The Unexpected Financial Benefits of Public Transportation

Ever since I've moved closer to the downtown area, I've tried really hard to take the bus more often - partly to contribute less to the carcinogenic sludge we call "air" in downtown Salt Lake City, and partly because riding the bus allows me to read/write/draw during the commute. That's pretty groovy, but I've found another benefit to taking the bus, one that's actually padded my wallet a bit.

I've not actually crunched the numbers to see if taking the bus really saves me money on gas. Yes, I go to the gas station less often, but I'm still paying for a bus pass - although my bus pass gets subsidized through work, so I expect there are some pretty significant savings there. But that's not actually the benefit I was referring to.

Whenever I'm feeling down or lonely, rather than picking up the phone like a healthy person, I tend to get in my car and drive to the bookstore. I satisfy my cravings for social interaction by reading or watching movies. As a result, I spend a lot of money on... stuff. Just stuff.

HOWEVER... commuting by bus tends to add about an hour to travel time... which means that most of my jaunts to Barnes and Noble wouldn't get me home until well too late to eat and unwind before going to bed, so, most of the time, I just can't be bothered. So I go home and call people instead.

My savings have never been better!

Our Dearly Departed

I've been making cake bites for nearly two years now - and, frankly, I've gotten pretty good.  I've come a long way from my early days of working with chocolate, and I've managed to make do with a pretty limited supply of kitchen tools.  Heck, I've even managed to jury-rig a double boiler system without destroying any coat hangers to do so.

Sadly, that has all ended today.  After years of loyal service, one of my staunchest allies in the ktichen has fallen.

Alas, poor Yorick.  You've left us too soon.

What?  Are you telling me you DON'T name your glass bowls after figures from Shakespeare?  Geez - and they say I'M the weird one.

My best guess, not really understanding physics and $@#^, is that the heated water in the pan created some sort of low-pressure environment that sucked the glass bowl down until it simply shattered.  And that's really quite the bummer, because I've got four partially-finished batches of cake bites in my kitchen right now that are sitting around naked because Daddy Braddy can't get their chocolate pants on.

You know, I've never actually seen anything explode in the kitchen before.  I'm just glad the glass bowl shattered into the pot beneath it rather than shooting up and out.  I already have to replace my glass bowl - the last thing I need is chocolate-covered shards of death shooting at my eyeballs.

A Wrong Turn

Saturday was Ward Temple Day for my ward. Since I'm currently the Temple/Family History Committee Chairperson Thing, I was in charge of organizing a group to head off for a session at the Jordan River LDS Temple. We were supposed to meet up at 9:30. I got there a bit before the meeting time, so I leaned back in the driver's seat for a quick nap. By 9:40, nobody'd shown up. I figured I'd head off to the temple by myself. I got about halfway there before I realized that... I don't actually know where the Jordan River Temple is.

You mean I was supposed to turn right?

After driving around for another half hour, I went back home, got some lunch, and... decided to head off to a completely different city. I mean, I know EXACTLY where the Bountiful temple is. It's only an extra half-hour away or whatever. Besides, I had plans in Bountiful later that day.

Above: Nowhere near the Jordan River Temple.

So hopefully there's some metaphor for my life in there - I take some unexpected detours, but I wind up at a good place anyway. Also, I think I might need to get a GPS something.

Weepy Pants

I think there's something wrong with my eyes, guys. They get all weird and weepy-sweaty over the silliest things.

Sure, I've been known to tear up over the silliest things. Like a scene from a summer blockbuster, or a great joke in a book I'm reading, or a particularly epic passage of music, or a delicious spoonful of mango sorbet. But now I find I get misty from simple interactions with other people.

Any time I get a compliment from someone, I get a little teary. Heck, every time I give a compliment to someone, I experience the same thing. It's weird, and I'm not sure I like it.

I mean, I guess I could just go the rest of my life without ever complimenting anyone, ever. And I could respond to every compliment I get by just blowing the biggest of raspberries. I mean, I could do that, but I don't think Dale Carnegie would approve.

I think I'm just going to say that my glands are acting up or something like that if anyone ever calls me on it. That's a thing I can say, right?

It's not?

Well, poop.

Independence Is Tough To Maintain Alone

So life's been pretty busy of late. Here's the SHORT list of what I've been dealing with:

• I just took over the role of executive director for The Jesters Royale.
• My boss broke her ankle, and one of my other co-workers went on a cruise, reducing our four-man workforce to two. And guess who picked up ALL the extra work?
• My art class is actually assigning homework, which means I have 65 drawings to complete by Thursday

The biggest change, though?

• I moved last weekend.

When I first moved to downtown Salt Lake City almost three years ago, I did so with the intent of establishing some stability in my life. Up until that point, I'd moved two to three times a year. Things felt pretty turbulent and transitory, and I wanted to make a go at building some long-term relationships with the people around me.

And it worked... sort of. I definitely made myself a home in my cozy little one-bedroom apartment, but I got so intent on making my own life that I kinda shut out everyone and everything else. As a result, I think I even wound up losing a lot of my personal ambition...

So I have mixed feelings about sharing an apartment again. On the one hand, it feels like I somehow "lost" the independence game, and I now have to accept help from someone else. On the other hand, I'm now rooming with one of my favorite people of all time, so I made out pretty well.

