My First Hawaiian Stake Dance

In an attempt to switch directions from the past four months of moping around friendlessly hating Hawaii, I decided to "put myself out there" last night and go to a stake Young Single Adult (YSA) dance.  Here are some bullet points:

• I had forgotten that dancing requires you to stand really close to people for extended periods of time.  And not just any people--man people.  This is a thing I have not done in a long time.  It was weird.
• There was a lot of unrecognizable hip-hop music that all sounded the same.  Sometimes, when I dance to hip-hop music, I have to channel my inner Ellen Degeneres (without the whole lesbian part, probably) in order to even pretend to get into it.
• After the first several songs of reinforcing all of the stereotypes about White people and hip-hop dancing, I lost energy (I'm sick, after all) and stood against the wall with my arms crossed for a little while.  This guy/kid came up to me very enthusiastically and asked, "you're not dancing, or are you a chaperone?"  Brilliant!  I nodded, "sure, I can be a chaperone!"*
• After getting shanghaied into a couple of slow songs, the aforementioned guy/kid caught on to the fact that I was actually there for the dancing and not, in fact, for the monitoring of it.  He asked me to dance.  (I wanted to be like, "I'm a chaperone, remember?")  I am confident that even if I had taken off my heels, I would still have been taller than he was.  Also, he didn't know how to lead, so I had to do that.  First thing he asks me:  "How old are you?"  I have no qualms about revealing my age (even though I suspect that it is a significantly older age than most people in my branch), so I told him:  27.  Then he asked if I served a mission (no), if I planned to (not anytime in the next several decades), and why not (none of your business, kid, now stop dancing into the other couples!).
• There was some really good bean dip.  And Tres Leches cake.  (The theme was "Fall Fiesta" which meant Salsa dancing and faux-Mexican food, apparently.)
• I was slightly sick when I went to the dance.  By the end I wanted to stab my sinuses with an awl.  This morning I am all kinds of stuffy and achy.  I am constrained not to write any more about this dance for I must go to the drug store and medicate myself.

*Let me mention that it irks me that we had "chaperones."  Sometimes I feel that at YSA activities, people put too much emphasis on the "young" part and not enough on the "adult" part.

My "Inciting Force"

I've been reading Emily of Deep Valley by Maude Hart-Lovelace.  It's kind of a spin-off in the Betsy-Tacy series, a book that says, "meanwhile, in other people's lives..."  Laura gave me the book for my birthday, saying that I should be able to identify with Emily.  I surely can!  In the book, Emily stays home to have a "lost year" while all of her friends go off to college and she feels lonely and depressed and without direction, so she takes on all of these projects to give her life meaning and I'm not finished yet so I don't know what happens or how it ends, but presumably she ends up with this handsome schoolteacher.

This has inspired me to start writing things down in the hopes that eventually I will publish the memoirs of my year in the paradise that is my personal hell.  (You will notice that this is another project to give my life direction.)  I tried to write some things earlier today, but failed.  The reason?  I lack perspective.  Also, I can't yet figure out a way to not make this a story about my first major experience in heartbreak, but mostly it's the perspective thing.

Unlike Emily, whose story was published decades ago, my story is still in progress.  And sadly, it's still in exposition mode.  I'm on the third or fourth chapter of being miserable and moping around with nothing to do.  I have yet to encounter an inciting force, some event that sets things into motion.

I fear it's getting too late.  This story is only a year long, and I've spent five months of it in exposition, and it's not even great exposition.  I mean, it's slightly better than three blank pages symbolizing Bella Swan sitting in her room wearing the same outfit for three months and screaming into her pillow every night, but it's pretty lame:  work every day; cry in church; sit at home and write in my journal while listening to The Civil Wars; lather, rinse, repeat for five months.  Something had better kick me into rising action mode pretty quickly.

For Emily, going to a dance with Cab Edwards helped.  There's a dance at the institute this weekend.  Not really my scene, and I'm certain we won't be doing the Turkey Trot, but maybe I'll crash.  See what happens.

I'll keep you posted.

