To Sleep, Perchance to Dream.

Two days ago somebody suggested the moderately unreasonable notion that Julia Roberts has reduced herself to feasting on the heads of orphaned children. Now I know what you're thinking. This blog used to be family-friendly, before I mentioned that. Well, it might be a valuable family policy to read my blog together with your parents so you can discuss thematic elements like this as they come up, on a case-by-case basis. I want families to be stronger, and this might just be the way to do it. I have an expanded outlook, is what I'm saying, and let's hope I know what I'm doing.

Anyway. I heard that, thought it sufficiently singular, moved on, and proceeded to have the weirdest dreams I have ever experienced that very night. It even flowed over into last night. I'll leave it up to your imaginations and parental discretion to figure out how far down this rabbit-hole you want to go. As you can imagine, things got weird. Fast.

Anyway, not only did America's Sweetheart have a cameo the last few nights, but so did a couple of my friends who are about to leave on missions, and it bummed me right out to wake up and realize they were still about to leave and not having zany good times with me at Julia Roberts' Orphanage and Coincidentally Cannabalistic Soup Kitchen. Dreams: where dreams and faceless innocents go to die.

Like I said. Downright bizarre.

Fun fact: she kindly took the time to explain to me why she wasn't in Ocean's Thirteen. It was something dull, like not supporting or wanting to glorify grandiose heist schemes any more. Or a scheduling conflict, I forget.

Bump, Scrape, Screech.

Have you ever sneezed so hard that a string instrument on the other side of your room started resonating? Because, let me tell you, it is an experience. I don't know whether to be proud about this or not. I mean, I did it, but anyone could have. Why was I chosen? Too many questions, not enough time. Life is a mystery to me.

Last night as I was riding the elevator up to my floor, I took regretful note of a ticket stub lying on the elevator floor. Somebody had seen White House Down, starring Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum, and was not ashamed enough of their film choice to hide, incinerate, or destroy the proof. Don't they know elevators have cameras? Didn't they know that, unlike books, some movies can be wisely judged by their covers? Do I really want to be living among people who fail to exercise the most elementary levels of prejudice at the box office? Too many questions.

So we went swimming last night for a surprise party for Dear Little Sister. Balloons, pizza, pop, fun, and friendship were had by all. The chips didn't quite make the rounds as well as the friendship or the pizza, but a couple people were lucky enough to get some samples.

Then as I was dropping off some folks at their apartment after the party, I had a completely fine drive with responsible and prescient navigating skills that kept both myself and my car unscathed and fit for travel. It was entirely uneventful, as my driving often is, and one wonders why I bother to mention it at all. One might wonder if I'm telling the truth. Well, One might really want to tone it back a bit with the questions, all right? I'm sure One isn't half as perfect as they make themselves out to be, so let's, can we all, I mean, just forget it, all right? Too many questions.

Standing Outside with My Mouth Open Wide.

Pink eye is among the less manly-sounded diseases I've heard about. It's right up there with the butterfly plague or the rainbow flu. Either of which sounds markedly more interesting. My eye's itchiness is none of your business, thank you kindly, but since you asked so politely, yes, it itches something fierce.

I played Mafia last night with Dear Little Sister and the gang. Not a real gang, mind you. A close-knit group of friends forged in years past through common experience to become almost like a family. Like I said, Mafia. Then we played Rook. It was basically the Sunday game night's greatest hits album last night. Just throw in Bang and we'd have it sown up.

So the Gospel. Just want to say, I loved church yesterday. Went to a different ward so we could stay late and say good-bye to the family yesterday morning, but as usual I loved it. Church is always so inspiring.

Well my assignments and such aren't going to finish themselves, you know? Would that they would. Oh what a rain that would be.

Oh, What's in a Blog?

When I was in elementary school, my teacher read us a book where some kid was eating worms every day for some reason. Like you do. One day he forgot, or was tricked into forgetting, so in the middle of the night before the day was technically over he took a megaphone and announced to the neighborhood that he was about to do it so he wouldn't break his streak. Anyway. Writing in my blog every day is slightly more rewarding than eating worms. I imagine if I missed a day I would just let it go.

Yesterday we went to a space camp with my family. We signed up and this place assigned us roles on a spaceship adapted from a surprisingly spaceship-like room. I wasn't fooled, it was just a room, but that didn't make it any less incredible. I actually went to pretend space yesterday afternoon. Better believe it.

I tell you what, Mormon Messages? These YouTube videos we watch in Sunday School sometimes? A genuine blessing heaven-sent for teachers and classes both. Multimedia is the way to go.

