes, which is a wondrous feeling. I've still got to do the Westminster grades, but that won't take long, and that's only one class, as opposed to the three I had to grade at BYU.

Also, the weather's been nicer, so that helps immensely with my health, my mood, et al. We're planning on moving into the condo soon (as I mentioned before, the landlord is sprucing things up), and that's a good thing. In other words, life is splendid.

So splendid, in fact, that I've decided to take a small liberty with the bank account. See, back when I was getting sick every week, M. and I put away some money to cover medical expenses. It was actually quite a bit of money, since, at the rate I was going, we half expected to be paying for a surgery or something. Now, however, I'm feeling much, much better, and the money's just sitting there, collecting whatever interest a checking account gets. "Hey," I told myself, "there's got to be a better use for that cash." And, as it turns out, there is.

I don't know why I never thought of this before--I'm going to get my horns removed.

For those who are scratching their heads right now, you must understand: Members of my church are accused--with alarming frequency--of having horns. Please note that I've never seen any horns on my own head, but I keep hearing this from numerous sources. It's one of the reasons that losing my hair has me so worried: What if, a few years from now, my horns start coming in? What if they're like wisdom teeth or something--you know, one day, everything's fine, and then, suddenly, there's this shooting pain in my forehead and POP! and out come the horns? With my hair loss accelerating, I wouldn't have anything to cover the horns with! I mean, my wife (who doesn't have horns, either, as far as I can tell) has long, thick, shimmering brown hair, the perfect for concealing horns, be they large, small, straight, curly, or even forked like antlers.

Antlers! What if I grew ANTLERS?!? Would I have to RUT?

Such are all the questions buzzing through my head right now, and I'm sick of the stress. I mean, come on, man, I've been sick. I don't need one more thing to deal with. An anecdote I found on the internet says that J. Golden Kimball, the famous obscenity-spouting church leader, was once performing a baptism in a river. When a mob gathered nearby, he supposedly shouted to them, "Watch yourselves[!] [...] We've got horns, and we'll gore the [fetch] out of you if you come across!" Humor, it seems, was his way of dealing with this problem, back in the days before cosmetic surgery. Thanks to the advances of modern medicine, though, no longer do we have to suffer, trying to assuage our embarrassment through jokes.

See, the problem, as I mentioned before, is that my horns haven't erupted--YET. It would be one thing if the horns were already there, sticking up through my sunroof as I drove, picking up radio stations, scaring small children, etc. If that were the case, I'd just borrow my uncle's power grinder and have at--no fuss, no muss. But, no, my horns still lie dormant inside my cranium, waiting for the moment--when I'm giving an important speech, perhaps, or when I'm kissing my wife--to launch out and ruin my day.

Now I just need to find a plastic surgeon...

A couple thingies

Dear all,

After reading the comment (from my dear cousin-in-law, the ex-spy) about the last post, I felt the urge/need to clarify: I would love to move to sunny Southern California--my health does better; the weather makes me very, very happy; and I enjoy living in a cardboard box, since that's all we'd be able to afford.

No, seriously, Southern California is a lovely place, and a place where my dear wife, M. (thanks to J.'s blog, I've decided to start using code to disguise the identities of my loved ones), is okay with (thanks, love!!!). Nevertheless, I confess that, at times, I feel like Moses, able to see the promised land but never enter into it. However, I have faith that M. and I, as long as we live right, will end up where we're supposed to be. I just hope that it's Orange County.

Of couse, there are downsides, such as the aforementioned cost of real estate, and the risk of myriad natural disasters: flash floods, flash fires, earthquakes, landslides, sinkholes, more earthquakes--heck, scientists have even bantered about the notion of a tsunami. And then there are the man-made disasters: flash fires (many of 'em are arson-related), riots, more riots, air pollution, noise pollution, zero educational funding, Hollywood.

But, so help me, I love it. We'll go wherever we're supposed to, though. If this sounds like a mission call or something, I admit that it feels that way sometimes.

My favorite word is BLEACH

Dear all,

Heh. Heh-heh.

So, even though we're moving, it won't be for another fifteen days or so--our new landlord is doing some needed repairs to the condo. (NOTE: For anyone who's seen the condo, I'm accepting suggestions for the condo's new nickname; right now, I'm thinking "The Beachhouse," since it is long and narrow, like a beachhouse, and it's right next to the duck pond.)

Thus, I'm going to have to live with the mold for a few more days. However, I don't have to stand idly by and suffer--no, not in the least bit.

