Greatest Hits, or That Time I Fed Someone Off-Brand Denture Cleaner

You know those stories that are so funny that you still find yourself telling them years after the fact? I think that intro is my fancy way of saying "Sorry if you've heard this one before, but it's high time I put it in writing somewhere. Also, sorry if most of these stories are gross. Turns out 27 years is not long enough to outgrow potty humor. Maybe 28 will be?"

So my freshman year at BYU, my roommate and I had this epic home teacher (fellow congregation member who visits you regularly to make sure you're doing okay and help out with any big projects you're working on). He was from rural Montana, dressed entirely in Army Surplus attire, and is the only person I know who's bested the gallon challenge.

One night he called our room from the lobby phone (that's right, I went to college before texting was invented) to let us know he & his companion were here for a visit and to ask if we would bring 5 cups or bowls down to the lobby with us. The roommie and I, expecting some variation of the food coloring and bleach object lesson, grabbed the requested ceramics and headed down. I should pause here to remind you that for two girls living in a dorm room with a mini-fridge, a meal plan, and a Sharon, those 5 mugs comprised our entire dish collection. And since we were expecting chemical reactions, we didn't exactly bother to wash them out. Two were actually clean, two were clean under a thin layer of accumulated dust, and one was used daily to soak my retainer in denture cleaner.

The twist? Three mugs, one from each category, were identical except for Sharpie initials on the underside. Imagine our surprise when food coloring and bleach turned out to be a half gallon of strawberry ice cream and a box of plastic spoons. A good hostess is quick on her feet (never mind the washes her dishes bit), so I figured I could just hold on to the retainer soaker, play with my food so it looked like I ate it, and no one would be the wiser.

Except that somewhere in the dishing up ice cream process, I ended up with the wrong identical mug. Realizing the mistake, I tried to surreptitiously peak at the bottoms of everyone else's mugs (just imagine that for some visual comedy), hoping against hope that roommie ended up with it and I could, you know, send her a warning look. But no. I found it just in time to see army home teacher scraping the sides. And then he started licking the sides. What was I supposed to do at that point? Tell him? It seemed a little late for that. Luckily my poker face lasted just long enough to get back into the stairwell before I busted up laughing.

And so, dear army home teacher (if you're reading this), I'm ever so sorry I mildly poisoned you with a residue of denture cleaner and plaque. And to all my other friends, I swear I've never fed you anything disgusting like that... unless you appear in the next episode of Greatest Hits.

Watermelon

To all those of you who thought I was weird for making my friends carve St. Patty's Day watermelons with me all through college, I present the National Watermelon Promotion Board's gallery of carvings:

Love

For these two guys. Fifth year please? Pretty please?

20 Years Later

Today was the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, and if you know me at all, you know that this called for a party. My roommate got the used shipment boxes from her work last week, I got a few cans of spray paint, and a little good-natured chaos ensued.

We stacked the reassembled boxes on our front walkway to make the wall. It got a whole lot more graffitied than this before the night was over.

We roasted marshmallows while we waited for the spray paint to dry, and then I yelled "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" and we all charged it and knocked it down. This was the aftermath:

Then somehow my hometeacher ended up jumping out of a tree. Do not try this at home.

For those of you who were worried, these cardboard boxes made surprisingly good landing foam.
He only broke through the first layer (there were four). Then one of the neighbors called the fire department, but the firefighter who visited us in his gigantic fire truck inspected the portable fire pit we were using on the sidewalk and said everything was in order. He declined our offer of a s'more.

It was a fun party with good entertainment and great friends, and it gave me the opportunity to celebrate how grateful I am that the Wall did fall because it allowed me to serve my mission there. I wouldn't be the same today without all those wonderful people and the experiences I had learning to feel and share Heavenly Father's incredible love for them.

