Monday : 25 July 05
Today was Pioneer Day in the Land Behind the Zion Curtain. Or “Mormon Christmas,” as refers to it. I started thinking about it and came to the conclusion that it would be more like “Mormon Thanksgiving,” since they found a place where they could live (relatively) free of the persecution of those who didn’t believe as they did.

I’ll refrain from getting on my “Colony Kid” soapbox and going on a tirade about this being a state holiday… and it getting more fanfare than the Fourth of July (in some places)… and that it isn’t even commemorative of the day that “The Great State of Deseret” became the state in the Union known as “Utah,” that day is in January. And the statehood day hasn’t had much ado about anything (let alone “nothing”) in the six years that I’ve been here.

Other than that, my big highlight of the day was getting a phone call from a friend of mine back home. We usually manage to just miss each other when we call, but today he got me. We talked for nearly 45 minutes. It was really good to hear from him and to catch up.

Stray Toasters

  • Not only did I play City of Heroes tonight, but I also have gummy worms!
  • Last night, I made the following comment in my post:

    Our waiter was attentive, responsive and just all-around, hands-down better than the toe rag who waited on us the last time.

    This morning, I received a comment asking what “toe rag” meant. I was flabbergasted. Not because the person had to ask what it meant – although, that did surprise me; maybe it’s just an East Coast thing – but because (stay with me on this one): In order to see the post and to reply to it, the person had to be online. On. The. Internet. The largest pool of information in the world. Maybe it’s just the way that I’m wired (…maybe it’s Maybelline), but I would have just looked up what it meant. And given the context in which I used the phrase, I thought that it would be painfully obvious that my opinion of the first waiter was less than “good.”

  • Japanese condom packaging art (Work safe)
  • You snowboard and think you’re the new hotness?
    Step aside.
    This guy is all about the old-school hotness.

  • For : Bollywood’s Good Girls Learn to Be Bad
  • Monday nights and ABC meant one thing in the 80s. Wait… “one thing other than football“…. MacGuyver. Check out this site and you to can (almost) make a (laser) gun out of some rubber bands, a paper clip and a pencil.
  • “I wanna be a zombie when I grow up!”

  • Troopseses! (Thanks to Nyx for showing me this.)
  • Repeat after me: “A new line of Micronauts toys will be out soon…”

I think that there was at least one other thing that I wanted to add to this, but I can’t remember what it was. Oh, well. Either I’ll remember it and use it tomorrow… or I won’t.

Namaste.

EDIT
I just remembered what it was: and posted links to this article – she on LJ, he on IRC. I was just on I-15 in Utah County this past weekend… and I missed it! (Had I not missed it, it would have been plastered all over Saturday night’s post.)

Anywho, I don’t think that quite understood just how… um… expected/common/normal/something it is for young men and women to hitch up, settle down and have kids here behind the Zion Curtain. Couples start their families in their early 20s, often shortly after the young man returns from his mission (going out into the world and spreading the gospel of the LDS Church, for those of you not in Utah). It seems to work for them, so more power to ’em! So, when the article refers to him as an “old maid,” they really weren’t kidding. (And, from what I’ve gathered from some LDS friends of mine, to be a woman and in your thirties and unmarried/childless isn’t exactly a walk in the park, either.) It was one of the (many) things – along with the lack of “chocolate people” – that amazed me when I moved here.