Spine

As you get to know me, you may realize that I am rather spineless. I have a ridiculously difficult time saying no to even the most ridiculous requests. This was re-brought to my attention yesterday.
First, there was a knock at the door. My roommate answered. A few minutes later, she came into the kitchen and told my other roommate and me to go talk to the people at the door. They were selling newspaper subscriptions to put themselves through college. If we would pay just $0.25 per day, they would be able to go to college, and they would give money to inner-city children.
The last time I encountered these people, I fell for their sob story. I wrote them a check, and proceeded to never see either my money or a newspaper. So this time, I was able to resist (that, and my other roommate was there backing up my refusal). I said no, then felt guilty about it for the rest of the evening.
While I was still feeling guilty, I was hit up with another request that I wanted to refuse. There is a midterm in one of my classes this weekend, and two other people in my ward are in the same section. They wanted to set up a study group and study for about four hours. I had planned on studying for this test for about twenty minutes. Due to my inability to say no, I will now be studying for four hours. Eventually I will get a spine. Until then, I'll be in the library studying Thucydides.

Pain

I bought flip-flops last week. I have somehow lived my entire life without ever wearing flip-flops, so I decided it was time to give in to the peer pressure and join the crowd.
Somehow, I had imagined that because almost everybody wears flip flops sometimes, and some people wear them all the time, they must be comfortable. I was wrong. They hurt between my toes, and wearing them has been akin to torture. Still, millions of people can't be wrong (famous last words) so I am determined to keep wearing them. Maybe if I break them in (or break in my feet) things will get better?

Happy

Today was a good day. I was officially accepted into the chemical engineering program.
Also, I didn't have class today. I love not having school on Friday. Instead of being productive, I bought food, so now I won't starve. Then I watched Mythbusters. Now I know that it is definitely possible to blow up your house with bug bombs if you don't follow the directions. And also that it is possible to find a needle in a haystack. And that a child couldn't be carried away by balloons at a carnival unless the balloon man had 3000 balloons and gave them all to the child at the same time. And that you can, in fact, raise a sunken ship by filling it with ping pong balls. It is a pretty cool show, and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen in.
And, if that wasn't enough, tomorrow I am going to have a free french toast breakfast. I feel a tad bit guilty about taking free food from businesses that are trying to promote themselves when I know that all I want is the food, but not bad enough to stop eating it.

Anti-social

I have come to the conclusion that I am naturally anti-social. I am working on overcoming my anti-social tendencies, but they are still there. And today I was reminded of why.
I was in my civilizations class, which is two and a half hours long, located in a windowless room that is completely white and gray. I do not get along very well with this class. Anyway, the teacher told us to discuss the relationship between freedom and happiness with our neighbors. I said that if you are free to act on the choices you make, you can be happy, assuming you make good choices. The guy I was talking to asked me for an example. I said that if I had been born in Iran or Saudi Arabia or somewhere like that, I wouldn't be free to choose my religion, what to study in school, or even to go to the store by myself.
Me: So it's probably easier for me to be happy here, where I do have those choices.
Him: Or harder for you to be happy.
Me: No, I think it's easier for me to be happy in America than it would be in Iran.
Him: It could be easier for women in those countries to be happy.
And this is why I don't talk to people.

Karma

I think I have bad karma. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe sometime somebody was starving and I took the last free roll that was being handed out, or something. Anyway, now every time I'm starving and I'm offered free food, it ends up being hot dogs. I hate hot dogs, and have hated them since I was three.
Today I went to institute for the first time. The main reason I went is that I had heard they would feed me dinner afterwards. I went, and then afterwards they had hot dogs. The last time I was offered a free meal, it was also hot dogs. The time before that, it was hot dogs.
And thus we see that I have bad karma.

Near Death Experience

I feel like a cheater for blogging this because I already told half or more of my blog's readership, but I didn't tell Emma, so here we go.
I had a near-death experience as I was coming to Salt Lake on Friday. This is because my bus driver was somewhat insane. (Aside: I am very grateful for bus drivers.) This particular bus driver was not a very good driver and seemed to have road rage issues. The first indication of this was when I was getting on the bus, and instead of pulling over to the side, he just stopped in the middle of the street.
As we drove on the freeway, he kept swerving around, which was frightening because buses were not built to swerve. The road rage issues also came into play here. He did not like it when other people were speeding, apparently. So, he kept abruptly slowing down, I guess to throw off tailgaters. I was thinking, "Oh, great. I'm not even wearing a seatbelt and I'm going to die! My family will hear about this on the news. I wonder who will tell my roommates? I'll never even be 20!"
This was bad enough, but I became even more frightened and started praying really sincerely when I looked up. The bus driver was reading a book, while he drove. Yes, you read that right. He was reading a book and driving at the same time. The book was spread open on top of the steering wheel. He would look at it, glance up, look back down, repeat.
So, if you never hear from me again after tomorrow, I probably had the same bus driver and he did get in an accident this time. I'll miss you all.

Compulsory

I have been informed by Josh, Emma, and Kristina that I need to blog. However, I have nothing to say, except that last week Tuesday was Raptor Awareness Day. As in velociraptors. We had a cool sign for our door that said, "This area is not safe in case of raptor attack" but I failed to take pictures. Which is why I did not mention this in an earlier blog. But I encourage you all to think about whether you would be safe in case of velociraptor attack. In the public service announcement vein, remember, either log out of your facebook account when you're done or password protect your computer. I hope you're happy now!