Out of the Mouths of Freshman

So my new roommate (not room roommate, but saying housemate makes me feel like I'm on the Real World Provo, or something) is a freshman out of the inland empire in California. She's very sweet and incredibly timid, and it's been an adventure remembering just how much you don't know when you're a freshman. Today she decided to make snickerdoodles (green ones!) for a Troll 2 party our house was throwing, and here were some of the highlights of the conversation:

Her: "So, what time should I start making them?"
Me: "Well, how long do they take to make?"
Her: "The recipe says bake for 11 minutes... so if the party starts at 8, I should probably mix them up at 7:45"
Me: "Don't snickerdoodles have to refrigerate for awhile? Also, you're probably going to have to bake more than one batch."
Her: "No. The recipe just says bake."
Me: "Check out right here where it says 'refrigerate 1 hour.'"

Her: "Do we have any cream of tartar?"
Me: "Probably not"
Her: "What am I supposed to do then? Do you want me to go buy it or something?"
Me: pretended that was a rhetorical question and kept vacuuming.
Her: "What about flour, sugar, and vanilla? Oh, and eggs, butter, and crisco? Where are those?"
Mental Me: "At the store, with the cream of tartar."
Verbal Me: "There might be some in the communal baking cabinet. Just make sure to replace whatever you use the last or almost last of."

Her, while staring at the finished dough: "So when do I add the food coloring? Now? or after I bake them?"

Oh the joys of leaving home for the first time!

Getting Quasi Published!

During my last semester at BYU, I worked as a research assistant for a professor who was writing a book about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Germany during the Second World War. I did a little editing and a lot of poring through German microfilms and internet databases trying to track down the fate of soldiers who were listed as MIA. I also got the opportunity to go and help with a few interviews where we met with survivors of the war or their descendents. We listened to their stories, got as much detail as possible so we could compare it to other accounts and verify as much as possible, and took pictures of their old photos and surviving keepsakes. Anyway, the book is finally done and published and will be hitting the shelves on September 21st! I'm pretty stoked! At one point there was talk of crediting all of the research assistants who worked on this project (for we were many), but whether or not that actually happened, I still feel pretty special. Anyone who's interested in more info, or wants to order a copy can visit the publisher's website.

I am officially 100 years old

Today on campus at BYU I spotted a lost little freshman, and offered to help him find his class. Then I recognized him as the valedictorian from White Pine High School class of 2009. For those of you who don't obsessively follow my life, that is the school where I taught last year... and knew him as a student. I felt like a dinosaur.

In other news, I am now taking 2 classes at UVU, 1 class at BYU, and 2 classes online from BYU, all in pursuit of a social studies teaching certification. I am currently certified in History and German, but I am in school again so I can upgrade to social studies which also includes geography, political science, economics, etc., and hopefully makes me more employable.

And since I am terrible at retro-posting and catching up on an entire summer at once, here is a brief list of this summer's highlights:
I moved back to Provo.
I went to Canada (and Washington) for the first time! (since I was born there!)
I got a boyfriend. Then I broke up with him.
I went to Manti a lot. Sometimes for all girl camping, once for the pageant.
I went to tons of weddings, all of which were lovely (how's that for impersonal ;)
I didn't take any pictures of anything... because I am a camera loser. Sorry!

EPIC Kitchen Failure!

This past Sunday a friend and I decided it would be a great idea to go up on campus and pick some fresh plums to make a plum tart. This especially seemed like a great idea because I did it last summer with some friends from the campus tree crew, and it was possibly the most beautiful dessert I have ever created. And it tasted okay, too.

So this time we picked the plums from the very same trees, and made the tart using the very same recipe, but there were some significant circumstantial differences, the first being that my current abode is about 30 degrees hotter inside than last summer's. We first noticed something was amuck when the pie crust was roughly the consistency of chocolate chip cookie dough, most likely owing to the fact that the Crisco was more than half way to melted in that sweltering kitchen. This made it impossible to make the tart walls stand up properly, so we decided that plum cobbler would be a better idea. Just throw the pastry dough on the top, and it's a whole different dessert! Right?

My neighbor suggested that since we switched desserts at the last minute, we should call it Plum Surprise, and boy was I surprised to see that plum dessert coming right back up the hatch on Monday morning! and afternoon! and evening! I'm pretty sure the plum cobbler is to blame because it is the only thing I ate between Sunday lunch and Monday surprise. Luckily, the friend who helped me make it was also the only other person who ate it, so only two of us spent our Mondays wallowing in the misery that is epic kitchen failure.