A Strange Statistic

I wrote more posts for this blog in the month of July than I wrote in January through April of this year!  One might think that I've been doing many more interesting things than I actually have been.  More realistically, I think it's just my internet self trying to say, "hey, I'm still here!"

I've Been Scooped!

I thought I was unique in bringing my quest for a fantastic burger to Oahu, but then I found this blog!  At least now I have a source.  I went to the Cheeseburger Factory in the Ala Moana Center food court tonight, and I have to say that my opinion was slightly different than theirs.  They gave it a pretty bad review, but I liked it okay.  It was definitely a "lunch burger" though.

My viewpoint may have been skewed as it was the only "real" food I'd eaten that day.  (Story segue time!)  I finally got to take my competency exam for work.  It was fairly simple and straightforward:  seven practical stations about essential aspects of forensic anthropology.  It took forever, though!  It was taking so long that I skipped lunch, so the only food I ate at work today was a cupcake from the General's wife.  After taking the test for almost six hours, I felt like this:

Oh my gosh, I freaking love Snape so much.

Of course, I wasn't going to eat the plain pasta that I'd brought with me because it was the kind of day that's so intense that in order to make things right, an animal has to die.  Burger time!  (Can you believe I was ever a vegetarian?)  So I went with my friend Sarah and her boyfriend to Ala Moana Center and we hit up the food court like the classy folks we are.  

Then we meandered around the mall and went to the Pacific Place Tea Room (which isn't a room at all, but a little kiosk in the mall) and got macaroons:  mine was Mango-Lime, Sarah's was Red Velvet.  I quite liked it--it was very fresh-tasting and not too overwhelming in any flavor direction to keep it interesting.

Basically, it was a pretty not bad day!  (Except for the fact that my office-mate and I now know the answer to the question, how many forensic anthropologists does it take to evict a giant cockroach from the building?)

Two and One

Here are two things that people said to me today:

Temple worker outside of the women's dressing room:  "You look so bright-eyed...does anything escape your gaze?"  Er...probably?  


Girl from church I ran into at the Temple Visitor's Center:  "You could date [name of guy]; you guys are both Caucasian!"  Hey, I just met you, this is crazy, but we're both white...call me maybe?

One thing that nobody is going to say:

Man:  "Of all the women in Hawaii, I'm really hoping to land the nearsighted brunette with the modest bosom."  One of the many hitches in my plan to go on dates here.

Actually, this guy might say something like that.
He is white, so we're good to go.

Flightless Birds

The birds here are strange.

My roommate and I were driving yesterday, and this bird runs out into the road, sees us coming, and then turns around and runs back.  I thought (ironically) oh bird, if only there were some evolutionary adaptation that could allow you to avoid cars a different way.

Is flying difficult, I wonder?  I knew someone who studied birds, but I never thought to ask her about it.  Birds fly.  It's just what they do.  Is Hawaii so hot or so relaxed that the birds just forgot how?

Then, because I'm very "deep" these days, I went into metaphor mode.

[Now, so I don't further aggravate all the people who hate me for complaining about Hawaii, feel free to replace "Hawaii" with "new place" and "Boston" with "old place."]

In Boston I grew a lot.  One might even say that I "evolved."  Maybe I didn't become more awesome, because I was already pretty awesome, but it was the first time that I felt comfortable enough with my awesomeness to show my awesomeness off to the world.

I'm afraid that moving here will cause me to regress, to become the awkward, closed-off person that it took me three years to outgrow.

I'm afraid of forgetting how to fly.

Christmas in July

It's hot here.  I thought listening to Christmas music would help, but I chose the wrong album:  "Wintersong" by Sarah McLachlan*.  It's still hot here, and now I'm just feeling melancholy.

"Wintersong"

"Song for a Winter's Night"

At least this is happening now.  I don't think I could handle it at actual Christmas.  Oh well, back to wishing I had a river that I could skate away on...

*This is the only time that I will use the words "wrong" and "Sarah McLachlan" in the same sentence.

My Sacrament Meeting Talk

This weekend, I prepared a ten-minute Sacrament meeting talk that was some of my best work.  I felt really good about everything that I put in it, and I'll even go so far as to say that I think some of it was inspired.

Then I fell victim to what I call The Curse of the Closing Speaker.  The second speaker went way over time and I was left with only five minutes.  I was a little perturbed, and I was so tempted to go against everything I believe in and go over time myself, but I couldn't do that.  I took the last five minutes of the meeting time and gave half of my talk.

