Countdown to the Finish

As of when I am typing this, there are 81 days, 16 hours, 50 minutes, and 50 seconds until noon on the day I enter the MTC (I can't have an exact timer for when I enter the MTC because I don't know when that will be yet). That's not very long. There have almost been breaks between posts on this blog that were that long, and I'll bet none of those breaks felt very long. 6 more weeks of classes, 1 week of finals, and then 5 weeks later I'm gone. Which means this blog may come to an end. It may continue on as a place to put emails I send home to my family, but probably not. More than likely, I'll just compile a list of email addresses for my mom to forward those on to. And, honestly, I don't foresee rejuvenating this blog after I get home. I barely get any readership now; a two-year hiatus will just make it worse. Admittedly, I haven't put any effort into garnering readers. I've only posted a link for it publicly one or two times. The template is horrendous, the color scheme more so, and the writing only marginally better (seriously, I just reread through all my previous posts, and I am amazed some of you have stuck to reading this). I do think I've accomplished my goal with it, however. "Rants and Raves and Maybe Some Deep Thoughts" I've certainly had rants, and I've had a few raves. Hopefully, I've expressed some somewhat deep thoughts. I certainly was able to do the writing I wanted to when I wanted to do it, which was the real purpose for this. Well, that and placating Dania Frandsen, but she's practically admitted to me that she's stopped reading this. I may have a few good posts left in me, and rereading what I have written has given me some ideas as to what I could write on. Thanks for being willing to participate with me in this experiment. I hope you enjoy these next two years as much as I plan to.

Obligatory Title

100% obedience. I hear it so often from all my missionary friends. Realize you may never get there, but strive for perfect obedience to the mission rules. I think there is a fair number of missionaries with that same attitude. They recognize that life is actually better when you follow all the rules, not just the ones you like or that are convenient or easy. Sure, you may not get to listen to Vocal Point's absolutely beautiful voices sing brilliant harmonies and create mind-blowing sounds, but what you get is worth so much more than that.

It's interesting, however, that such an attitude on a mission doesn't necessarily carry over into normal life. I see, for example, a young man that tries to uphold certain rules a large group of people have agreed to live by for a period of time. He goes about it in terrible fashion, but his public ridicule is not due to his method so much as his intention. Now, could this young man find someone violating the rules in more fragrantly? I'm sure of it. It probably wouldn't have taken much searching to do so. The target of his attempt at constructive criticism was certainly not the person at the time going farthest outside the rules, but what has been glossed over--and many times denied entirely--was that she was, in fact, outside the rules: "Dresses, skirts, and shorts must be knee length or longer." Seems like a pretty cut and dried rule to me. The dress of the young woman who was the recipient of the criticism quite clearly did not meet that requirement. Whether the top was cut low enough to be "revealing" is up for debate (I personally fall on the side that it was), but it's pretty hard to debate that a dress is knee-length when it isn't.

Now, I recognize that it can be difficult and sometimes very inconvenient to find clothing that fits this standard and is cute. It is inconvenient and expensive for me to be clean-shaven every day, yet I strive to do so. Until recently, I would forgo shaving on Saturday because my facial hair really wasn't that long, and after all it is Saturday, and I like to be freshly shaved for church on Sunday, and shaving every day really is overkill for how much/fast my facial hair grows, so I either shave two days in a row or don't shave Sunday if I shave Saturday, and neither option sounds very good. The last few weeks, however, I've taken a step back to look in the mirror, and decided that the hair really was long enough that I couldn't fit the clean shaven bill. Yes, it means I'll spend more money on shaving cream and razor blades because I'll use them more often, but it's a small price to pay to be a little bit closer to 100% obedient.

Life. Go Ahead and Talk to me About Life

A week ago yesterday, we had a funeral for my Grandma Sorensen. It still is difficult to write this post. I was able to write one for Grandpa Cobabe much easier. Partially, it's because I liked Grandma Sorensen a little bit more, even though I loved them both equally. Mostly, though, I think the way in which they died has a lot to do with it. Grandpa Cobabe was taken suddenly. He'd had heart and blood problems for a long time, but I'd gone to see him the week before he died, and he still seemed very strong. The suddenness of it kept me from thinking about his condition and reflect on the life he had lived. Grandma Sorensen was different. She struggled with Alzheimer's for several years before she died. It was hard to see her slowly forget so much. It became clear around Christmas that she was coming to the end of her life, and that she probably wouldn't live long enough to see me go on a mission. I got to observe her slowly slipping away, and, as backward as it seems, that makes it more difficult.

