Stuff the Garlocks Like

Japan. And many things Japanese. We're so white. :-)

Okay, so I don't have much of an obsession with Japan. But Luke does. And he's slowly getting me into it. Because seriously? Japan's pretty cool. And Hayao Miyazaki is pretty super amazing. I've slowly (meaning over the past year . . . ish) acquainted myself with all of the Studio Ghibli movies . . . I think. His movies are just . . . amazing. There's really no other way to describe them, at least not with one word. They're sweet and fun and cute and exciting - and intelligent! It's so cool - movies for kids that don't dumb things down. Awe. Some.

We went to see Ponyo yesterday. We had to go to Ogden because none of the Logan theaters are showing it. And seriously - 5 screens of GI Joe leaving no room for a cute animated kids movie distributed by Disney? LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It really sucked too, because my car doesn't have air conditioning. However, Luke's car needs a new wheel bearing, as we discovered when we got the tires rotated on Monday. Luke's car wins. We took mine. At least it's dry heat, especially since we were both dripping by the time we got there.

But it was SUCH a cute movie!!!!!! I absolutely loved it!! If you're going to a movie this weekend, go to this one. It's not like there's really anything else out right now worth seeing anyway.

Sooooooo adding the Studio Ghibli Musuem to my list!!

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The trailer for Howl's Moving Castle, my favorite Miyazaki movie. I wanted to put one up for Ponyo too, but I couldn't find one that hadn't had the embedding disabled . . . grrrrr!! BTW, we've got all the movies, so if you want to borrow one . . . well, you're not likely to find any other copies in Cache Valley, it seems. :-)

Is It Temporary Insanity?

What is it with these nut job names people are giving their kids these days? Where did this competition come from - you know, the one to see who can make up a name that sounds the most like it describes some alien species . . . or inanimate object . . . or disease . . .

I can kind of understand where the parents are coming from. I mean, they are (mostly) from my generation (and it feels sooooooooooo wrong to even type that!!), and I remember what it was like in elementary school. There was Sara M. and Sara R. and Sarah K. . . . Ashly G. and Ashley L. and Ashlee J. . . . Scott V. and Scott Q. and Scott Z. . . . or whatever. I always felt bad for those kids, and was glad I had an uncommon - yet heard of! - name. Then we moved to Utah . . . and all of the sudden my graduating class had Lacey B., and Lacy R., and Laci W., and another Lacee W.! When three of us were in the same history class one trimester junior year . . . nightmare!! Thankfully, instead of going the elementary school route, we became Lacey, Lacy Jo (not me . . . I got that nickname my senior year . . . ), and Laci Lynn. And while none of them were in our ward, I was still the third Lacey there. And there was a lot of confusion in sacrament just after the Jenson family moved in. On their second or third Sunday - before a lot of people knew who they were - Lacey Jenson was called to be in YW . . . and our second counselor had to explain that there was a new family in our ward, and that no, we had not just sustained his nine-year-old daughter as the MM advisor! (Although it is interesting to think that people would have done it, apparently . . . ) On the plus side, it's not a common name in Washington . . . or at least it wasn't when I was born . . . so I tell people the town of Lacey, Washington was named after me. :-) It's even more believable when you see how close it is to Puyallup.

So, yeah. I totally know what it's like when EVERYONE has your name. But I'm not sure my fellow Millenials are going about solving the problem the right way. I mean, these names are just so outlandish! Back in March I subbed in nursery one week. There was Hacken (long a), Kaycen, Ava, and Tracken (short a). Dude, looking at those names I wouldn't even dare to guess whether they're boys or girls! Well, except for Ava, but only because that one's getting popular. Ava is totally the new Brittany. Just like Emma is the new Ashley. Whoops! Messed that one up, didn't we guys.