I woke up this morning to three of my nephews jumping on me, throwing pillows on me, and generally making merry in the direction of my person. It was working to get me up, until I bought some time by letting them play games on my iPod while I came to and licked my wounds. Your move, little kids. Your move.

So, guys. What's up? Life good? Family treating you well? Glad to hear it. Nothing else to say, as far as I can think of. Or maybe you and I are in a fight. In which case I don't want to tell you anything else right now. I'm currently feasting on Korean candy, and it's incredible. As such, I've got to go.

These Creaky Bones.

This is something like the dozenth year we've had these official family reunions on this side of the family. I just love them. Before that I really didn't know many of my cousins or aunts and uncles, but now I'm good friends with a lot of them. (To coin: the term "iblings" to refer to aunts and uncles. And this blog should be renamed The Mint for all the coinage I'm responsible for. Rimshot.)

Last night we united our board game collections, accrued over years and years of research and extensive field testing, and played a couple until late into the night. I tell you, my arthritis is due to start manifesting soon enough, because I was over-ready to go to bed by eleven. My ten-years-ago self would be ashamed; my ten-years-ago parents would be elated.

Weakness can't halt the forward arrow of tradition, though. We ended a couple of hours after that, when none of us were truly self-aware any more. We have genuinely begun these game sessions in years past at the same time we were cleaning up last night. Our stubbornness kept us all from yielding altogether to fatigue, though, like the Black Night's "flesh wound" from The Holy Grail.

Board games at family reunions: proof that the human achievement is destined to exceed the impossible. Just kidding, functioning cold fusion systems would do that. The parallel I've heard most often about rallying my family members to a single cause is "herding cats." That's unfair to cats, from a family whose motto is "I'm the boss of my own self." As documented on the T-shirts a few years back.

One dear cousin in high school reminded me of the time I had a hip-hop hit in my head a couple of months ago, which upon my stuck-in-the-head performance she said, "Isn't that song from, like, ten years ago?" Mockery ensued. That song is current, hip, happening, fresh, now, I said. For a high schooler I was astonished by her slippery grasp of pop culture. Well that's what Wikipedia is for, team: she looked it up and showed me it was genuinely exactly ten years old. Okay, then. Mockery ensued. I tell you, I need to either get with the times or get out of the temporal kitchen.

Have at You, "The Man."

So I've got this friend. He's long been a fan of all kinds of music I judged harshly as being the front lines on the wrong side of the musical battle of good vs. evil. For regular readers, I considered all of the bands he liked heavy metal. Well apparently, like he's been saying for some years now, I am totally wrong on this count. Last night I willingly searched for specific songs on YouTube that were stuck in my head by three such bands (read: bastions of wickedness). Not only did I seek these songs out intentionally, but I did so mindfully with intent to enjoy them. Now either I have fallen far, or I have been wrong all these years, and those bands make pretty music. I just don't know what to believe. Friends, right?

I was certain, I tell you certain that I saw the president of my university playing foosball in my apartment complex yesterday in the common area. First of all, a "common" area is neither fit nor becoming for one with so exalted a station as he; secondly, foosball, sir? I do declare. Never liked that game much. Granted, when I say I was certain, I tell you certain, I do so without any of the willingness to defend my position that the word implies. As a matter of fact I am certain it wasn't him. But, you know. Blog fodder. You gotta do what you gotta do.

The other day I fought the system and won. I regularly stay at my friend's apartment and park in the two-hour visitor parking spots. I thought I had a solid strategy to avoid the local parking Gestapo's wrath, with regard to getting tickets or fees or boots: obey all signs. Turns out they're not so big into that, as in the last month or so I have gotten no less than three boots. (I'm not saying I didn't have more, but I didn't have less. No, I didn't have more. Three it was. You guys got me.) I mean, I even set an alarm on my phone a little before two hours are up to go move it to a different spot, which they have told me is allowed. Very kind of them.

Well I got a boot. Normally the guy who comes to take it off says that he doesn't have anything to do with anything but taking it off, so I just started complaining a bit and explaining my situation. He took out his camera they use to take photos every two hours, apparently, and I showed him that I was in two different spots. He politely agreed and just went ahead and took that bad boy right off.

That's called fighting the system, folks. Politely accepting your fate, lightly commiserating with fellow bureaucracy cogs about the status quo, and then watching them reveal more authority than you knew they had in order to reward you for being mildly upset. It's the way of the world. He was a nice guy, and if he hadn't ended up being able to fix it, I would have felt bad later about complaining to somebody who couldn't do anything about it. But, I didn't, and I'm kind of glad about this? Listen. Don't moralize this story. It's kind of not so easy to do.

