Plunged!

So by far my favorite New Year’s Day tradition is the annual Polar Bear Plunge here in the (sometimes very cold) Northeast. This year’s Plunge rocked. It was relatively warm (temperatures in the 30s, I think, as opposed to last year’s 10°F) and I got my belovéd roommate C-t-P to document the experience on film:

C-t-P’s intrepid nephew and me properly dressed for the occasion:

Going forth with faith:

Enjoying a nice cool swim:

Mission accomplished:

So fun. SOOOOO fun. Pretty much the raddest thing that will happen to me this month, mebets. I honestly wanted to do it again right after I got out and I’m not sure why I didn’t. What is it about freezing cold water that I love so much?

Essay: How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Really it’s a photo essay, as is probably already obvious.

So here I am all decked out in my late grandfather’s overalls, shirt, and gloves (and my grandmother’s socks), holding the gargantuan rake:

(I’m TOTALLY posting this picture on LDS Mingle. Or I would, if I had an account on LDS Mingle. Which I don’t.)

As you can see from the piles behind me in the picture above, I had already been doing what’s in the picture below for quite a while:

Then, the gathering and cramming into bags!

Can you tell where I’ve been?

Once one has bagged the leaves, one must carry the bags to a specified location:

Forty-three bags in all. Thirty-five from today; eight from yesterday.

My grandmother TOTALLY owes me. I mean, all she’s done is love me and help raise me for the past almost 34 years. And let me stay at her house and eat her food for free. And give me Christmas and birthday presents. And…

Scandinavia, part 2 (Norge)

More pictures from another beautiful, beautiful place:

Scandinavia, part 1 (Sverige)

Pictures from a beautiful, beautiful place:

Unas cosas

1. For the next few days, I’m the semi-proud driver of a Volvo. It was the smallest rental car available. Simon Bennett, the victim of a (very minor) sideswipe last week, is having his scratches and dents repaired courtesy of Liberty Mutual. I already miss him and his cute checkerboard top and his manual transmission – I really wish all American rentals weren’t automatically automatics.

2. For one of the funniest posts I’ve read in a long time, visit my friend’s weblog. (It’s short. And hilarious.)

3. A friend of mine is involved in a 10 Days to 10 Million project, seeking to share love with as many people as possible in the days between now and Thanksgiving. According to the website, one in three people currently feels some kind of sadness or anxiety – in other words, a third of the population needs to know that they’re loved and cared about. Given my own 23+ year battle with depression, I know how much a quick note or call to someone can mean. So, visit the site, watch the 3:45 film, read the text, and then let someone know you care.

Thunk.

That’s the sound of my head hitting my desk. Again.

You see, for the second time in as many months, I have left a pot on the stove until all the water boiled out and the pot was ruined. This time, the pot in question even caught fire. I was reminded of my would-be lunch when the smoke alarm commenced its piercing cries.

I actually remember thinking today as I turned on the stove that I hate having one of those “you-can-tell-she’s-been-cooking-when-you-hear-the-smoke-alarm” reputations, but had to acknowledge, even then, that it’s a reputation well deserved. I shouldn’t be allowed to leave the kitchen when something is cooking. Or enter it in the first place.

Anyone want to become my personal chef?

The quotidian

Using a recent journal entry as a post today:

I was reading the testimonies of the Three and Eight Witnesses on Thursday and started thinking about that place where earth and heaven intersect. I was thinking about how it bugs me sometimes that God seems to choose such prosaic ways of accomplishing His work – that I want the plates to be carried around in a shining silver box in some kind of constantly illuminated celestial carriage, instead of shoved in a sack and buried under a hearthstone. I want everything related to God’s work to be obviously imbued with the celestial. But what occurred to me as I read is that maybe God’s work is imbued with the celestial – that I need to learn to see the divine in things that seem humdrum and everyday, because really nothing in this world is humdrum or everyday – and neither are people.

Autumn in New England

So a travelogue of my Scandinavian sojourn is coming, but in the meantime, I have to direct you to a friend’s weblog post for today. The pictures are AMAZING, especially given that they were taken with an iPhone – I can only imagine what pictures taken by a photography aficionado with a Nikon would look like (hint hint). I’ve copied the following images as a teaser to encourage (or perhaps compel) you to visit the real weblog post.

Simple pleasures

Thursday: I received a paper clip shaped like a MINI Cooper in the mail. It’s now on my vanity wall next to the cat sticker and the Chinese uglydoll.

Friday: That hand-dipped caramel apple with crumbled Heath bar was divine. DIVINE.

Saturday: We had some seriously perfect fall weather. I’m so glad autumn has arrived; I’m daily reminded why it’s far and away my favorite season.

Sunday: Jane Eyre (the intense version) combined with belovéd roommates and pie and ice cream to create a much-needed respite after the relentless nerve-jangling chaos of Primary (so few children, so much… personality).

Monday:

A) As of today, I get to be part of the Mormon delegation attending the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremonies this year.

B) Close encounters with road construction trucks by the dump entrance, lurking Staties who didn’t catch us, half-concealed parking spaces, getting lost in the woods, un-go-aroundable puddles the size of small ponds, coldcoldcold water, torrential rain, delightful friends, and nymph impersonation synergized into the best nightWaldening trip EVER. And to think I almost didn’t go.

Tuesday: A friend sent me this haiku.

Sylvia I write
An unknown name to obtain
Pause – I am Batman.

Can’t wait for Wednesday.

BRAIN FREEZE

So today I had an errand to run. I completed the errand and returned to my car, which I have owned for five and a half years and had just driven two hours earlier. I climbed into the car and looked down. To my complete astonishment, I suddenly had no idea which pedal was the clutch.

Now, I have been driving stick shifts almost exclusively for over twelve years. Most of you know that I drive automatics only under duress and that an automatic transmission is a dealbreaker for me.

But.

I sat there, bewildered, staring at the pedals and trying to figure out which one to push, and decided after about a minute that it must be the one on the right. The action felt somewhat awkward, but I stepped on the pedal and turned the key anyway. Not a sound from Simon Bennett.

Still bewildered, I looked down at the pedals again, and started pushing different pedals with different feet. After a few seconds, I chanced to push the left pedal with my left foot. At that point muscle memory took over, and I was able to drive home.

Am going to bed now and hoping that whoever stole my brains last night puts them back in while I sleep tonight.