From the Archives

January 8 is my blogiversary (sadly, it turns out I am not the first person to make up this word). Since I'm struggling to come up with anything to write tonight, and since I've been reading back through old journals and blogs (as I am wont to do at the beginning of a new year), and since it's been almost a week since my last tragic blog entry, and since most of my readers were not part of my first year readership, I thought I'd share some excerpts from Miles Away from Here: The Early Years (well, the early months anyway). 2005 was an eventful year. I started in Provo and ended in Michigan. I defended a thesis, ran a marathon, sold a car, attended a family reunion, and watched my computer crash and die (but don't worry, the story had a happy ending).

January 14

We scrounged up enough eighties garb to dress up one person (not me), and took pictures, and piled into the car and made the trek into Orem. At first I stubbornly refused to even put on skates, believing that I had done enough just coming in the first place. But somehow being around friends and bonding over memories of our eighties childhoods, and watching people stumble around the rink while thinking “I’m sure I can do better than that!” did something to my attitude, and I finally made it onto the rink. I was encouraged when I got the hang of it rather quickly. In fact, I actually had fun and stayed right till the end, much to my surprise.

January 25

I discovered a Firefox extension, ForecastFox, that puts a little icon down at the bottom of my browser screen. All I have to do is run my mouse over it and the weather from my future place of residence will pop up. I check it about five times a day. This is a bad idea! I keep telling myself I just need to get rid of it, because all it does is scare me.

February 11

And then the second movement, and then applause again, and the same girl in front of me looked even more annoyed and frustrated—and yet still clapped. And then the third of the four movements, and I just couldn’t take it and when the elderly gentleman on my left held up his hands in preparation to applaud I couldn’t keep myself from shaking my head no, quite visibly. To my embarrassment, he noticed and looked over at me. And then to my relief he grinned and lowered his hands and said, “I’m watching you now.” And even though the clapping was still going on around me I relaxed because I found it hard to be annoyed after his good-natured acceptance of my unintended criticism.

April 4

Until she suggested that I marry the boy.

That’s when the conversation really took off. The more we discussed it, the better it sounded. The arrangement solved problems and concerns that we didn’t even know existed. Everybody benefited. In multiple ways. We could not think of a single practical reason why this would not work out. It was a win-win-win-win situation. And finally my roommate, in wide-eyed amazement, said, “We have to tell him. I don’t know how he can turn this down.” And she was serious.

“But there’s no way he’s ever going to believe that we’re serious,” she added in dismay.

April 30

It was a beautiful run. Saturday mornings are the best time to run because no one is up and the streets are quiet. And it was overcast, too – I love running when it’s overcast and the clouds hang low over Timp and there’s just a little bit of precipitation. I knew the rough outline of my running route, based on where I had deposited the water bottles the night before, but I was at liberty to choose how to get to my “water stations” and I explored just a little. Two hours into the run I was feeling just a little worse for wear than I had been feeling last time I ran over 20 miles, but I was pacing myself better and I finished off the run strong. I didn’t feel like I was going to keep over and die at the end of the last 100 yards (like I did last time) and I’ll bet I could have gone another mile or two (but I really, really didn’t want to), and my legs are just aching right now as I sit at my computer, but I made 22 miles and I’m feeling good.

May 23

My hands were freezing for the first couple miles, but I felt very relaxed, and enjoyed the view of the canyon, and was surprised every time we hit a mile marker. The first one appeared sooner than I expected. Shortly thereafter we passed a green highway mile marker that said Mile 26. I thought that was pretty funny
…
I was exhausted, but giddy in the car—for the whole day, in fact. Even now, on Sunday evening, I can’t quite believe I actually did it. 26.2 miles is a long way, and my legs keep reminding me. Yesterday I thought I was sore. Then I woke up this morning and nearly collapsed getting out of bed. Standing up, sitting down, and walking downstairs are all excruciating ordeals.

June 27

My family did the wave behind my thesis committee’s back to help me calm down.