What do I remember about Grandma Sorensen? I remember going up to her house fondly. I remember playing with all the toys that they had, especially doing so with my cousins. I remember running my fingers up and down and all around the sculpture she had done, just feeling the interesting texture. Most of all, I remember Grandma pulling me into her lap to read a book. As much as my parents nurtured a love of reading, I think it was Grandma Sorensen who planted that love in me. It was never Grandma reading to me. It was always reading with Grandma, even when I couldn't actually read the words. She freely shared her library with us, even if we were just a bunch of rowdy boys. She understood that books were meant to be read and loved, not kept prettily on a shelf.

Another love my Grandma Sorensen passed on to me was of BYU sports. She was one of the biggest Cougar fans I've ever known. We used to go up to my Aunt and Uncle's cabin for Thanksgiving, and the BYU-U. of U. rivalry football game often falls that weekend as well (or at least it did when they were in the same conference). I can distinctly remember one year listening to it on the radio up at the cabin and my cousin David, who is a Utah fan, coming out in all his Utah gear and cheering loudly for the Utes. Grandma wasn't going to sit quietly for that; she went up and put on her BYU sweatshirt and called out "Go Cougars!" As much as I looked up to David, I loved Grandma more. That moment was the beginning of my now full-fledged Cougar fanship. I remember going to numerous football and men's basketball games with Grandma Sorensen. Our parents kept buying season tickets for them even as Grandma got older. It was one thing she enjoyed even as she forgot other things, and she went as long as she was able to. She may not have been able to steer all her grandchildren onto the correct sports path, but she certainly helped this one.

I love my Grandma Sorensen. It was very hard to watch Alzheimer's overwhelm her life, especially in the last month or two of it. I know, however, that she is now continuing her life of love and service. I know that didn't stop when her mind and body failed her. As sad as I am to see her go, I know the truth of the resurrection, and I know I will see her again.

Yes, I am Just Sending you Somewhere Else

Quite a bit's been going on in my life this month. I actually have stuff to right about. Instead, I'm just going to post a link tonight. I intended to write a few words, and I'm sure I will, but for now I'll let you read some writing that's actually good from someone who knows the source a whole lot better than I do:

m-mortality.blogspot.com

I'll have my own words to add soon, I'm sure. For tonight, my dad's words are enough for me.

Harry Potter...Again

Yes, yes, I know. You've heard it before, and you're sick of it, but I need to write about something. Besides a distressing lack of snow, not much has gone on in my life. Well, I guess there was Thanksgiving, finals week, my birthday, and Christmas, but there isn't a whole to write about it in there. I could also talk about BYU sports (heart-breaking basketball loss to Baylor, blow-out at St. Mary's, stunning comeback in the Armed Forces Bowl) but I get the feeling that most of you who read this aren't big sports fans. I think I am safe in a assuming, however, that a very large percentage of you are Harry Potter fans. You can read previous posts (here and here) that demonstrate my general disregard for the series. Last night, however, in the midst of a Star Wars, it was brought up again that I don't like Harry Potter. I have thought about it for awhile now, and I think I have one more reason why I am opposed to the book that I have yet to state clearly that should be stated.

In the genre of fantasy, to me, there are two basic sub-genres: epic fantasy and, for lack of a better term, fun-story fantasy. Fun-story fantasy is not meant as a derogatory category (i.e. it's not meant in the "it's just a fun story" sense); I would classify C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia as fun-story fantasy. Narnia is a series of loosely connected stories that occur in the same world. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is epic fantasy: it deals with one central plot line, and everything contained in it is connected to that central plot line. The first four books of the Harry Potter series are fun-story fantasy. The first four books are a series of stories surrounding Harry Potter. They do not really advance a central plot. The events of one book do not have a very large impact on the events of the next book. It's just a well-written series of exciting stories about Harry Potter and his friends, which means I ate it up.

After the fourth book, with Voldemort revived, J.K. Rowling decided to take the series in a new direction. She decided to make it an epic story about Harry Potter vanquishing the Dark Lord. It was, by my estimation, a good decision. In order for the stories to be good, Voldemort had to come back at some point. Once he's back, you can't ignore him, and you can't continue to have the same sort of isolated battles as were present in the first four books. An evil that powerful can't stay in obscurity. Unfortunately, that good decision had very poor execution. First of all, the decision wasn't even clearly made in the fifth book. You had epic fantasy in the underlying elements of the plot, but the confrontation with Umbridge and creation of Dumbledore's Army that was such a central part of the book was really just a continuation of the type of stories that were depicted in the first four books. The ending of the fourth book set up a transition; you didn't need a whole book dedicated to switching sub-genres. Rowling could have picked up the fifth book and started straight in with epic fantasy, but she didn't. Mostly, however, she just didn't know how to write epic fantasy for the Harry Potter world. She didn't seem to have it set up very well for how the story would progress. She knew that she should rely on details from earlier books, so she included them, but she didn't have an overall picture of how to make it work. Instead of dealing with previously learned knowledge about the way the Harry Potter world works, she invented entirely new explanations. Good epic fantasy should not leave readers saying a confused "wait, what?" or "where on earth did that come from?" There can be newly revealed tricks, rules, or magics, but they should be based on the foundation that is already laid. I haven't read the seventh book, so I don't know if it violated the rule (based on what I've heard from Daniel, it does, by the way), but the idea of Horcruxes in the sixth book basically came from out of the sky. J.K. Rowling fell into the great trap of magic: she made it practically infinitely expandable. That works just fine for fun-story fantasy; it doesn't work for epic fantasy.

