serendipity

man oh man. I was up late last night — like, 2am late — so decided to go to rockville branch today. I walked into the institute building and who is the first person I see? …elizabeth felix!!

it must be more than two years since I’ve seen her. she’s living in sacramento, but comes down to fairfield about every other weekend. she said she almost changed her mind about going to rockville branch today. holy hannah am I glad we were both there! now I have a friend again! and she’s got lots of connections to…everyone, pretty much, and if she were my link in a big group of people I’d have nothing to worry about. elizabeth is one of the most awesome people I’ve ever known. huzzah!

church was decent. it was branch conference, so president clark came and spoke. I do enjoy his talks, and just listening to him in general; he’s very well-spoken, and puts in good amounts of humor. he also brought one heck of a sword to use as a…what’re they called? “visual aides.” yeah. this thing had to be three and a half, four feet long. massive. musta been heavy. he also taught the sunday school lesson, which wasn’t quite as interesting, and then we were going to have a combined priesthood/relief society during the third hour. all of this in the same room. my attention span ended about two-thirds of the way through sunday school, and I knew there was no way I’d ever make it through the last hour. so I skedaddled. got elizabeth’s number and email first, of course. imagine me prancing around on my tiptoes out of sheer joy, because I can have a life again.

I made cookies last night. sort of. it was the recipe chelsea-next-door gave me, for the ones that always come out with really dry dough…I forgot that the way I made them last time was to mostly melt the butter first, and add 1 cup of sifted flour at a time. that way it wasn’t dry. well, last night I didn’t do that; when I started mixing everything together, it wouldn’t mix, and there were clumps of butter everywhere. aha, I thought, I’ll just stick it in the microwave and melt the butter. the rest of it’ll be fine.

so I put it in the microwave, the butter melted and the dough came out wonderfully. then I added the chocolate chips and started stirring them in.

surprise, they started melting.

my shouts and cries to “stop it! stop it!” were to no avail. I ended up with chocolate cookie dough, instead of chocolate chip cookie dough. needless to say, the cookies didn’t turn out quite as planned.

I watched the terminal while I baked. can’t say that I really enjoyed it. granted, it certainly doesn’t even make it onto the list of biggest wastes of my time (read: honors econ at armijo), but the best thing I can say about the movie is that I’d watch it again if I thought my life was awful. the poor guy, honestly.

tonight at dinner I made kendy leave the table in anger, and storm into her room sobbing. in my defense, it was 98% unintentional, and I didn’t think she’d overreact that much. I was, like always, making strange faces and noises, and she asked me if I could please stop. “whoa!” I exclaimed. “I think that was the first time at dinner you’ve ever politely asked me to stop.” she replied, “well, since I did ask you nicely, I’d appreciate if in the future you didn’t make comments like that.” I could see it was really getting her, but do I pull back? no, full speed ahead. “I’m sorry, but it seemed pretty true to me,” I said.

yeah. at that point she got up and stomped off to her room, slamming the door shut but doing little to shut out the sound of her crying. should I feel bad? …probably. but since it was one of the first times, if not the first time, that she’s bothered to be polite instead of just shouting “mika! stop it!” — I felt I should point it out. if you think about it, it’s kind of a weird compliment, saying she done good. kind of. anyway, one of my pet peeves is the fact that she demands I stop something that bothers her even a little bit. whereas if I ask her to stop something that bothers me she acts like there’s no reason for me to be bothered by it. whatever.

in other news, I think ryan gets back from his hike today. maybe he’ll be driving up to logan tonight and talk to me on the way? that’d be nice.

confession: I made a countdown chain. yes, it’s true. 8 weeks until jarom is home. to be honest, I feel better now that I have it — it’s awfully long, and makes it seem like there’s plenty of time till he comes back. never mind the fact that soon half the chain will be gone.