Mouse update

I mostly want to post about what we think happened to the little mouse I liberated a few posts ago.

He died.

Or we're pretty sure he died. Becca started smelling something rank in her room, like something had died. A small rodent, perhaps? She thought he died under her dresser since her clothes were starting to smell awful, and demanded I move it and remove the body. (Hee hee...if all anyone read in this post was that line, that would be hilarious. :)) I thought that was reasonable and attempted to do so, but, alas, there wasn't anything there to remove.

She tore apart her room and found the same thing. Or didn't find the same thing, I guess. Plugging up any and all holes in her room at floor-level became the solution. We think he crawled in one of them and promptly died.

So my liberating was all pretty much for nothing. Except that he got a few more days of life. That's good, right? At this point, I've decided I can't really do anything about it and beating myself up about it doesn't help any. I'll probably be sucking up to Becca for the rest of my life because of this...and oh well.

Anyone know a good way to buy off an angry sister with an rank-smelling room?

Madame Butterfly - I can't forgive Pinkerton

It's been a crazy couple of days at work, so this post is a little belated, seeing as I saw Madame Butterfly on Wednesday, but it's still a good thing to think about so I'm writing about it anyway.

First off, here's a Reader's Digest synopsis of Madame Butterfly: This US Navy Lieutenant named Pinkerton wants a Japanese wife while working in Nagasaki. He negotiates a house and wife - his wife's name is roughly translated as Butterfly in English. He leaves her, telling her he'll be back in the spring.

Three years later he does come back, after everyone told her he wouldn't ever come back and she was unfailingly loyal, but the only reason he's back is to pick up the son they conceived while he was there three years ago. He says it's to give the son a better life in America with his new American wife. Butterfly is told of this plan and says Pinkerton can have their son if he comes to get him - Pinkerton bolted before she came out of her room. She kills herself just in time for Pinkerton to catch her dead body.

It was AMAZING - hands-down awe-inspiring. The colors, set, lights, costumes, emotion and the singing were all spell-binding. The little boy was especially well-trained and disciplined. He caught the audience's attention and hearts and kept it there when he was on stage - when he was supposed to be asleep, he would lay still even when the orchestra was going crazy, cymbals and all.

Getting to the discussion part of this post: there was an essay in the program about forgiving Pinkerton for his actions because he was young and foolish, sucked in by the contract culture of Japan; he thought his marriage would be a contract he could nullify anytime without undue consequences.

I don't buy it. As me and my mom talked about it, people can have character at any time of their life, and they should. Being young is no excuse for anything - especially marrying someone and then leaving them to wait for your arrival, which he promised would happen in less than a year. He knew what he was getting into. One of the conversations with his friend during the wedding scene is a warning to consider Butterfly's feelings and to not take the marriage lightly. How young would he have to be to have the responsibility of a lieutenant on a ship? Also, if all he wanted were *ahem* intimate relations, why didn't he just pick up a geisha instead of marry one? He said it was because he wanted to capture the Butterfly for good. How incredibly selfish can you get?

Even at the end, he supposedly wants what's best for his son by taking him to America with him, but he doesn't consider Butterfly at all. So, what is she supposed to do - go back to being a geisha? I love that his cowardice won't even allow him to face her until she's dying. Okay, I don't really. He says he's sorry for what he's done, but he can't even tell her that to her face.

I think Puccini probably painted him this way on purpose - as the antagonist of his opera - but even at the end when he's supposed to have his redemption, I wasn't feeling it. Are you?

Of mice and women - to kill or not to kill

I know, I know, two bad cliches in one blog title...just bear with me.

With Becca being as crazy busy as she is these days, and with me being moderately crazy busy as I am, there are days when we don't see each other at all in a day.

So, I try to make an effort to see her when I can - usually keeping her up needlessly at night after I get home early from some rendezvous with Caryn.

In one of these awesome times the other night I noticed something moving in her window well.

"AH!" I screamed.

Okay - I didn't really scream. Although, one of my friends had a peeping tom hop in her window well, so I guess I had a valid reason to be scared. But Becca allayed my fears.

"That's just the mouse living in my window well," Becca said.

"Um...kay," I said. "So, what are you going to do with him?"

"Mom told me to leave it in there," Becca replied.

"What?"

Now - I'm not an animal lover or anything - I don't parade around in picket lines with "Oxen free!" written all over signs I've made - but when it comes to letting an innocent creature die, I don't feel that great about it. Especially in a cold, cold window well.

Therefore, I decided to capture him in the window well and let him free into the wild.

