Three days before Easter

Easter is in two weeks, so I'm going to remember what I can about the Thursday before Easter.

2013. I remember a few things, but my journal entry for the day sums it up just as well:
"Today I studied out in the sun and caught up on EME [Early Modern English] readings. I went to the JFSB courtyard and sat at a table, and a jumping spider was on the table. It kept staring back at me. I worked in the library on my source check; I'm almost done.

"Tonight I went to the temple. I called mom, but she couldn't talk because she was introducing Jackie to Jan Terri. Then I went running. My route got changed since there was something going on near the field house and because there was construction on 900 E. Then tonight I watched It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown."

2012. We had an upcoming test, so we went to class for a test review. Normally, when a professor doesn't show up, it's a good excuse to leave, but since it was a test review, we wanted him there. So after waiting a while, I went to go find him. I didn't know how the geology offices worked, so I went up to the secretaries and said, "Is Dr. Nelson in here?" They said, "Is he supposed to be?" They told me where his office was, so I went over and knocked on his door. He opened and I asked if we were having a review. He went "Oh no!" His alarm apparently didn't go off. I grabbed a drink at the drinking fountain before I followed him back downstairs, and he walked into the classroom with a sheepish look on his face. My journal entry basically says what I just said:
"Today I slept in until almost 10:00. I went to class. In Geology Professor Nelson didn't show up. I went to the Geology department and found out his office wasn't in there. They told me where it was, so I went and knocked on the door. Apparently he had turned his alarm off and lost track of time. If it hadn't been a review, we would have left. I made Hawaiian haystacks for dinner."

2011. It was spring break with my family, and we drove to the LaBrea tar pits. We looked at all the stuff in the park, and then we went in the museum. When we were walking in, a hobo was outside, singing some song about Minnie and Mickey (since Allie was wearing a Minnie Mouse hat) and said "hice" as plural of "house" to rhyme with "mice." Then he said, "Do you know that if something has less than four legs, you add s to make it plural, but if there's four or more, you make it -ice? That's why you have lice and mice but spouses and houses. It's the most obscure rule in the English language." (Today I would have said to him, "No, that's not the rule, it has to do with their etymology, because in Old English they had different inflections.") I was disappointed that despite the museum's insistence that there were no dinosaurs in the tar, they had lots of dinosaur things in the gift shop, likely reinforcing misconceptions. I liked looking at all the fossils, and Matt, Nan, and Allie all seemed anxious to leave. I was amused by the warning sign on the door of their courtyard.

We left, and when we got back to our car, someone had put their bumper up directly touching ours, since we had a big car and were slightly sticking out. We laughed that they had a ticket. Matt said we should take it and make them get a bigger fine, but we didn't. While driving through cities, Nan pointed out a rainbow store, and I saw a sign that said "Facebook cigarettes"; Matt said it was probably because Facebook is addicting. We drove out of California and stopped at McDonald's for lunch. Our destination was Las Vegas, for some reason. When we got there, we checked in at our hotel and went out to the strip, for some reason. We had dinner at Rainforest Cafe. Our waitress asked where we were from, and when we explained, she asked Allie, "You know that big castle-y building,"--my mom prompted, "the temple"--and the waitress said she was married there. My mom said they were married there too. Then that led to a conversation in which Allie said to Matt "You're not Mormon," and my mom said, "We'll get him one day," to which Matt said, "Ignoring." After dinner, we went to the gift shop, and I wanted a walrus bouncy ball, but then realized that it cost $4, an outlandish price for a small bouncy ball. We went to the Coke and M&M stores. I was disappointed with the lack of holiday stuff at the M&M store. We left, and there was a girl sitting on a corner, playing an accordion and singing with an operatic voice. I think a black guy representing a church did some street performance. I remember crossing the street and hearing M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes," a song I had never heard other than on Pandora.

2010. I showed up to my math class, and one girl said to another classmate that they had seen Elder Holland walking past the JFSB. He believed it, but then she told him it was just an April Fools' joke. Our internet was down, so I called to get it fixed, and I had my planner there to write down anything I might need to know. When I told my phone number to the guy who answered, I wrote my own number in my planner. (I only remember this happened this day because I put it on Facebook.)