True Love as Described by a Forensic Anthropologist

When you're reconstructing skeletal remains and you see this tiny little piece that doesn't really look like anything and you don't really know what it is, and then you notice that it bears the same taphonomic signature as this other piece that, as it turns out, has a little piece missing.  They fit together perfectly and the whole thing makes sense, and it's such a joyful moment that you don't even mind that it took several tedious hours of sifting through pieces that didn't fit anywhere and that you had to sit there for five minutes holding the thing together so the glue could dry, and that joy is enough to make you want to keep doing that, trying over and over again.  This is what love is like.

If you can't tell, I spent much of the day alone with fragmented vertebrae, acetone-soluble adhesive, and my thoughts.  I should really get some sort of music-listening device for the lab floor.

As It Turns Out, They Do.

In response to my previous post, good things do come to those who wait, and then keep hoping even when all seems lost.

So remember how distraught I was when my dream room was taken?  Horribly distraught, that's how.  Like an idiot, I kept checking the website just to see if maybe whoever booked the room cancelled.  They didn't; however...the B&B lowered their room rates!!  So now I got to book an even nicer room for under the government rate.  I'm the luckiest idiot there ever was.

Look how freaking adorable this room is!

Queen bed, private bathroom.  And free WiFi in the room, a home-cooked breakfast every morning, and delicious (in theory) cookies waiting for me when I come back in the afternoons.

This was the happiest of all days.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait...Unless They're Me

I'm going to a conference in Washington, D.C. in February, and I really wanted to stay at this really cute Bed and Breakfast next to the conference hotel instead of at the conference hotel.  I tried to be "responsible" and wait until the advanced program for the meetings came up before I booked my room so I could confirm which days I would be staying.

I waited a day too long.

I was so sad to find out that the room I wanted (the only one under the government rate that I could get reimbursed for the full cost of the room) had been booked.  It made me not want to go to the conference anymore.  I ended up booking a room in the conference hotel.  I'm trying to see the bright side.

Pros:

-I don't have to go outside in February to go to the sessions.

-My room has a full private bathroom (the B&B room had a communal shower)

-There's a TV.

But...Cons:

-No free breakfast

-No free WiFi in the room

-It's so "mainstream" and I can't say that I'm supporting a small business that serves locally-grown food.

I'll have to find some other occasion to stay at that B&B for two nights or so in my life.  Honeymoon?

In a Dark, Dark Room

Today was pretty fun.  I stayed at home and rested for most of the day before meeting my old roommate Doree at the Ala Moana Shopping Center for late dinner and reminiscing.  While I was waiting for her to get there, I browsed around Barnes and Noble to see what I could see and maybe buy something awesome if something awesome was to be bought.  And oh, it was.

Surprisingly, they still had Halloween stuff there (although it was definitely overshadowed by Christmas stuff), and in the Bargain book section, they had this book:

It was hardcover, for only $5.98.  Bargain, indeed!  Let me tell you about this book:  this is probably the book that wins the award for "book most frequently checked out from the Aliquippa Public Library by tiny Alex in the early 90s."  I believe it was partially responsible for my creepy phase (that I have yet to grow out of).  There's this one story about a girl who wears a green ribbon around her neck in order to [SPOILER ALERT] keep her head from falling off; there's a variation on the ghostly hitchhiker story; and then there's a bunch of other stories that are super creepy with illustrations that terrify me and fill me with nostalgia in equal measure.

This is a book that I will read to my children.  Maybe not at bedtime, though.

About Nothing in Particular

I can't believe it's already November.

In some ways, it almost feels like fall.  Not in the kind of way that it would feel like fall in any normal part of the world, but a little bit.  I walked outside in a sweater and was almost chilly!  I could have been chilly because I also have a cold, but having a cold kind of also makes it feel like fall.

I found a new route home from the bus stop today.  It's through a suburban neighborhood; it's kind of a nice change from the sidewalk along the major street.  It's significantly faster and it feels a little safer (not that the other way was dangerous).  I'm kicking myself for not finding it sooner.  There were still Halloween decorations out, but many were being taken down.  I bet it will be nice at Christmastime.

On that note, I got my leave approved for my Christmas holiday!  Not that I was worried about it not getting approved, but my holiday is actually a reality now.  Kind of exciting.