Then there's the poor child Ashli told me about. (side note: Mom really was just as bad as the rest of her generation. We all got really common names, just with unusual spelling. Good thing Khrystyne is Shay's middle name!!!! Imagine having that butchered all your life!!!) Anyway, Ash says she worked with a little girl this past year named L-a. Yep, that's spelled correctly. Elle-hyphen-eh. Wanna guess how you pronounce it? Anybody? Bueller? "Ledasha." Now who on earth is gonna get that one right the first time, unless they've been warned in advance or something? Seriously?! That's just cruel. Here's hoping the kid changes her name the day she turns eighteen.

I really feel for the little girl who started kindergarten the year I was a reading tutor in college. Her name is Princess. Yep. you read that right. Given name, on the birth certificate. Princess. Come on, people!! Yeah, I can totally see not wanting to use Sara, it is pretty common. But seriously, there's a lot of other names out there that mean princess, and some of them are really pretty. It's not like she was born in the '60s or something . . . she was born in 2000! Y2K, internet, anyone? I just did a baby name search that took me, like, ten seconds, and look what I got for substitutes for Sara: Almirah (Arabic), Hara (Hebrew), Sadie, Sari, Sarina, and Suri (Hebrew . . . Henrew has TONS of names for princess!!). I wouldn't recommend Suri to anybody though. Tom Cruise aside, heaven help any girl with that name if her school ever puts on "Oklahoma!"

What about the pretty "old-fashioned" names that nobody uses any more? Like Mary or Esther or Alice or Margaret. One of my visiting teachers has a daughter named Hazel Pearl - how cute a name is that?!?

Granted, using old names has its risks. Right after I became a trainer at Disney there were two new trainees coming in at LMA (Lights, Motors, Action! . . . I really should do the glossary . . . ) by the names of Edith and Fanny. One of our co-ordinators joked that we were probably getting a couple of sweet little old white-haired ladies. Well, she got the sweet part right. The trainees I met the next day were two adorably sweet girls on the International College Program. Edith was from Mexico, and Fanny from France. I still miss them. :-( But seriously, people should be working on making names like that mainstream again instead of making up these stupid fake names!

I already have a handful names I like picked out. They're uncommon, but they are most definitely REAL names. No one can say I don't practice what I preach! :-)

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Speaking of unusual names . . . but she gets a pass for names, because it's probably Alaskan, and it's her last name. Last names are generally weird. No pass for stupidity though . . . just amusement at her expense.

Just How Desperate Am I?

So I'm job searching online last night, and I went to craig'slist on a whim. And there's only about a million job openings for office assistants/secretaries/receptionists/whatever you want to call them. And the worst paying one is $13 an hour. Sweet, right? But you hear so many horror stories about people getting scammed or stalked or whatever when the use craig's list. So I'm wondering if I dare respond to any of them. There's practically no details at all - the basic gist of every single one of these ads is "office assistant needed for local business/dentist office/lawyer office/whatever. Duties include . . . blah, blah, blah. some of them have fairly legit sounding email addresses or phone numbers to respond to, but some of them only have the craig'slist-provided one. I'm wondering if I can trust these ads . . . especially since they sound so waaaaaay too good to be true. There's even one for an eye clinic - that's not Uncle Isaac, is it? And if it is, can I, like, just call dibs on the job here and now? :-P

I did respond to one last night. It's for a library assistant. It only got posted yesterday, and one of the preferred qualifications was that the person be passionate about reading. I couldn't resist. Plus it has one of the highest pay rates. The reply I got when I emailed the address they provided seems liget so far . . . sent me to another site to actually apply, and said they'd be looking over the applications this week and next . . . cross your fingers for me!! Seriously, a job at a library making more than twice what I made at Disney?! Heaven!!!!! I'm really hoping this one's for real.

Am I crazy for responding to a job posting on craig's list? Am I putting my life on the line or something? I really need a job, but I'm not sure I'm that desperate . . .

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My other dream job (well, one of them) would be to work for Hallmark and write these guys' cards. Everything I've ever seen with them on it absolutely cracks me up! I heart Hoop and Yoyo!!! :-)

A Dying Art Form

Have you noticed how nobody actually writes anything anymore? Like, physically, hand writing? Everything is printed out or an email attachment or a text message. A couple more generations and nobody is even going to know how to use a pen.

