Naming Rights

My office sits in a little alcove in Building A near 8 or 9 other offices. At IVCC, they don't arrange faculty members by discipline. In an effort to avoid cliquishness, they mix it up. So I'm next to a biology teacher, down from the philosophy instructor, around the corner from the French teacher, etc. It's an eclectic bunch and we all get along just fine. (Except for the biology teacher who, as I have previously blogged, insists on conducting all of her phone conversations on speaker.) 

Anyway, we all share this little mini-fridge and microwave in the back hallway near the printer. Since I arrived here three  years ago, the fridge has been filthy. Spilled pop and drops of spaghetti sauce speckled the bottom. The same three bottles of half-drank (drunk?) water sat in the shelves on the door. Ancient ice encrusted the tiny freezer.

Generally, I didn't care. I'm not a clean freak and as long as I felt okay about placing my Tupperware inside and didn't feel like something was going to crawl up and try to  break into it, I was fine. Three weeks ago, however, the glacier that had been growing in the freezer began to expand. Our tiny fridge was entering its own ice age and it got to the point where it was difficult to close the door. 

So, man of action that I am, I decided I'd take care of it. I left a note telling everyone to take whatever they wanted to save by Friday. Then I had it hauled to a floor sink in a janitor's closet where it sat and defrosted overnight. Saturday morning, Parker and I returned to the school while Suzy and the older two were at a church thing in Joliet. Armed with 409 and a lot of paper towels, I cleaned that sweltering pit of filth to the best of my ability. Once it was all clean and shiny, I returned it to its spot, happy we could not only close the door but close it on a fridge that didn't look like a hoarder's house. 

A few colleagues stopped by and said thanks. They marveled at its cleanliness, commented on how long it had been since it was in this kind of shape. And that was that. It got done and everyone was happy. 

Then someone decided to give me naming rights. Here at the school, some area rich guy gave us a million dollars to outfit the new community technology center with some fancy stuff. Due to his generosity, the building will now be named after his dad. Someone in my group of offices thought my fridge cleaning was worthy of similar naming rights. Behold:

Thanks to some peer with a label maker, I am temporarily immortal.

Have You Heard This Song?

Weird, kind of haunting, and a complete ear-worm.

Ha Ha

Every time one of Maryn's hillbilly friends makes her feel bad because she doesn't wear a bikini to pool parties or come over on Sundays to play or because she doesn't play sports, I want her to hand that friend a card with this cartoon printed on it:

Easter

It's Easter Sunday. What better way to celebrate than blogging?

It's been a nice day so far - Easter baskets for the kids this morning, pleasant times at church, the ham and cheesy potato bonanza awaiting us for dinner - things are good.

There have been several things I've meant to blog about over the last couple of weeks but just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I'll just adopt a monthly digest form of this blog. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, here are a couple of things:

General Conference: I enjoyed more than I have in a while. Thanks to DVR, I actually watched all the sessions and stayed awake. That usually helps when it comes to taking in the messages. As usual, President Uchdorf and Elder Holland knocked it out of the park, talk-wise. I found the following on Facebook and it made me laugh:


There were other talks that I found meaningful as well. The overall message I received is that I need to focus on my relationship with God, my testimony, my prayers, my humility and not worry about much of anything else. I heard a lot of "Don't get so wrapped up in the church (the people, the programs, the gossip, the shortcomings) that you don't pay attention to the Gospel which is the thing that actually matters. Worry about striving for your own perfection before worrying about others' lack of perfection."

Part of the reason I was able to stay awake for General Conference is that I spent most of it moving heavy dressers and assembling beds. We decided it was time for Maryn and Avery to have their own rooms so I spent most of my spring break doing that. We had a tv room and a living room - and the living room never got used for anything. So we moved the tv in there, moved the master bedroom into the old tv room, Maryn into our old room, and Avery kept the room she used to share with Maryn. It doesn't sound that hard but it involved a lot of moving, hauling, dusting, etc. (By the way, if you are ever under the impression that you are a clean person, try looking under your bed, behind your nightstand, etc. and you will find that you most certainly are not.) So now both girls have their own space and seem to enjoy having a space to retreat to. It makes them seem older and I guess that's more or less a good thing. They are older.

We've seen quite a few movies over the last couple of weeks so allow me to sum up:


Something Borrowed - the lamest of the lame. Trite, predictable, bland, not worth the dollar twenty five it takes for Redbox to haul it out of the cauldron of mediocrity from whence it springs. Can we just agree that Kate Hudson's presence in a movie pretty much guarantees a high reading from the Suck-o-meter?


John Carter - Sigh. Not bad for someone who enjoys sci-fi and has read the books but, as a stand-alone film, kind of a failure. I'd love to write a comparison paper one day about directors who got their start in animation and then moved to live action. Brad Bird, director of The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouie, went on to direct the very successful Mission Impossible 4. Andrew Adamson directed Shrek and Shrek 2 and then got tapped for the first two Chronicles of Narnia movies. Then came Andrew Stanton who directed Finding Nemo and Wall-E, both wonderfully successful films. He got picked to helm the John Carter adaption and managed to lose Disney 200 million dollars. Too bad for him and too bad for those of us who were looking forward to a cool, long-lived franchise.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 - Sweet fancy Moses. Please kill me.

The Hunger Games - Pretty well done. It's a very economical telling of the story, even at 2 hours and 20 minutes. The casting is good and the effects are okay. It's surprisingly affecting. I'd read the books and knew what was going to happen but I still felt anxious and worked-up as the story went along.


The Muppets - Sublime. Honestly, I know it's probably just because of my sentimental attachment to the characters and material, but I loved this movie more than anything else I've seen this year. If Jim Henson were still alive, I'd write him a letter just to thank him for making something wonderful, sweet, and hilarious that I have enjoyed literally for as long as I can remember. My very earliest memories are of sitting in front of the tv with my brother, Jason, and my parents watching the Muppet Show. The jokes are funny, the cameos are great, the songs are hummable - I loved it so, so much. (There is a barbershop quartet version of Nirvana's "Smells Like a Teen Spirit." Brilliant.)

In non-movie news, I read Ann Pachett's State of Wonder. I'd loved Truth and Beauty so much, I was eager to move on to something else I found equally moving. Unfortunately, it didn't happen and I'm sad about that. Some books move you, and others do not. Ah well.

One other thing. Yesterday I got a letter from Brother Scott Samuelson, my former English professor at Ricks College. I took a couple of lit classes from him back in the day and somewhere along the way, we became friends rather than just teacher and student. I try to make time to visit him on campus or at his house whenever we make it back to Rexburg. We trade stories and poems. He gives me advice on how to be a teacher, how to be a grad student, how to be a husband and father. I give him . . . not much in comparison. Well, I sent him a copy of my story, "The Iron Door," recently and in response he sent me a very nice letter accompanied by one of his watercolors. He and his wife spend weekend afternoons driving around the country surrounding Rexburg. Shauna drives and Scott either reads aloud to her (which is how they read my story together) or he paints. Since Scott often understands things about me, I think he knows how much I miss Idaho's landscape. So he sent me a small piece of it. It was a nice thing to get in the mail:


P.S. On an entirely unrelated note, I just looked at my blog dashboard and discovered that this is my 666th post. It doesn't feel particularly devilish but devilishness is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.