August 2006 Archives

Classes start Tuesday. Yesterday I turned in my syllabi to be copied, so as far as clerical preparations for the first day are concerned, I'm good to go. I've also figured what I'm going to discuss the first day (I've been here too long and have too many repeat students to just read the syllabus for the first 75-minute period) and acquired any necessary materials. I have no clue what's going to happen on Thursday, the second day I teach, but at least the first day is accounted for.

Thought you'd want to know.

I recently discovered something amazing: It is possible to play solitaire without a computer! Just get a regular old deck of cards--the kind you use to play poker or some such game--and replicate on a table or some other flat surface the layout of your favorite version of computer solitaire. The rules and so forth are the same, except that you must shuffle and move the cards about yourself.

I think part of me always knew this--now that I plumb my memory, I can recall a time in the 1970s, back before VCRs were commonplace; back when there were only three networks, all of which showed reruns in the summer, so that there might be nothing to watch on television, necessitating other ways of amusing oneself after the sun went down (which it does around 8 p.m. in mid June in Arizona, a state that resolutely refuses to observe Daylight Saving Time); back when my mother would try to get my sisters and me to entertain ourselves quietly from time to time and so taught us all to play every version of solitaire she knew of and bought us each our own deck of cards. (Which was kind of a big deal because there was this whole weird to-do in Mormondom in the 1970s and 80s about how "face cards were Satanic." Rook cards were fine; Uno cards were fine; Gin Rummy played with Rook cards was fine and Go Fish! played with Uno cards was fine; but play those same games with a deck of face cards and you were practically ringing the doorbell of hell, because cards bearing stylized representations of European royalty were the devilish creation of Lucifer himself, and the sin in such cards was so potent it would rub off on your fingers if you even picked up a deck.)

But seriously, when I recently came across a deck of cards and thought, "Huh. I so rarely run into anyone who enjoys playing cards any more; what am I ever going to do with these?" it felt like a discovery to realize that I really truly could, all by myself, play a game of cards that wasn't virtual, that the object itself was every bit as good as the electronic replacement.

Every so often, people will post lists of the search queries that brought readers to their blogs. I'm finally following suit. I picked this particular list because it contains a few searches I might conduct myself (I've googled the Salt Lake Tribune a time or two, though I know my chances of finding the paper's home site instead of some reference to the paper are increased if I type in its full name) and the others are only sort of upsetting, instead of really, really gross. I'm offering it without comment because really, what is there to say?

pretty russian girls bikinis panties bra
self portraiture
drunken one night stand forgivable?
behold here is my daughter
self photo vagina
literary devices on keeping a notebook by didion
sl tribune
writing really good letter praise
mormon taboos coke coffee
my tits
tattoo in genital organ
men in britain emasculation
stuffed mormon pussy
when the beard is too painful to remove

Yesterday I went to Best Buy and bought Season II of Veronica Mars, just as I said I would, and watched about as much as I could stand before my eyeballs started to itch. One thing I'm fascinated by is what a big deal Kristen Bell's small tits are this season.

Not a lot was made of the topic the first season, though one of my very favorite exchanges referenced the subject: Veronica has discovered that someone has let the air out of one of her tires. New guy and love interest "boy toy Troy" (as he is referred to by Logan Echolls) squats beside her as she struggles with lug nuts and asks, "Flat?"

Yeah, I'm back.

I got home Wednesday night. The journey home was, as they say about acid from time to time, a bad trip. Flight patterns were screwed up at the Salt Lake airport for some reason no one ever bothered explaining to me so although we boarded on time and shut the door on time and pulled away from the gate on time, we then sat on the tarmac for 55 minutes (the captain specified that it was 55 minutes) waiting for our turn to take off, waiting and waiting and then waiting some more as if waiting were a perfectly normal thing to do in an airplane. Fortunately I have a gift, a very fortunate gift indeed, and even a strange one, in light of the fact that in a bed I am prone to insomnia, and my gift is this: I always fall asleep on planes. I am so disposed to falling asleep on planes that I get sleepy just waiting to board one. So I slept while we waited for our plane to take off, even though I had slept a lot the night before and it was only ten a.m., too early really to be sleepy.

Yesterday I explained why I go to Sunstone; here's something I posted last year about why it's hard to attend, and how I always feel weird in Utah.

Today is my first day at Sunstone. Several people have asked me recently why I go to Sunstone, especially given my relationship to the church. Since I've already written something that addresses that question, I'm posting it here. This essay was published last year in Sunstone's print journal. It's kind of long, but if you're interested, here it is.

"What are you doing at Sunstone, then?"

It's a question I am asked each year. Sometimes the question is posed with genuine curiosity; sometimes it's an accusation. Why would someone who isn't a practicing or believing Mormon attend a symposium on Mormonism? It's also a question I asked at one point. Although I had read, subscribed to, published in, cited in my own scholarship and learned from the print version of SUNSTONE for years, I never attended a symposium until 2001--and the decision finally to do so wasn't easy. Early in 2001 I submitted an essay for publication; a few months later I got a message from Dan Wotherspoon, letting me know that he'd accepted the essay, and requesting that I read a version of it at the symposium. I told him I'd think about it.

"Why would I want to go to that?" I asked myself. "It's all fine and good in print, where you can read what intrigues you and ignore what doesn't, and nobody interrupts the author in the middle of a point. But this live version...I'm sure it'll just be a bunch of disgruntled inactives arguing about stuff with a bunch of bossy hard-liners"--and I'd seen and participated in enough of that already. But Dan was graciously, persistently insistent that I'd enjoy the symposium, so I queried a few friends who had attended.

"Of course you should go," they told me. "For every panel that doesn't interest you, you'll find one that does. And you'll meet so many incredibly cool people."

So I went. And Dan and my friends were right--so right, in fact, that I've been back every year since, and plan to go again. But what is it that draws me?

As I mentioned yesterday, today is the first anniversary of my blog. Instead of posting some long new entry, I thought I'd suggest you check out my very first entry, which explains why I named my blog Self-Portrait As.

I'm leaving for Sunstone in a few hours, but while I'm gone this time, I'm not turning the comments off, because Jim my host has fixed me up with a nifty new security function to keep spammers at bay. However, a couple of people have had problems posting when they try to preview their comments-- there's a glitch somewhere and once you preview the comment you can't post it. You have to highlight and save your comment, then hit refresh, then paste your comment into the new window, then hit post without hitting preview. Sorry for the problem....

Anyway, you can comment while I'm gone (and I do have some posts lined up to publish with the "scheduled" function) but it might be a while before I approve them. And I won't be around to comment on your blogs for a while, but I'll catch up when I'm back.

Thanks!