Today in sacrament the first speaker used his laptop. He explained what had happened - they just put a new ink cartridge in their printer, and for some reason now it prints out everything with a big heavy line through the words so you can't read it. (that doesn't strike me as a problem with the printer, but I'm certainly no expert . . . ) So, since his talk was typed, he brought in his laptop. It was a little weird, not gonna lie. And I couldn't help but wonder . . . why didn't he just copy it down by hand instead? We have 1:30 church for crying out loud, he had practically all day to write it out after discovering the printing problem. (side note: I have never had church this late before. I'm kinda not a fan. kinda really not a fan. A huge anti-fan, if you will.) I mean, this is a student ward, so surely they have notebook paper. Granted it wasn't all that distracting, but seriously . . . a little bizarre to see a laptop sitting up there on the podium and watching him scroll down instead of shuffling pages, not gonna lie.

I love writing. I love the physical sensation of moving a pen across paper. I love watching words appear behind my pen, almost as if by magic. Like the wake of a jet ski. I love picking colors and ink qualities . . . and don't even get me started on how much I ADORE gel pens!!!!! I have a serious pen-buying addiction. Show me bright colors, funky shades, thick ink trails (none of those lame fine print pens for me!) and it's almost like giving me fudge brownies. With chocolate chips added. We went grocery shopping a couple days ago and it was soooooooo hard not to go to the back-to-school aisles and just grab all the pens they have.

The funny thing is, my handwriting kind of sucks. At least I think it does. I never did super well in penmanship at school (do they even teach that anymore?) and my mother was always telling me I had horrible handwriting. She would even make me do extra sometimes if I was doing a penmanship worksheet at home and she didn't think it was good enough. Oddly enough, that didn't turn me off writing . . . although I can't figure out why. But even today once in a while I find myself looking at something I've written and I'll trace a letter here and there that I think I made look particularly good over and over, so that it's about five times darker than all the other letters. Like I'm still practicing. Like I'm still trying to convince my mother that my handwriting isn't absolutely terrible. (you may have noticed that it was not my handwriting on the wedding invitations . . . yeah . . . that's working out real well . . . )

In school, I always hand wrote everything I did before typing it. Mostly because I liked it better (in case you haven't figured that out already), but it was also so much more convenient. I didn't need to carry a laptop with me to be able to work on a poem or paper between classes - I just plopped myself down on the grass between the English and Foreign Languages buildings, pulled out my notebook and wrote until it was time for my next class. I'd do my homework in the living room, watching TV and working during the commercials. (no, really, I worked during commercials. And sometimes I would get on a roll and keep working when the show came back. But when I got stuck I always had a distraction for a few minutes, and then when the next commercial came I could usually get going again. It worked really well for me.) If one class was boring I'd flip to another section in my binder and work on another class' assignment, and it looked like I was taking notes.

Writing really is an art. Everyone's handwriting is so different. Some are really pretty. Of course, some are just about completely illegible (my dad's comes to mind there!). But it's such a mark of personality and individuality. It's such a weird thought to me that in today's world, where everyone is all about being your own person and being unique and everything that everyone is migrating toward the type-written word rather than the hand-written. Type-written is the same for everyone. Sure, you can use funky fonts and stuff, but they all look more or less the same. And you can't even do different fonts when you're texting. Except maybe on an iphone. And with there being handwriting analysists and how everyone says you can tell a lot about a person by their handwriting it's just sad to see such a unique art form on its way out. :-(

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Another fun Japanese game show. Long but good . . . I so want to try this sometime!! :-)

I Did It!

Started a book review blog, that is. It's still kind of a work in progress. I'm playing with layouts and color schemes and all that. And I really want to put a picture at the top of that one . . . just like this one. But Luke and I just can't figure out how to change the size of pictures on a Mac so they don't look stupid only taking up half the space at the top of the blog. I swear he downloaded at least five freeware apps yesterday trying to make it work for me (I know, how sweet is that? even I'm a little disgusted by the syrup-iness, lol) but none of them actually worked. Grrrrrrrr. So if any of you know anything about Macs . . . yeah . . . a little help please?