July 5

The next day, after a barefoot run on the beach with my brother, my dad organized a mass effort to build a giant sand castle. Most people came and went, but I was one of a handful of faithful who worked for a good solid two hours or more, from start to finish. I helped dig the trench and pile dirt for awhile, and then claimed the southwest turret as my own and built it up to somewhere between three and four feet high, and a couple of feet in diameter. To be honest, I don’t usually have the longest attention span, but somehow the combination of a concrete goal, physical labor, problem solving (how to create a sufficiently tall tower with relatively straight sides), and artistry kept me occupied so that I hardly noticed how much time I spent.

August 14

As usual, a trip to the bookstore is enough to convince me that I have a particularly serious case of book lust. Last night after this trip to the bookstore my roommate moved back into the house after being gone for the summer. I helped her shift things around in the room downstairs and as I slid a rather heavy box across the floor, she apologized for putting all her books in a single box. I stopped, looked at the fairly smallish cardboard container, imagined the columns of similar boxes upstairs in my own room, and just laughed.

August 28

I just dropped my sister off at Helaman Halls, and it was strange to get out of the car and hug her and realize that this is it – not just until Christmas, but for good. No more lunches together on campus, no calling her up to see if she wants to come to the movies, no hanging out in my office, no dinners. The ends are always so anticlimactic. It felt like I ought to do more than just hug her and say I love her and that it’s been fun and that I’ll call her. But of course, I don’t know what more I’d do.

September 27

After writing organ with intentional conspicuousness in the Skills and Talents section of my new member info sheet, and mentioning casually to my roommate (who has at least a little clout in the ward organization) that I actually enjoy music callings, I really wasn’t all that surprised when I met with the second counselor in the bishopric and was extended a calling. I felt like I had set the gears in motion the moment I entered the ward and it was only a matter of time.

October 12

God has been very patient with me for the last couple of months.

I feel like I keep sighing in relief and admitting: “Okay, you were right, I’ll be just fine,” only to come running back to Him in a panic a few days later in order to describe in detail once again all the reasons that this really isn’t such a good idea. And I keep wanting Him to say, “Why yes, as a matter of fact, I did send you here just so you could discover once and for all that this is not what you want to do with your life. Now you can go ahead and get on with whatever you’d like to do from here.”

But He stubbornly refuses to do that.

November 20

I was surprisingly attached to the Civic. I’m only now realizing that all the little nuisances were actually sort of…endearing. The CD player that ate burned CDs (and I probably compounded the problem by fishing the CDs out with whatever tool I had on hand). The cigarette lighter that dangled by a wire, but still managed to fulfill its purpose by successfully charging various electronic devices. The long scratch across my windshield from when I installed my windshield wipers incorrectly and then left them there during the rainy season, for a month or two. The faded paint on the roof from being left out in the sun of Utah summers and the snow of Provo winters for four years, and from surviving the worst blizzard in one hundred years of Washington, D.C. weather. The scratches on the trunk from my bicycle rack. The still-unidentified stain on the front seat. The floor mat that would never stay in place.

November 27

On Friday morning, in preparation for the holiday season, I joined my roommate on her annual trek to the largest Christmas store in the world, located about an hour and a half north in a little German immigrant town called Frankenmuth. She prepped me on the way. “My family has labels for Christmas decorations,” she told me. “There’s ‘classy’—that’s the elaborate, expensive-looking decorations. Then there’s ‘traditional’ which is, well, traditional. And then there’s ‘holly jolly.’ That’s the plastic reindeer and inflatable snowmen. And the street leading up to the store—it’s all holly jolly.”

December 16

I was in such a good mood when I walked in my apartment door that I pulled out my laptop and began composing a blog entry that I tentively titled “10 Reasons to Be Happy” – finishing the semester intact was a big one, and I was pretty sure I could think of nine others without much trouble.

And then, on number six, the screen on my trusty little iBook, which had served me so well all the way up to a few weeks past its warranty expiration, suddenly went blank and the computer shut down.

THE END: Happy fourth blogiversary to me :)