I notice I've made a habit of hitting about five paragraphs and stopping, so this bonus mini-paragraph is just to reset the status quo. It's the equivalent of a page that reads, "This page intentionally left blank." Move along, move along.

A Little Less Celebration, a Little More Action.

I always thought (until how recently I decline to say) that the positions of attorney general and surgeon general were military distinctions, sort of a way to let all the different generals stand out. Turns out that is not the case.

So there was a little festival going on yesterday to celebrate Pioneer Day, which I attended with some folks I know. The problem was, we got there in the afternoon apparently right when it was all closing down. It wasn't all at once, though: pretty much every single activity or exhibit or whatever waited to shut down until we walked by it or, if we were trying to take part, we were next up in line. It was like a malevolent series of Pioneer Day anti-miracles, as they were out to get us instead of helping us celebrate. Pioneer Day 2013 ruined. The magic is gone for me; next year I'm going to need to learn a valuable Pioneer Day lesson to offset this year's mild inconvenience.

I've got a family reunion that's going to start tonight, and I'm really excited about that. Dear Little Sister will be there, so I'll have to pretend to be excited about that. (I kid, I kid! Or do I? You be the judge.) We always stay up late playing board games and do fun things with the niblings. (Fun fact of the day: "niblings" is a real word that encompasses nieces and nephews. You're welcome.) It'll be nice to see everybody.

Okay, okay, I'm not so jaded that I don't believe in Pioneer Day any more. Obviously I'm a huge fan of having work and school off all day. It should be a weeklong celebration, I say.

I'm going to have a fun contest. Whoever memorizes every word published on this blog will get a dollar. Go.

There Is Yet Hope for Humanity.

Happy Pioneer Day, everyone! What is that, you ask? You don't get the day off from your daily labors? I'm sorry to hear that. Next time, try living in a state that commemorates the Mormon pioneers' westward exodus. I don't think I even knew about this holiday before I moved out here. It's definitely bigger than Independence Day. I would like to see Will Smith in a blockbuster about traveling west in a handcart, but racing aliens to get there or something. Wouldn't you? You know you would pay to see that, too. That's the magic of Pioneer Day. I think. Or so I'm told.

Went swimming last night in my apartment's vast first-floor pool complex, with some friends who wanted to see it and go swimming there. So, "swimming" is a strong word, I admit. My feet got wet, anyway. While we were there I was drawn to reviewing the pros and cons of living at my apartment complex. A huge pro is that everyone here is way nicer than anywhere else I've lived. Everywhere else, people walk right by you without even looking at you, no matter how much you go out of your way to make eye contact. It is anathema to those people.

Not so, here: everyone I run into not only says "hi" but tries to start a conversation with you. The first couple times this happened to me, I was genuinely confused. Had this guy just moved in? Why won't he respect the sanctity of my urban solitude? But, being from the good ol' Midwest, that wall quickly came tumbling down. I love it, and I never want to leave, not until the exact moment a better offer presents itself.

Guys, yesterday the unthinkable happened. I poured my cereal from a new box and a toy fell out. It was Trix. It was a promotional toy for Despicable Me 2. But it was magnificent. It happened just the way they show it on TV: serendipitously, falling into my bowl like a magnificent limited-edition marshmallow would be, shining for all the world to see. That's when I knew. That's when I knew the world still had hope and a fighting chance. Happy Pioneer Day!

Breaching the Lower Limits of Boring. Sorry.

I can't say how tired I am right now. Words fail me. For the first time in my life, my trusty sidekick, my faithful standby, my most valuable tool—the ancient craft of written language—is failing me. I am that tired. Actually no I'm probably fine. It woke me up a bit to try to figure out as complicated a way to exaggerate that as possible. Meaning, we're ready to roll.

Medicine is a funny thing. It totally messes with your system one day and grants you salvation the next. I'm on some medicine for which I had the dosage increased last week, and yesterday it started making me sick. I called the doctor and changed my prescription back to where it had been, but the damage was done. No, that's being melodramatic again. Everything worked out fine, and I didn't get that sick, but it was a little annoying. There, I said it. The weakness of my mortal frame bothers me sometimes. We were all thinking it.

"Stream of consciousness," as a friend dubbed this writing style to me yesterday, is one of the best ways to write, I've decided. I mean, that's pretty much how I've written in my journal for the last couple of years, and it's always a pleasure to go back and reread. Although I am typically blown away by how trivial things were back then, and how much weight I would give things that weren't really important or didn't end up being that big of a deal. I mean, I really miss the big picture when I write in my journal. It's normally a detailed dispatch of the day's activities, when the day wasn't really that interesting. I can pretty much summarize my method for crafting entries thus: "not much happening these days; here's an overly detailed description of the aforementioned non-happenings; I should really write more often in my journal."