As always, life never turns out as you plan it. He ran away from me and hid in the corner of the window well for a solid five or ten minutes, meaning I had to climb in there to attempt to trap him.

Yup - he came out of the open window and into Becca's room as soon as I climbed in there.

Another ten good minutes was spent chasing him from under her bed, then to under the dresser, then back to under the bed, at which point Becca pointed out that no one needed to know there was a mouse in the house.

I agreed, but it didn't necessarily mean Becca had my back, since she told my mom the next night.

Benedict Arnold. I mean, I heart you Becca! :) And you, Mr. Mouse.

An A to the MR (An Adventure to Mt. Rushmore)

*Length warning- this post is rather long...

Well all, I finally did a pretty huge thing on my bucket list - I went to Mt. Rushmore.

The whole idea started with National Treasure 2 - Caryn, Lisa and I were all watching it and all of a sudden I said, "I've always wanted to go to Mt. Rushmore, but my dad didn't want to and so we never did as a family. He said there wasn't anything else to see around there and he didn't want to drive forever just for Mt. Rushmore."

Caryn turned to me and told me it was the same way for her in her family.

"Me and my roommate were going to go there Spring Break, but it never happened," Caryn said.

"Let's take a trip there sometime soon," I said, rather spur of the moment.

"Done," Caryn said.

Sometimes these kinds of things get talked about but never actually executed - and I thought this might turn out to be one of those things.

I sometimes get bored at work, and subsequently, one day I looked up what kinds of other things there are around Mt. Rushmore. I was a little surprised to find hot springs, a giant maze, paint ball, rock climbing walls, go-karts and horseback riding. We also figured out that Mt. Rushmore was about 9 hours from West Jordan - and actually started planning the trip.

The only problems came the week of: namely, Caryn's car breaking down, my car not getting the tune-up it needed and no one being able to go with us.

It was looking grim until Caryn called her sister, Adriane, who not only would let us borrow her car but wanted to come with us, too.

We left Friday night at 7:30ish and drove our brains out - switching every two hours until we got into Casper, Wyoming at 3 a.m. - which was not to be our last visit there. We got off the freeway about then, and since we hadn't really planned on staying the night there, we didn't know where to go.

Joy. So, there we were at 3:30 a.m., driving around, checking hotels in Casper, Wyoming, feeling cranky and tired. Finally, we caved and stayed in the Holiday Express Inn, which was like $130. Dah! Who knew rooms could be so durn expensive? I now understand why my dad never wanted to stay at a hotel. Yes, yes, I know - I admit it.

We decided to get directions from the hotel at the "business center" and promptly were on our way to Hill City, South Dakota, to our KOA campsite.

Lots and lots more driving later, we were there. Or, at least, we were pretty sure we were there - we drove past it before we realized we had missed the turn-off. After turning around, we saw the men on the mountain - which was my introduction to Mt. Rushmore.



The Park was amazing - we started out in information, where Caryn and Adriane decided they wanted to become Junior Rangers. I decided I did not - mostly because my siblings had to do it at many national parks they visited, and I rebelled where they could not. :)

We started in the hall of flags - every flag of every state in the good ol' US led the way to a great overview of Mt. Rushmore. We took our first pictures with it here.





Then, somehow, hot poses started...







Then it was time to go to the museum, with all sorts of facts about Mt. Rushmore and the presidents and the sculptor who dreamed it up. We watched a 13-minute movie on it - and I correctly guessed that it was Tom Brokaw who was narrating. Boo-yah!

I was pretty much amazed at all that went into carving four presidents on the mountain. I guess I never really thought about what it would take, from the conceptualization to the actually blasting: 17 years. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, had a vision about making presidents he viewed as the founders and shapers of the nation immortal in rock - he was an incredibly dedicated, well-thought out man. He actually died before he finished it completely.

90% of the rock removal was done by dynamite - which I thought was pretty cool.



This is a to-scale picture of an eye. It was slightly creepy...

From there, it was time to "hike" around the base of the mountain. And take more pictures.








At the end of the trail was the sculptor's cabin - where it had the scale model they used to carve the mountain. It was closed, but you could kinda see in if you blocked the light out. We were sad it wasn't open.



Then it was time for Caryn and Adriane to get sworn in as junior rangers and get souvenirs. My favorite were mugs with "Mt. Rusmore" on them, although the Mt. Rushmore pocketknives were also hilarious. Hee hee...





We then ran to the Black Hills Maze - thinking we'd have a good two hours to get lost in the maze before they closed. Except they looked pretty much closed for good - with a fence and everything.