I'm looking forward to spending a bit of time WITH a roommate, for a change, partially because it'll help me recuperate from some of the financial damage I took over the summer, and partially because having someone else around will help me get out of the slacker mentality I've recently fallen in to.

Anyway, now that the move's done and work's gone (mostly) back to normal, I've got some projects I can finally dedicate my attention to - I've got some art to make, some blogs to write, and... well, there's life away from the computer, too.

Trivialities: Fourth of July

Independence Day tend to be one of my least favorite holidays. However, I still managed to get a lot done this past weekend - some of it fun, and some of it... well, read on.

1 - Friday

I've still been hanging on to my old car after a recent dating mishap prompted me to buy a new one. Well, I had the day off on Friday, so I decided to take the car in to get inspected and cleaned up a bit. The mechanics that worked on the car checked all the systems, including the headlights... which they forgot to turn off.

I then drove to the library, went in and browsed for a while, and came out to a drained battery. I went back in to the library to ask for some help, only to find that all librarians are hippies and don't actually HAVE cars to provide jumps with.

Above: Not owned by hippy librarians.

So I wound up walking home from the library to pick up my other car, driving myself back to the library, giving MYSELF a jumpstart, driving back home in my old car, walking BACK to the library, and then driving my other car home.

Friday was a bit of a waste.

2 - Saturday

I spent most of Saturday morning in Bountiful, helping my grandmother paint her garage. In the afternoon, I felt like kicking back and watching a movie, just to relax, so I picked... Batman.

Na na na na na na na na...

Despit my deep and abiding love for all things Batman, I haven't actually seen the old "Biff! Kapow!" Batman show since I was a little kid, so I went in to this movie with some pretty low expectations. And, I have to say, the movie was a LOT more fun than I anticipated. Shark repellant bat spray, self-sacrificing porpoises, and, of course, a bad day to get rid of a bomb... it was all good.

Also, Frank Gorshin's Riddler is beyond awesome.

3 - Monday

The Jesters Royale have a traditional Fourth of July show that's free to the public. Last night's show was pretty darn spectacular - one of the best in recent memory.


We had death tacos, CPR that fogged up a fellow's glasses, beat-boxing British types, a treehouse that somehow transformed into the Tower of Babel.

Oh, and lots and lots of ambush kissing.

Trivialities: Weekend Updates

1 - I didn't sleep well at all last week, and, by Friday, I was absolutely exhausted. Slept only three hours the night before. I actually wound up leaving work about an hour after I got in. I wouldn't have gone in at all if I weren't the one who was supposed to unlock the office. Bleagh.

Anyway, I went home, grabbed a blanket and a pillow, and curled up on the couch with one of my favorite movies on, carefully selected because, even though I love it, I knew it would bore me to sleep right away:


Hey, it's a beautiful movie to watch, but not really to listen to. I slept through the whole darn thing, and it was a lovely, lovely time.

2 - Even after all that sleep deprivation, I couldn't shirk my duties to the improv team. I went out to the Empress Theatre on Friday, where I emceed the show. We had a darn solid performance.

At the end of the night, I had the players perform a game of Double Blind Freeze Tag. Two players perform a short scene. The MC then yells "Freeze," and the actors have to hold their positions. Another player steps in, tags out one of the two players in the scene, and takes his or her pose. Those players then start a new scene based on the poses of the scene that just ended. It's pretty darn fun.

Right out of the gate, two of our performers did this high-energy scene where a football game devolved into a fistfight. Their scene ended with the players on the ground, one nearly straddling the other. The next player to step in (one of the team's female players) hesitated. You could almost see her brain going, trying to think of a way she could step in and start a new scene without violating the theatre's "family friendly" policy. At last, she tagged out the player on top, got down and the ground, and then immediately stood up and said:

"That's how you do pushups."

I laughed so hard I fell out of my seat. Heck, I wasn't even sitting down. I had to SIT down, and THEN I fell out of my seat. The other guy in the scene (once he composed himself) followed up with:

"I learned that completely differently in P.E."

3 - I don't swim. I took swimming lessons when I was younger, but I've pretty much forgotten how to swim since then. I almost never go swimming at all anymore, mainly because no one really needs to see me without a shirt on.

Above: Not Me

So why I went to a church pool party on Saturday is even beyond me.

I spent most of the time sitting in the shade, chatting with some of the other guys who didn't want to get in the water and working on a new sketch (forthcoming). After several hours, I got my stuff together and went to go. Just as I was doing so, I saw a couple of young ladies cannonball into the pool (now nearly empty) and splash a couple of innocent poolside sitters.

That... shoulda been my first warning.

Anyway, just as I was on my way out, one of the girls called me over and said she just wanted to talk. She was late to the party, so she missed all the swimming and socializing and whatnot. Then she said, "You have really nice veins. Let me see," and she reached for my hand, which... REALLY?

Of course, I fell for it, and only just saved myself from getting dragged into the pool. Not that it mattered. The other girl swam up and started splashing at me, and, at that point, there wasn't much else to do but empty my pockets, take off my shoes, and jump in.

The drive home was wet, but what else can you do when two pretty young ladies beckon you to jump in the water? Stuff your ears with cotton?

Sirens... man...

#lameclassicalreference