This is where I start cackling maniacally.

So I went to Smith's and bought a large bottle of Tilex--it's the disinfectant spray with the largest percentage of bleach in it, and it'll kill just about anything that moves, given a sufficient quantity. And I vowed to use a more-than-sufficient quantity.

I also bought the economy-size jug of Chlorox wipes, a pair of rubber gloves, a microfiber cloth, a jar of peanut butter (because killing mold works up an appetite), and a tube of toothpaste (so I can look good afterward).

Coming home, I got out my respirator, the industrial-grade one I wear when I spray lacquer on my woodworking projects. Then I got out the Tilex. I went to the bathroom and sprayed the walls, the ceiling, the shower, the exhaust fan, the etagere (the cabinet over the toilet), the atomic clock. YES, I EVEN SPRAYED THE FREAKING CLOCK. And then I scrubbed, hard--the walls, the ceiling (I got some bleach in my eyes with that one, but I didn't care), the lightswitch, the shower-curtain rod. Out came the wipes for a second pass.

Now the whole apartment smells like an indoor swimming pool, and the bathroom's clean enough to perform a heart transplant on the toilet. Will the mold come back? Sadly, it probably will, since we have every reason to suspect that it's infiltrated the walls from the inside-out. However, if it ever peeps its little fuzzy head into my bathroom again, chemical death awaits, painful and chlorine-scented.

A thought: Years from now, when my presently non-existent daughters begin dating, I'm going to have their boyfriends read this post. "As you can see," I will say, as I sharpen a large knife or, perhaps, oil a shotgun, "I take care of the things that harm my family members."

MOLD!!!

Dear all,

Well, there's good news, and then there's bad news. Which first?

I'll go with the bad news: Our apartment is infested with toxic mold. Yep--yellow mold, orange mold, green mold, black mold. I even think I saw some red mold, but that could've been rust from an old bathroom fixture.

The good news: Now we know why I've been sick all winter! The symptoms line up perfectly; I've had chronic sinusitis, swollen lymph nodes, and--the real clincher, as far as I'm concerned--a swollen thyroid gland. Yes, mold can make your thyroid swell up like a football!

So we're moving; we have to, for my health. As it is, we're living with the windows always open, and it's getting a little cold. But we have been blessed, amazingly so--I walk into P.E.C. on Sunday morning, tell the folks about the apartment, and a brother in the ward says, "Hey, Brother ________ has a condo that he rents, and the current renter is moving out at the end of the month." So, long story short, we're taking it, assuming that it passes inspection tomorrow--I want to make sure that there isn't mold within a mile of this place. And, to sweeten things even more, the condo is in our ward boundaries, so we don't have to switch wards!

Talk about being blessed, eh? Glory be. So, yeah, it's a nice condo--kinda dated, judging by its '70s-era decor, but that's perfectly fine. It's bigger than our current place, too, so we can finally put up all our art. Plus, there are two--count 'em, two--duck ponds nearby. Sweet!

Episode IV; or, A New Hope

Dear all,

I went to Orange County last weekend.

Yes, those are fireworks you hear. May I, perchance, get a woot-woot?

It was lovely, lovely, lovely, from the ninety-degree weather to the spotless sky to the blossoming citrus tress in the backyard. Oh, mercy, was it nice. My lymph nodes' swelling went down, my ears stopped hurting--man, it was superlative. Supernal, even. So, yes, I'm feeling much better, although I still suspect I might be allergic to my apartment, in which case I'm going to burn it to the ground out of spite.

NOTE: In case my apartment complex burns down, this will look incredibly suspicious.

Anyway, the semester is coming to a close. I gave my first final last night, and it went well. I'm grading like a mad fury, and things are going well.

Case in point: The University of Southern Mississippi, which is very fun to type, allowed me to apply for fall admission, even though the deadline is a month-and-a-half behind us. Joy!

The Latest Update; or, The Night of a Thousand Urps

Dear all,

I love that we got comments last time around; thanks!

Well, it looks like all the PhD results have come in, and the answer (from all of 'em) is no. Alas. Boo. There are three programs that I've found--maybe a fourth--that admit for the spring, so we'll see what happens.

It's been a bit demoralizing, I confess, since we were really banking on this one. I mean, now we have to extend our lease, and that alone is enough to make me want to apply to law school.

Note: I will not be applying to law school. (Why make millions saving innocent people from prison when you can tell stories for a living?) Or business school.