Anyway, I really loved Aunt Sandra's suggestion of The Book Case . . . so of course that url was taken. Grrrrrr. So after playing around with a few variations and some of Julie's suggestions - all taken! - I decided to go with The Real World Book Case. And there you have it. Make sure you tell everybody you know so it'll get big and I can start making money off it. :-P

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I don't remember if we showed this one to Team Jayla or they showed us, but we all cracked up. Rated PG . . . 13 . . . ish for blatant (and cheesy) innuendo.

From the Bowels of the Internet Ghetto . . .

I read Tuck Everlasting every year at the beginning of August. (HUUUUGE thanks to Aunt Tawnya for introducing me to it when I was eight!!) I absolutely love it. And yesterday, whilst doing my yearly reading, I remembered a blog post I made back when I was blogging on myspace. So today I logged back in (I know - scary!!) and skimmed through my old blog entries looking for it. That was fun. I kept a really detailed blog the first year (ish) I was in Florida, so re-reading was lots of fun . . . tons of silly memories I'd forgotten. Good times. Anyway, I'd thought to re-post with perhaps a few changes here and there, but I think I'll just leave it as-is (was?). (The first paragraph is the first paragraph of the book.) Just for a frame of reference, I wrote this a couple of weeks before I went to Florida.


The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that comes before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless and hot.

I read Tuck Everlasting religiously every year at the beginning of August. I have since I was about 12. It's become way of marking the passgae of time and observing how much things change and how much they stay the same as I grow older. No matter how old I get, the premis of the novella still fascinates me. Who wouldn't want to live forever? On the surface it seem like a marvellous idea. But more and more I come to agree with Angus Tuck. To get off (or be thrown off) the wheel of life is not a good or desirable thing. As much as I would love to see what happens in this world as time passes, there isn't anyway I could do that and be happy. I don't want to grow old, at least not really old. I don't want to reach that point where either my mind or body goes. On the other hand, I don't want to stay 22 forever. Granted, it would be nice to stay 22 for a while, but I imagine I would get tired of it, and want to move on.




Update: I'm glad I didn't stay 22. :-)

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Just . . . fail!!!

Another . . . Achievement?

So I delivered my first "Relief Society meal" yesterday. Does that make me officially an adult? An adult ward member at least . . . good times. It was a little intimidating, especially since I'd never actually met the people I took the tuna casserole to (yeah, I went the cliched route . . . it was a last minute thing, the RS pres called me around noon on Saturday. Good thing we had a box of tuna helper!). I'm still learning names, and they had been missing a lot of church the last couple of months . . . I guess it was a bit of a rough pregnancy. It's just so weird to think that I'm the one in charge of taking meals to people instead of my mom . . . who's nutjob idea was that? Granted, I haven't killed Luke . . . yet . . . but you won't be seeing me on Top Chef any time soon either. But seriously, this one thing, above pretty much everything else, has made me feel more "officially" married and grown up than anything else. Is that normal, or just a me thing?

On a completely unrelated note, I had the idea last week to start a book review blog. The more I thought about it, the more fun it sounded, plus, who knows? Maybe I'll get big, or something. (Can you tell I'm really trying to keep my hopes up with this whole no-jobs-in-all-of-Cache-County thing?) Crazy thing - Luke made the same exact suggestion last night as we were getting ready for bed, and I hadn't mentioned it to him. We decided that maybe that was a sign that I should give it a go . . . or something. So now I'm looking for suggestions for blog names and such. I'll be reviewing pretty much everything I read (or have ever read) from classics to LDS fiction to Star Wars to contemporary to fantasy . . . yeah, that pretty much covers everything I read. Anyway, if I use your suggestion you'll totally get something when I'm popular enough to start doing giveaways. :-)

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Just in case you missed it when it was hugely popular last year. We all loved it . . . all you had to do was say "Charlie!" like the other kid does and we'd all start giggling.