Walk Like a Man (And Other Daily Topics)

Today is the first of the month, which means that it's rent check time! Our landlord's apartment is a five-minute walk from ours, so I took the rent checks to his place this evening. Lately, there've been lots of BU alerts (aka annoying text messages about every minor crime/potential hazard possibly related to campus) about "armed robberies." I use the quotation marks because "no weapon was shown" but somehow, there was one. This has made me a little extra cautious/paranoid about wandering around at night, and has therefore prompted this theory: muggers/rapists are like bears. How so, you ask? Well, they're not going to pick on you if they think that you can take them. Nature experts tell you that when faced with an angry bear, you're supposed to make yourself look bigger. I decided to make myself look like a man. I put on a gender-neutral jacket and covered my already-boy-short hair with a baseball cap. Knowing what I know about male skeletal anatomy and its implications on gait, I abandoned my quick and careful girly walk for the strut of one with an elongated sacrum and narrow pelvic brim. I tell you, being a man must be exhausting! A few blocks of that and my hips are sore. Frankly I don't know how these macho men do it. But I dropped off the rent checks without getting mugged, raped, or hollered at by any Friday night rowdies, so ultimately, success.

Other events of the day included a trip to the gym. I tried the elliptical in lieu of the treadmill; it's more difficult. I witnessed a lot of driver/pedestrian/bicyclist stupidity on Commonwealth Avenue. I slightly threw my back out doing some ridiculous tasks for Fran (stay tuned for a post about Fran one day). I got caught in the rain at Downtown Crossing and tried to wait it out by going shopping for boots--I can't pull off boots. We had a forensic anthropology pizza party, and I'm sorry, but I still don't know why so many people get all excited about Upper Crust. I've had better. Also, dear professors, I don't care how comfortable you are with your physiology or with your students, but nobody needs to hear about details of your digestive systems--especially when there's food being consumed! I went home and made apple turnovers with leftover puff pastry dough (delicious!) and watched "Bones" on Hulu. Not a single bit of legitimate science in the whole episode, but Clark Edison still stands as one of my favorite assistants.

My other big thing of the day was discovering new.familysearch.org. And by "discovering," I mean finally visiting the site after my visiting teaching companion told me about it a few months ago. It makes doing family history work so easy! After putting it off for too long, I'm finally going to take both of my grandmothers' names to the temple to start their work. Another cool thing I found out was that my great-grandparents on my mother's side had their sealing work done in the Provo Temple! I wasn't in Provo when it happened, but it was still very interesting, considering their baptisms and such happened in Washington DC. There's still so much to be done and figured out and so many dates and places to add, but it'll be nice to pick it up as an every-once-in-awhile hobby. There'll be a minor snafu on the maternal side with figuring out the whole biological father vs. step father thing and how to make that work on the family group record (any insight?), but maybe that's one of those things I'll set aside and let that come together in the eternities.

Happy October 1st, everyone! As this has been an overall very positive post, I must end with something snarky: Dear world, the left side of the escalator is for walking! So don't just stand there, unless you want people to mutter things about you behind your backs. The end.