I don't know if it's because of that--stress can do weird things to the body--but, Thursday night, my body revolted. "I don't care if you shove seven vitamins down my throat every morning," it said, "but I want to lurch." And lurch it did.

"Body," I said, "I try to take care of you. I feed you healthy foods, some of which actually taste good. I take vitamins and, when those aren't enough, I take antibiotics, plenty of them, enough to enable me to lick the floor of a high-school locker room and remain unscathed, such is the penecillin that courses through my veins."

"Fie!" countered my body. "It's time for you to taste dinner again."

I really must thank my downstairs neighbor, Brian Olsen, who came to my aid. I hadn't started reverse peristalsis yet when I called him--all I knew was that my head felt like a giant zit about to pop. Then my kidneys started hurting, and I was very, very dizzy.

Steve "Spoon" Bitter, are you reading this? Do you remember the time when I got really dizzy, that time with the toilet paper and the Mountain Dew and the pickup truck and the paintball gun with Scott shouting out the window about Ultima Online? Really, I was THAT DIZZY this Thursday.

So Brian came over, saw me careening around my apartment like a drunken sailor, and called a nurse in the ward, because, the way I looked, he wanted to know if I should go to the hospital. She came over (thank you, Dana!) and thought I was dehydrated, which I probably was, and told me to lie down.

Long story short, an hour later, Melanie was home, and my body wanted to show off. Thus began The Night of a Thousand Urps.

Okay, well, it was only three, really, but there was a bit of dry-heaving thrown in there for good measure.

I'm feeling quite a bit better now--not perfect, but pretty good--and I'm grateful, really, because the weekend reminded me of all the synonyms for urping: driving the porcelain bus, doing the technicolor yawn, bringing forth the bounty of the harvest, tossing one's cookies, etc. It's fun for a creative writing professor.

For all who prayed for me, thank you very much. Please keep praying.

Easter; or, my birthday; or, a lovely InstaCare morning

Dear all,



Sunday was Easter, obviously, but it was also my birthday. To celebrate, I started off by spending a glorious, sunny morning in the Taylorsville InstaCare with a stabbingly painful strep infection--one of my tonsils looked like a spiky marble.



But, hey, any excuse I can find to take more Augmentin (the manufacturer sends me thank-you notes now) makes me happy. Happy!



Afterward, I spent some time with my parents, who were visiting from Orange County, and my sister, who is taking over Provo with her raw, unbridled brilliance. They're fun folks.



Then, for the finale, I went to my aunt 'n' uncle's house--with everyone in tow--for dinner, along with my best man, Steve, and his wife, Emmy, who is with child. If my lobbying efforts succeed, they will name him Jeffrey Joaquin Bitter.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

An update, long needed

Dear all,

Well, I'm sick again--it's some stomach nastiness that's making me dry-heave. On the bright side of things, it's a heck of an abdominal workout, and my eight-pack stomach is re-emerging. Nevertheless, I am still enfermo, and I'm passing the time by looking at my old friends' blogs. Man, I miss these folks. It still amazes me how such a cluster of talented, smart, spiritual kids ended up in one stake. I don't know why, and I don't care, because it was great, and I'm just glad it happened.

Here are a few of their blogs; even if you don't know them, I'd suggest taking a look (I suppose I could put these in the "Links" section, but I hate html code):

http://swellchelbelle.blogspot.com (Chelsea & Michael Christensen)
http://rileyspace.blogspot.com (Matt & Rachel Riley)
http://dnariley.blogspot.com (My friend Dan Riley and his wife, Nichole, with possibly the most offensive blog name of the bunch)
http://saltybloggers.blogspot.com (My friend Kelli Harris Salter and her husband, Jared, presently all living in Hungary; she's a great photographer, and it shows on her blog)

Anyway, that's all the blogs for now. There are more, for sure, but my emotional sensibilities can only take so much, and I'm practically weeping as it is.

Okay, so several people have asked me for an update on PhD stuff; here's the summary:

Cornell - No
FSU - No
Georgia - No
Houston - ?
Missouri - ?
Ohio - ?
Tennessee - No
UNLV - ?
USC - ?
Utah - No

I'll be sure to keep y'all updated.

An update, right?

Dear all,

Well, it looks like I'm finally recovering from the numerous plagues that have affected me throughout this winter. Oh, this winter, this malaise, this purgatory. If I ever see another falling snowflake, it will be too soon. My goal in life is to create a series of desalinization plants along the major oceans of the world. That way, it can stop snowing because of global warming, and the world can still get enough water for agriculture, ice sculptures, sno-cones, etc.