Does anybody else ever worry about huge things that take up a ton of mental capital for you, but in the end you bring it up with nobody at all? Because, let's face it, nobody really cares. (Thank you, Gollum-brain, for that one.) So instead you just take the amount of worry you have been expending, remove the reasons that justify the worry, fill it back up with trivialities that anybody can relate to but that won't make them wish you weren't talking to them, and find yourself being upset about things you don't actually care about? I do. Maybe it's just me, but it's like I have a misery quota that is, each new day, my top number one urgent priority to fill up, even if I have to fudge the numbers a bit to come up with something to be miserable about. Worry waits for no man. I'm sure this is standard to the human condition, yeah? Nobody? Okay cool then, me neither. Glad we worked that out. Just one of those, uh, jokes, you know. Gotcha.

Okay let's talk about happiness, on the other hand! If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops, that would be a totally sick rain. If a butterfly can reach the top of a double rainbow and the sunlight strikes it just so, we get a unicorn. You can't explain that.

Well, cool. Pretty sure we unraveled some of the more mysterious threads in the tapestry of mortality today. And you got to be a part of it. I'm so jealous. Let's blame it on the cat if we get in trouble for it. All agreed?

This Is All Just a Big Misunderstanding.

Somebody from home recently went to Comic-Con and had been keeping me apprised of its goings-on via Facebook. That is to say, they posted photos to their timeline from time to time—not so much like a direct channel as I'd like, but just as effective as a direct line to the Kremlin. Facebook was my red phone on my desk that kept telling me that somewhere, someone else was having fun and I wasn't there. I always thought Comic-Con—well, I guess I just drank the Kool-Aid about it being dweebish and unbecoming one of a high station in life as myself (read: over 16 years old). Red Kool-Aid, on my desk, for parallelism's sake. But the Kool-Aid was a lie. It looks awesome.

I was also just alerted by my informant in China—that's unnecessary to this story, but you needed to know that I have powerful friends strategically globe-hopping on the internship phase of their professionalization—to an article about a man with my same name. Middle initial and everything. He was just released from a prison sentence that nearly spanned my complete mortal sojourn, exonerated by DNA evidence for a crime he didn't commit, and he's having the order that set him free framed. Nothing particular about that story, just that I can't imagine what the world would be like without DNA analysis. Well, I can, since it hasn't been here forever, but I mean I'm grateful for it. It's just awful to think about that much of someone's life being taken from them. How do they cope, or make the best of it? Do they, even? Bummer might be as much of an understatement as awesome is an over-, but there it is. It is the ultimate bummer to start your morning off with. And he has my name. Could have been me. Thanks a lot, informant. Let's take it down a notch on keeping me so apprised.

So there's a song that I've taken a particular shine to. It's by a band that I've always assumed was heavy metal—to be perfectly unfair, I apparently thought every single band from before the eighties, sans the Beatles, was heavy metal. Elvis probably dabbled. Anyway I've come to begrudgingly accept my naivety and to see that this song, and presumably this band, is extremely pretty. It's my favorite song of the moment. Meaning it will expire as such in about a week, and I have favorites of more permanence at the moment, but this is this song's time to shine, baby.

Well, it features prominently a name of a girl that I am also starting to really, really love. The name, not the girl. Well, I don't know the girl, so let's not judge unfairly: I at least love the name. I shot it right to the top of my list of favorite girl names for when I have children. It also probably has an expiration date attached. I need some favorite names of more permanence here. To quote Jack Donaghy's surprisingly reasonable advice, you've got to stick to Bible names and kings and queens of England.

Problem, though. I don't want my daughter—my little angel—to be named after a heavy metal song, even one falsely accused as such. Well, really a popular pre-70's rock song isn't going to cut it for my princess either. When they go around the class in third grade to say how they got their names, I don't want her to have to cite a rock band of any generation, quite frankly. I don't often mind what third graders think of me, but if they've heard of that band and made the same assumptions as I have, I will officially be the worst father ever in their little eyes. My little girl needs something better to say. I need to make this name normal. Meaning, today I begin my studies of the Bible and British royal history in earnest. I'll even drum up some forged manuscripts and see if I can get society to buy into them if it will keep me—cool? will that word even be around then?—in the eyes of those (surprisingly judgmental, in my imagination) children. Okay that's why we talk about these things. I've got some serious issues I need to deal with, here. Not the least of which is my rogue underpunctuation and overinterjection.