I almost cried when I sat back down.  My talk was so good and I felt so cheated at not being able to give it! So I'm going to sum up my talk here on my blog.

My topic was "Finding Strength in the Scriptures".  Because I don't like to talk in hypotheticals, I wanted to demonstrate (I'm not a good enough philosopher to prove) logically that it was possible to find strength in the scriptures.  Feeling rather literal, I looked in the Topical Guide for "Strength".  Coming up with scriptures like Exodus 15:2, 2 Samuel 22:33, and Mosiah 9:17, it's clear to see that our strength is our God.  There are multiple scripture references wherein the Lord is equated with His Word (Revelation 19:13, for instance).  So if we define the scriptures as The Word of God, we can rationalize that is is indeed possible to derive strength from the scriptures.  So how do we do this?

If you had to describe the scriptures to someone who had never heard of them before, and had to do so without mentioning God or doctrine, you could say that the scriptures are "a collection of stories about people doing hard things".  In the scriptures we find examples of people who persevered/endured when they had it way worse than we do.  We can find parallels to our own lives when we feel lost, overwhelmed, alone, and hopeless.

We can find strength in the scriptures by learning essential doctrine to keep us on the right path away from temptation.  We can be reminded of the blessings of righteousness and the consequences of sin.  Finally, we can be reminded of the Atonement and the promises our Heavenly Father gives us.  Scriptures that are especially precious to me when I need comfort and inspiration are D&C 121:7-8 and D&C 122:7-9.

I then referenced Richard G. Scott's 2011 talk, "The Power of Scripture".

Some scriptural examples of people finding strength in the scriptures:

• 2 Nephi 4:15.  Nephi glories in the scriptures at a hard time in his life:  his father just died and he's stuck with Laman and Lemuel, who are, by all accounts, horrible people.
• Matthew 4:1-11.  Christ (whom we should consider the ultimate example of spiritual strength) endures temptation during His fast (a time of physical and emotional weakness) by quoting scripture. 

Then (and this is the part of my talk that I wasn't able to give, even though I wanted to so much!), I proposed a different way of looking at taking strength from the scriptures by telling the following stories/examples:

• Jacob 1:2,4.  One of the things I find most fascinating about the Book of Mormon is how tedious it must have been to engrave all of those records on brass plates, and yet these people felt what they were writing was so important that they did it anyway.
• Moroni 1:1-4.  To paraphrase this chapter, Moroni is basically saying, "So I didn't think I was going to write anymore, because I thought I'd be dead by now since all of these Lamanites are trying to kill me, but since I'm not dead, I guess I'll write some more because it might be worthwhile to the Lamanites (who are trying to kill me, by the way)."
• Moving forward a thousand years or so, we see the examples of John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, people who were viewed as heretics and killed because they tried to translate the Bible into English.
• Then there's the story of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, as described in Jeffrey R. Holland's testimony of the Book of Mormon.

Basically where I was going with these examples is that tremendous effort, sacrifice--sweat and blood--went  into assembling the scriptures.  While the scriptures are the Word of God, but there is an indisputable human component to them as well.  As we read and study the scriptures, we show that those sacrifices and efforts are not in vain.  The scriptures are imbued with the testimonies and spirits of those who cared enough about us to give them to us, and we can gain strength from them as we read them.

So that was basically my talk.  People did seem to like the parts I gave, though, and I felt that it was pretty skillful on my part to make it all work in five minutes.  Maybe next time I get asked to speak in Sacrament meeting, I'll give the second half (or so I "joked" to the Branch President afterwards).  But at least I got to share it with you all.

In other news, I got called to be Relief Society Music Coordinator.  I guess I'm going to be pigeonholed in music callings for the rest of my days.  Sigh.

Incentive

A few days ago, I blogged about my target GRE scores (I'm not going to link to it, just scroll down if you want to see what they are).  I decided that if I get these scores, I'm going to reward myself by buying myself a box set of all seven Harry Potter books as I've finally read them all, and after tonight, will have seen all the movies.

In other news, here are some things about my day that were good:  I went to the dentist and had zero cavities; I ate Panda Express for lunch (Chow Mein and Chow Fun--I like the Chow Mein Better--with Orange Chicken and Eggplant Tofu); I went shopping at the Ala Moana Center (the most intimidatingly large mall ever, but fun to walk around and have a mindless shopping day); I bought as much produce as I could carry at Sam's Club; and I got an awesome present in the mail from Laura Taylor.