So, yes, Ms. Muppett and I are still alive and kicking.

Part two: No Cornell; I found out yesterday. Oh well--it's not that bad. After all, it snows there.

Horsing Around

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

So my niece Libby is turning into one of those girls who loves horses. And, given her reaction during Kaysville Equus Romp(us) 2008--the name I've bestowed upon the following event--I don't think her fascination is going away.

'Cause, you know, a lot of little girls go through a stage when they want to be marine biologists (a trip to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy did away with that phase, courtesy of the satanic moray eels) and animal vets, but they grow out of it. No, I think Libby's the real deal.

My aunt, Laurie, has a horse named Junior. He's a fine Arabian steed with a wacky sense of humor (he loves, for instance, to flash his green-encrusted horse smile at passers-by). She was nice enough to let us take the girls to see him, brush him, and--yes, I'm serious--give him his vaccination. Yes, Libby loved the vaccination part.

Here are the pictures:

Random Thoughts; Or, My, It's Been a While

I received an invitation this week from a couple of my old friends from California. (Well, they're not exactly old, but I've known them for a long...well, you know...) They're having a reunion of sorts for all of us from the Orange Stake--those who grew up in the Orange Stake from the, oh, early '90s until the turn of the millenium--at the Holiday Skating Rink.

It's an interesting venue choice. I loved the Holiday Skating Rink when I was in the 6th grade, but my interest really tapered off after that; I think it was something about all those partner-skating sessions, where you were supposed to find true love and skate with it around and around and around while listening to "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles, all accompanied by the smell of ancient nacho cheese ground into the industrial carpet. Yeah--not my cup of herbal tea. As memory serves, random girls would come up to me, ask me to skate, and I'd mumble something about not dating until I was sixteen and roll away to play another round of Terminator: The Invasion. Joy?

Anyway, so I got the invitation, and it's too bad, because it looks like I won't be able to attend, and I really would like to see everyone. The real thrill, then, became seeing everyone's email addresses and, in the case of one person, a blog address, which led me to the blogs of many of my friends (and their spouses, which, in most cases, are also my friends, since Steve Bitter and I were, like, the only two guys from the stake who didn't marry girls from the stake; Kelli Salter nee Harris is the only girl that comes to mind that married outside the stake...). My, my friends are doing well. It's amazing, really, that such a cluster of talent existed in one stake. There's Riles, who's on his way to becoming CEO of Cisco; and Toddie, who's pushing the limits of modern technology at MIT; and the aforementioned Kelli, who will soon unseat Anne Geddes as the most famous female photographer (and thank goodness for that, since I'm sick of the Geddes-produced nudity that confronts customers upon entering Barnes & Noble), and the list goes on and on. The mere fact that Steve can survive summers in Arizona is enough to qualify him as superhuman, in my humble opinion.

It also saddens me, of course, because I've lost contact with most of these good people. Perhaps, in a way, that's for the best. In high school, I could be slightly odd; now, given my absence of a few years, I can emerge at some reunion and act properly and people might forget about all the times that I stuck my fingers into their birthday cakes.

Sorry about that, Dan. But it was delicious.

(NOTE: When I began writing the preceding paragraphs, I misspelled "Holiday Skating Rink," saying, instead, "Holiday Staking Rink." Now THAT would be interesting--instead of a couples' skate, they would have...never mind.)

Okay, well, here are some other random thoughts, since it's been a while since I blogged:

1. All of my PhD applications are in. Pray. Pray hard.
2. I really need to change my "About Me" picture, since I don't have hair anymore.
3. Speaking of that, I promised Melanie not to wash my cut hair down the bathtub drain anymore, since we had to have maintainence come out and plumb the thing out. Whoops.
4. Melanie's sick right now, but she still went to give a conference presentation in Mesquite. Wow. That librarian should get a medal.
5. Holy cow, this winter has been harsh. It's sunny today, thank goodness, but man. Lots of snow, though, which is nice; if it's going to be cold, it might as well snow.

Okay, well, that's it for now.

Ashley's College Graduation

My sister, Ashley's, graduation from Utah State University with her degree in Elementary Education. Way to go, Ash!

Winter Blows In

Dear all,

Behold: Winter in Murray.

First visit with our cousin, M. Jo

Eli in Bonneville High School's The Music Man

Updated Canada Trip Slideshow

Petersen FHE

Fun times with Drew & Jess (Fixing Jeff's car)