We were sad.

So, instead we drove farther in Rapid City and found a place to eat called Firehouse Brewing Company. It has amazing food - like awesomely amazing.



And we got plastic fire helmets.

It was time to go back to our campsite, get nice and fire-smelling, almost set the tent on fire, watch part of X-men before my lappy died and turn in for the night.

We awoke to fire-toast, courtesy Adriane and the grill attached to the fire pit, and hilarious neighbors on a month-long cross-country trip. We packed up and headed to church in Casper, Wyoming.

After church we went to On the Border - a pretty good Mexican place that they don't have in Utah, but they do have in Texas, where Adriane lived for awhile. Except the service pretty much stunk - Adriane didn't get her order correct initially and even after an hour, had barely received the correct food. We were all kind of razzled at that point, and therefore didn't blink twice before deciding to go north on I-25.

Yeah- big whoops. About Buffalo, Wyomingish, we realized our folly and turned around. We'd already lost an hour and a half, so three hours round trip later, we were back in the hated Casper, filling up yet again, anticipating another good six hours to get home.

Of course, it's this time some deer decided to cross the highway - three at the same time, right in front of me driving. Ah, slamming on the brakes. Thank the heavens for anti-lock brakes.

After that, Caryn and I talked for the rest of the time, in between listening to music on my iPod and trying not to fall asleep.

I finally got to sleep about 1:30, safe and sound in my own bed. And thus ended the Mt. Rushmore adventure.

Nothing like some controversy on a Tuesday

So, as part of The Park Record newspaper, I get to lay out the pages for the Scene section of the paper. The lead story was about the Body World exhibit that's being put on in Salt Lake. Basically, the idea is that people donate their bodies to science and the scientists preserve the bodies by injecting them with plastic to preserve them, so they can kind of peel away the different parts of skin or muscle to reveal the bone structure or nerve interconnections or whatnot.

Everything was going along fine and dandy until I printed out pages for the copy editor to look at and she saw that the genitals of the male skier were intact. She then asked us to crop it out of the picture.


This is said offensive picture. (Should I not be posting this?)

Although I'm not one to normally support keeping possibly offensive pictures in the newspaper, I kind of felt somehow that this was a little different. The editor's point was that if they didn't want to see the exhibit and would be offended by the complete realness bodies, we shouldn't force them to do so through the pictures. But, really, I think what she was trying to say was if they didn't want to see that certain part of the exhibit we shouldn't force them - we were already kind of "forcing" them to see the exhibit through putting in any pictures of it at all.

Also, what qualifies as art? I mean, yes, it is a real human, but it's not at the same time. The process to preserve them kind of makes them a statue or model more than anything else. The David is kind of the same idea - I wonder if we would put a picture of that in the paper...

Another controversial point about the exhibit is that it's taking bodies, which we know are sacred, and kind of manipulating them, but it IS educating people about how the body works...

I just don't think these are things that are cut and dried - but do you?

Car #2 - Let's try to keep this one a little longer, eh?

Well, after a long and arduous search, and much pain and whining, I finally have my second car in a little under three months.

My dad was definitely one of the proponents for my finding a car, which I didn't really blame him for since it's harder to juggle cars when I don't have one, but sometimes I just got tired of looking for cars, especially when things happened like I would go to test drive a car and it would be bought while I was out giving it a test drive. It all just felt so fruitless and frustrating, but my dad convinced me to keep on keepin' on.

So I guess it was only appropriate that he was the one to find my car, eh?

He was on ksl.com, which he had been for basically that whole weekend nonstop, early Saturday morning and woke me with, "I just found a great car. Here's the phone number. Call them and set up a test drive in the next 20 minutes." I sleepily accepted the outstretched phone and did just that.

It was for a black 1994 Camry LXE - which means it was a luxury edition with leather seats, sunroof and CD player. It had 177,000 miles - which was a lot, but since it was a Camry, we decided it would last for at least another 100,000 miles - and for the price of $1,300, which it was listed under, it pretty much couldn't be beat.

We headed to Sandy, got there and met the dad of the owner of the car.

"It's my son's car - he was our youngest son and he just left for college, so he needs the money more than the car."

And with that, he gave us the keys, telling us that the sunroof wasn't completely sealed and the passenger's side door handle was broken. Besides that, he said, it was pretty good for 177,000 miles and 15 years old. We agreed - the exterior especially looked really good for how old it was.

Pulling out of the driveway, we went to the freeway and decided to test it out at high speeds. It smoothly transitioned from gear to gear, and I was quickly falling in love with it.