2009. We tracted the street behind the house where we lived, one that I think only had a dirt road. We stopped at one house where I noticed a JW flyer--their typical "Come celebrate the death of Jesus," the only thing they celebrate--and I always felt a little uncomfortable seeing JW flyers, because it meant people would probably be even less inclined to talk to us, having recently been visited by a religion. There were some frisky horses at this house. Across the street, a 20-something girl answered and we set up a return appointment. We went to one house where the lady answered and said rudely, "Yes?" I said, "We're the..." and she said, "I know who you are. Get off my property, all of you!" So we left, and Elder Kitchen waved back as we left and she yelled again, "Stay away, all of you!" Elder Kitchen said, "That's the rudest person I've ever met!" At the house across the street, the wife was nice but not interested, and she seemed sympathetic toward us when we told her what had happened at the previous house. I remember when Elder Kitchen called our district leader that night, he told him how I wanted the rude lady's house to burn down. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today we walked around which wasn't my favorite. We visited the Nelsons, in addition to some others. After dinner we tracted. Most of the people were nice, except for one lady, who demanded us to get off her property and never to come back. But before her we talked to a young woman who wants to ask us questions so we're going back on Saturday. We also met Dave Smith, a less-active member whose records are not on the list."

2008. What I remember about the details in the journal entry below are that Brother Coats lived in a house next to the Little Spokane River, and I gave an Easter spiritual thought, and that Sister Berger said she had done alterations for missionaries before.
"The first day of spring was a cold one, with snow and hail ruining our car cleaning. We met with Duane and Vickie who are still excited. Then we met with Richard Swinkels, who might come to church, then Brother Smith took us to Subway, then to see Brother Coats, a less-active widower, then the Bergers, but only Sister Berger was there.  

2007. We were in Tennessee, and this might have been the day we went to some kind of museum during the day. We had some Reese's Pieces eggs, which Ya-ping wanted to keep hidden from Preston.

2006. We were in southern Utah for spring break, and this may have been the day we were driving around in Canyonlands.

2005. This might have been the day when in my math class, one of my classmates shared some of the chocolate bunny her grandma had given her. Ms. Jordan said, "This is good chocolate!" Although I liked it, I could tell it wasn't really quality chocolate.

2004. It was spring break, and I'm sure I would have read some of Farewell to Manzanar, and it might have been the day I might Easter sugar cookies.

2003. I probably ate a popsicle.

1999. This was probably the day we were supposed to write about our best Easter ever. I explained that the Easters I remembered weren't very good, so I wanted to write a story instead. I wanted to write a story in which I got a basket full of multicolored chicks and bunnies, but that seemed too cheesy, so instead I said I got "just what I wanted--pets," and I knew it was a terrible story.

1998. Our class went to see a play adaptation of James and the Giant Peach at a children's theater. For the peach, they had an orange balloon grow on a tree, and then they had a giant cloth-covered thing that was meant to be the giant peach. I thought it looked really bad. For the cloud men, they had weird jugglers who looked nothing like clouds. Then we got back to school and ate our lunches in the classroom; Mrs. Slagowski had a sandwich with sprouts on it. We watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail and we had promises of Easter candy. Logan Smith kept saying the Easter Bunny was coming, and Mrs. Fisher said there was no such thing. I think Logan knew that, but I was still surprised at her directness. When we got our candy-filled eggs, there were weird candies that were like Fruity Pebbles but they were hard candies. Mrs. Fisher brought some chicks, and I remember watching the chicks after school on the porch in front of the school, a porch that is no longer there. A high-functioning special needs girl, Heidi, was sitting on a bench, eating a hard-boiled egg she had gotten in her class. I think my cousins came over that night for a sleepover, and we slept in my tepee.

1997. This might have been the first day I returned to school after breaking my arm, and Tally Prosence was the first to see me, but maybe that was a different day. Our teacher, Miss Slater, brought her pet bunny to class. It had a name from its previous owner, but she just called it Bunny. We had made little baskets out of strawberry cartons, and during lunch she hid them all over the room. She had a few people search at a time, and I was in the first group (maybe because of my broken arm). I was the first one to find my basket. I took it back to my desk, but I didn't start eating my candy until I saw Nicole Nutter start eating hers.

1995. We got bunny-shaped marshmallows, and we watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail, but we had to stop it at the Christmas scene.