Updates

1. Shunned and scorned…by the Church

Last Sunday was possibly the most disappointing ever for the Romgi and I. For the past few months, our bishopric has been reminding us that Elder Boyd K. Packer would be the guest speaker at Stake Conference, held on September 8-9. They encouraged us to arrive early for all sessions, especially the general meeting on Sunday morning, which would be in the Provo Tabernacle. Now, I admit, we hit the snooze button once or twice and by the time we made it downtown and found parking, it was only 5 minutes before the meeting started. But lo and behold the Tabernacle was already filled to capacity – it had been for 15 minutes or so at least – and people were being turned away. That’s right…we were denied access to our own Stake Conference. What’s worse is that we later found out a lot of people who got there early were not from our stake; they’d heard through the grapevine that an apostle was coming, and showed up to listen.

My main complaint here is that the Provo Tabernacle is far too small to fit an entire stake when a well-known speaker is coming. I know that earliness was emphasized, but even if every member came an hour early, there still wouldn’t have been room to fit us all. Why not have the meeting somewhere bigger? Why make it a situation where people were turned away? Was this a lesson for us to learn? I mostly felt disappointed that there was no overflow facility available, no backup plan, nothing in place for the people who simply couldn’t get there very early for one reason or another.

What made it all worse was that our Elders Quorum counselor had called the week before to see if he could come visit with us on Sunday, and we set up an appointment for the afternoon. Unfortunately, no one ever called or showed up. This was a little disheartening as well, since the reason he wanted to come was because he had just discovered our records in the ward and thought we were a brand-new couple that had moved in a week or two before. Nope, our records were read in back in May. Oh well.

Altogether it was kind of sad. This Sunday, though, we had a really nice meeting with our ward and were much gratified by being able to attend.

2. Computadora that works!

I confess that I’ve had a strange urge to try out Vista. So when we were offered a free installation of Vista Home Basic, I gladly accepted and put it on the computer while the Romgi was at work.

Talk about a letdown. Regardless of the fact that this is just the basic of basic upgrades, there are so few bugs that have been fixed, and the appearance isn’t that great. Windows Explorer is now difficult to use – what was wrong with it before? I find it extremely frustrating. And on top of that, the computer… runs… so… so… sooo… slowly. Finally the Romgi went out and bought new memory to install, and $60 later it seems to be back up to pre-Vista speed. Altogether, I’m not sure that Vista was worth free, and almost definitely not worth the $60 for new memory. Sigh.

3. Fall Semester 2007 has officially commenced

Quite honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about my classes this semester. Three of them are fairly easy: Korean 101, Biology 100, and Religion 351 (world religions). Two of those I take with the Romgi, and one of his classmates is my Korean teacher. But then I also have two sociology classes – methods and theory. Both are once a week evening classes, so Tuesday and Wednesday I sit for two and a half hours and try to understand again the difference between epistemological and ontological perspectives, which theoretical perspectives embrace qualitative methodologies, and why I am taking these classes. It’s quite difficult, especially with the amount of reading required. Hopefully the TAs will be able to help me along.

4. Another pet?!

It’s true, I bought another lizard yesterday. Do you notice I didn’t say that we bought a new lizard? Very important distinction: the Romgi was in no way involved, except to say that he wouldn’t buy it if it were up to him, but that I had my own spending money and he wasn’t going to stop me. I know what you’re thinking – wasn’t the right thing to not buy the lizard, if the Romgi was so against it? I tried that too, but he insisted that he wouldn’t be at all upset if I bought it…and Petsmart has a 14-day complete guarantee on all pets, so if anything goes wrong, or I decide not to keep the new guy, I can bring him back, no questions asked, for a full refund.

The reason we were at Petsmart in the first place was to buy a second cage, which we would take some of the bottom out of and put on top of the existing cage to make a second story for Mu to climb in. Lately he’s been trying to jump up out of the cage, from his branch, which typically ends with him smacking face-first into the glass. Since he’s getting a bloody lip now, we decided to give him a little more room to climb. So far the cage is coming along pretty well; we ended up knocking out the whole bottom sheet of glass and putting in plexiglass, with foam, caulking, and dirt around the edges. In a day or two when it’s dry we’ll put it all together and I’ll post a picture of the finished product.

The new lizard is really small, and by comparison, Mu looks big and fat. We had originally planned that our second water dragon would be named Bruce Lee, but I think the Romgi has decided to wait for a water dragon that he helps pick out. In the meantime, the little guy gets called a variety of names – Pete, Pippy, Stumpy Dowd, The Little Guy, Pedro, and so on. If he lives through his two-week trial maybe I’ll take suggestions for a name. Then there’s always the possibility that it’s a girl, though…

5. So…what else is new?

Actually, that pretty much sums up life for us right now. Nothing too wild (except a tiny lizard that is REALLY quick) or too unmanageable. How’s your life?

The rains came down

Things have been a bit dull lately, so I’m tempted to be glad anytime Something Happens, whether it is actually interesting or not. Yesterday was a different story, though.

I managed to make it out of bed in time for a shower before work, but for whatever reason I felt compelled to dry my hair thoroughly after it had been washed – which ate up a significant portion of my 40 minutes to get ready. Near the end I realized how late it was and rushed through the rest of my preparations. We did make it to work on time (early even, since I set our clocks ahead a few minutes), and somehow survived the day.

When we got home and were walking back to the stairs to our apartment, our downstairs neighbor came quickly out of her apartment and let us know that her bathroom ceiling had been leaking all day, creating huge puddles of water and possibly making the apartment unliveable. The Romgi, at this point, recalled that as we were signing the contract back in March, the owner mentioned that the woman below us was a high-maintenance sort who was constantly finding small imperfections and declaring the apartment to be a safety hazard. Thus as I anxiously went upstairs to see why I was ruining the neighbor’s life, the Romgi reserved judgment on the situation until he had more information.

Well…our bathroom floor was covered in water, and the sink – which has been leaky since before we moved in – was dripping slightly more than usual. In my hurry to leave I hadn’t tightened the knob as much as I needed to, so the dripping, I admit, was probably my fault. The second problem was that in my hurry I also left the hair dryer sitting on the top shelf to the right of the sink, and the cord (unplugged) was hanging down across the leaky faucet. Of course, the result was that the water dripped onto the cord and then down onto our floor, and from there, directly into our neighbor’s bathroom.

She had been calling the owners all day, and they sent over a plumber around 3:30. By then the Romgi had cleaned up most of the mess in the bathroom and I had shoved our laundry into a good hiding spot. The plumber spent about an hour and a half making sure that there was no life-threatening leak from anything in our bathroom; he also told us that despite what the neighbor said, the building was definitely not any more structurally unsound than usual, and she would just need a new coat of paint on her bathroom ceiling. (Regardless, she had already given the owners 30 days’ notice, she said, and now she was thinking of vacating completely.) So the plumber tightened the knobs on our sink, put caulking around the toilet, and did everything he could to make his trip worth the effort.

By the time he left I had calmed down a lot. Fatalistic as I am, when I first saw what had happened I was afraid that we’d be charged for the repairs or even kicked out of the apartment. (The realtor was incredibly reluctant to let us have the contract in the first place.) But, nothing of the sort seems to be happening, and I think I’m fine for a few days of Nothing Happening.