"Let's have Roger look at it," my dad suggested. Roger is his/our mechanic.

I agreed, but it was like a 20 minute drive from the car owner's house to Roger's house.

"I don't want him to think we stole it," I protested.

"He won't. We left the Prizm, remember?" my dad insisted.

Ah, yes. The Prizm. I then realized how awesome of a scam it would be to drive a piece of crap car to test drive a nicer car, and never come back. Heck, let them have that piece of 3-cylinder...love. :) Not that I didn't enjoy having a car to get to work - I did. It was just incredibly frustrating to putt up Parley's every day at 30 mph.

I finally convinced him that we needed to call them and tell them of our plan, and so we did so. It went to the machine and I basically told them we weren't stealing the car, and we actually wanted to buy it. Roger wasn't home, but we decided to go through with it anyway. I drove to the credit union, took out the money and went back to the house.

We chatted, accepted the price, listened while he explained that his price was way below anything you could get decently, patiently agreed, and listened to him ramble a little more about what had been done to the car in the last year or so. We wrote on a bill of sale all the necessary information, and I proceeded three times to count out the money while he was paying attention. He pretty much never paid attention and said he trusted me - so I gave up and my dad gave up telling me to count it while he paid attention.

He said he had a plate that was from another car, with registration that didn't expire until November. Only problem was, it wouldn't match up with the car if someone ran a check, so we took it off.

When I brought it home and told Becca of my happy news, she almost sobbed with joy she was so happy. Actually, a lot of my friends found out from Becca that I got a new car, before I was able to tell them, but that was fine. I understand her excitement. When you have to drive to school and work every day, it sucks to drive the van or get dropped off and picked up.

I asked her to christen and name my new car, since that's what she did for the old one.

"Do we have a bottle of wine around here?" she asked.

And, of course, we didn't. We didn't even have any sparkling cider. Darn.

But she took a gander at it and I told her it was pretty posh - leather seats, sunroof, CD player and all. She wanted to name it Posh, but my mom said it looked sleek and stealthy, too, and could we think of a name that incorporated all three aspects into it? I think then she suggested James, as in James Bond. He's posh, stealthy AND sleek. It stuck.

He's basically my love right now - I'm infatuated, I'll admit it. Pictures to come, to make you all jealous. ;)

Nickelcade=fun...and exercise?

One of the more ignored things on our Bucket List this summer was going to Nickelcade - mostly because Lisa wasn't that excited about going, so we waited until she went back up to school to head to this semi-shady hangout for middle schoolers, high schoolers and a few post-graduates of college.

My hazy memories of Nickelcade involve Skeeball, basketball games, tons of luck games, semi-dirty carpet and lots of younger kids, so I was interested to see if it had changed at all. Mostly it hadn't - even from what I remember.

Although there were a lot more "knock the nickel off the edge of the precipice to get tickets" games than I remember from before. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll try to explain: you put your nickel in the slot (usually at the top of the machine) and it usually went through a series of pegs and such, until it dropped at the bottom, where various machines were going back and forth (but not over the entire ledge), pushing nickels off of the surface your nickel just dropped onto. But sometimes yours wouldn't push other nickels off - just get stuck on top of the pile that was right on the edge of where the machines were pushing. Also, you couldn't shake the machine or jostle it in any way, or your tickets were forfeited.



(This is the best picture I could find to represent the game- except instead of giving you your money back, it gave you tickets.)

I was the best at the soccer one - you could knock nickels off or shoot them into a hole for extra tickets - or both. I got the grand prize of 80 tickets for shooting it past the goalie into the barely-nickel-size hole. And I was proud.

Caryn was pretty good at the driving/flying/shooting games, and Becca was amazing at the game where you hit a button right when a moving light was in a certain place - she won the jackpot three times at that game. She was also really good at air hockey - she beat Caryn and me for the title of champion. Also, through her dedication she won a Harley Davidson-shirt-sporting stuffed eagle from a crane game - which she doesn't know what to do with now. But she won it all the same. ;)

Something else Caryn was good at was something I'd never tried: DDR. I was worried that I was so bad that I couldn't have anyone watch me do it for the first time, much less keep up with Caryn and play with her. But I did both - I bit the bullet and attempted to dance to six songs. It was a lot of fun - and a pretty good workout, too. My only sad thing is that they have nothing between novice and easy - and it's quite a leap in skill.

I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do for exercise, and I think I might try DDR...I've found some TV-hookup ones that don't require a PS or XBOX - but are they any good?