Let's Have Some Definitions

That's right. 2 posts in the same week. You might want to go to the nearest pig farm and make sure that they are all still firmly grounded.

Anyway, this post has to do with something very near and dear to my heart: snow.

I love winter. I was made for cold weather. I mean, all you have to do is see the not-insignificant amount of insulation (i.e. fat) I have on my body to see that I was built to thrive in a cold environment. One of the best things about winter is snow. Unlike most people, I rarely "get tired" of snow. Maybe if it was snowy for 8 months of the year, I might start getting tired of it, but probably not.

However, I do want to set one thing straight when it comes to snow. You see, my beloved brother and roommate (my mom occasionally reads this and so I had to put that "beloved" in for her benefit) walked outside today and gleefully exclaimed "It's snowing!" As much as I love him, he erred in making this statement, but at least he has an excuse after being in South Korea for two years on a mission. It was not, in fact, snowing. There were occasional little white dots that one could halfway see floating on the wind, but that is not snowing. Much like it's not "raining" just because you feel one drop of water hit your head, it isn't snowing just because a few flakes happen to fall. In order for it to be "snowing," it has to be a consistent, significant rate of precipitation. Similarly, the first snow of the year has some criteria associated with it: it has to be snowing, as I have just defined it; it has to stick and accumulate on the ground; and it has to be at your place of residence. As such, I have not yet experienced the first snow of the year, and I doubt that any of you reading this blog that attend BYU have either. Snowing on the mountains does not count, as beautiful as it is and as much as I love it. The "snowing" that I've heard rumors about doesn't count, either, because not only does each case fail to meet the definition for "snowing", but they have all failed to accumulate on the ground. I can't wait to experience the first snow of the year, but let's not water down the experience by slacking on our standards like we have with words such as "epic."

Why are these definitions so important? Because they are related to the Christmas Music Rule. I love Christmas music just as much as the rest of you. I really do. And you can make all the arguments you want about how we need to have the Spirit of Christmas all year round, etc. but it doesn't change the Christmas Music Rule. The Christmas Music Rule states:

1. Music having to deal with the Christmas, snow, the "Holidays", or other such material is henceforth designated to be termed Christmas music
2. Christmas music, as defined in (1), is not to be played outside the month of December, with the following exceptions:
1. The day of the first snow of the year
2. Following Halloween (Oct. 31), Christmas music can be played on days when it is snowing
3. Following Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November), Christmas music can be played if there is snow on the ground, or if there is less than 4 days until December
3. If one must play Christmas music at time not included by (2) or it's subsections, one must provide sufficient reasoning for why they are playing the music (e.g. learning a song to be performed during the month of December)
1. There are no sufficient reasons for a general body (e.g. Seminary class or ward) to sing Christmas music at a time not indicated by (2) and it's subsections
4. Failure to comply to these rules will result in ridicule by the Tower of Terror

So there you have the Christmas Music Rule. I truly hope you can all learn and apply these rules in your own lives.

I Owe You Something

So that idea I had about posting regularly again? Yeah, that didn't work out so well. The problem is the whole "life experiences" thing Dania originally wanted me to create this blog for doesn't happen so often. I'm in kind of a rut right now, in large part because of my own apathy, but also partially due to my situation in life. It's all about a waiting game for me right now, as I prepare to serve my mission. It's a great opportunity for me to get some preparation in, but it doesn't offer much in the way of anecdotes.

Anyway, an interesting thing actually did happen to me the other day. I was looking at my face in the mirror (which may come as a surprise to some of you; I do actually look in the mirror and still go out in public the way I do), when I noticed a slight change. Always before, the face staring back at me has looked rather boyish. There's still the puppy fat there, that facial hair is mostly fuzz and not scruff, and it's just got a boyish feel. It's always surprised me that people tend to think I'm older than I am. When people who don't know me learn my age they respond with disbelief. I just don't see it though. Until Sunday, when I caught a glimpse of it. I still don't buy it wholly, especially because I got that glimpse of it in a dimly lit room that was illuminated from one side only, but it was there. I'm not just a kid anymore, a realization that's been coming through more and more lately. Time to start making long-term decisions in addition to the short-term ones. Thank goodness I've got a couple of years to step back and take stock before I proceed too far in any of those decisions.