July 1-5, 2014

Memorial Day weekend has me thinking about patriotic holidays--specifically the Fourth of July, so I'm going to remember what I can about the Fourth of July last year.

July 1. I got up early and called my boss, and he told me he wanted me to create his Wikipedia page. He wanted me to look at other Mormon historians and pattern the page after theirs. I'd never done any Wikipedia work before, so I spent the day learning how to do it and writing his bio. That night I pulled down my bicycle and pumped up the tires, and I went biking. I biked near Lofty Lane in North Salt Lake and passed a family lighting fireworks. This is part of my journal entry for the day (parts of it have things I shouldn't put on the internet):
"I got up earlier than usual today because I needed to call Reid. He wants me to create his Wikipedia page, so I've been trying to do that.
"During my lunch break, I went to Winegar's. After work, I did some light organizing, then played some Nintendo.
"I almost went running, but then I decided to go biking instead. It was fun to be on a bike again. I had to get on the sidewalk to avoid some fireworks. Then I lifted weights, and then I watched Bewitched."

July 2. This might have been the day when I told my dad that a lot of the work I had been doing on Wikipedia had been lost. He said "Oh no" like it was a horrible thing, but I wasn't that worried about it. I was wearing my blue-and-white-striped socks with red stars when I went biking again that night. I went up to Gary Way via Centennial and went on David Way. I wasn't gone very long. My dad seemed disappointed I went for such a short time and said he wouldn't have closed the garage if he knew how soon I would come back. Late that night, my mom came home with my sister-in-law Ya-ping, my niece Allie, my three nephews, and Ya-ping's niece.


July 3. I was working from home, as usual. When I was working on the Wikipedia page, I got this funny Captcha image, so I put it on Facebook:

My aunt, Sue, was going to the zoo, so she invited my nephews to go to it. Preston and Franklin didn't want to go, but Nathaniel did, so my mom took him there. When she came home, she said that it was funny to see him shy when he met up with Peter. I reminded her that he was shy at first when we met them that summer but quickly warmed up. Later Peter came back with him, and it had taken him a very long time to get to our house because he got extremely turned around. As soon as he got to our house, Preston and Franklin became very noisy, so I had to go work in my room. Then Sue and Nicole and the babies Nathan "Wallace" and John "Bruce" came over to go up to the fireworks with us. At one point, I went downstairs and my mom and Susanne told me Nathaniel had been talking about his other moms. Susanne said, "How many was it he had? [Some number in the thousands]?" and Nathaniel chimed in, "And wifty," which we all found quite funny. We walked up to the fireworks, and I brought my patriotic Goldfish with us. Ya-ping made the boys take jackets, even though it was the middle of the summer, which I thought was ridiculous. We passed the Anderson house, and Sue stayed behind and talked with them. Preston was getting way ahead, even though he didn't know where we were going. At the top of the hill just as we enter the golf course, Franklin was bawling, and I think it was because Preston had hit him with his jacket and the zipper hit him in the face. I think Franklin's crying was excessive, but I told Preston he needed to be careful, and he gave some excuse I didn't entirely buy. After we had secured a spot on the grass, Nathaniel needed to go to the bathroom, so I took him. There were long lines, and he kept asking why it was taking so long. We had an interesting conversation, which went something like this:
"Why is the sun in half?"
"That's not the sun, that's the moon."
"Where did the sun go?"
"It went down already."
"Is the sun made out of fire?"
"Kind of." (Keep in mind that I was talking to a four-year-old.)
"Is it made out of lava?"
"Nope."
"Preston said it was made out of lava, but he was lying. Is the moon made out of fire?"
"No, the moon is made out of rocks."
"Why did they make it like that?"
"Because a really long time ago, in space, there were lots of pieces that stuck together and became rocks, and then lots of rocks stuck together and made the moon. And the earth."
"That happened a really long time ago?"
Allie met her friend Katy and played with her. We were missing "Wallace," so we assumed he had gone with Allie. A little later, Peter suddenly got up and ran over to catch Wallace, who was wandering on his own in a large group of people. When Allie came back to us, we said, "Did you know that Nathan followed you?" She said yeah, it apparently not having occurred to her that she should have made sure he was still with her, so we told her to be more careful. Susanne distributed glow sticks to us, and Nicole gave some Goldfish to John. We could hear distant music playing. One song was Pharrell's "Happy," and Preston said, "Why is the 'Happy' song from Despicable Me 2 so popular?" When Katy Perry's "Firework" was playing, we knew the fireworks would start soon. During the fireworks, Nathaniel got a little scared, saying, "They're getting woser [closer]!" He cuddled up to Sue for protection. Then when they were over, we walked home. I carried John in his stroller down the rocky hill.

July 4. That morning, Preston went outside and got stung by a wasp. He came inside and said he was stung; he looked at the sting and said he still had the stinger in him because he could see a little black dot. Ya-ping looked at it and also saw the dot, but I looked at it, and I said I thought it was just where some blood had filled in where he had been poked and then dried. Franklin said, surprised, "You know about science?!" I made a Facebook status that day that said, "I love America! But I don't feel that I have a right to say I'm proud to be American, because I didn't do anything to be American." Sue was at our house again and said she thought it was funny. I think she also complimented my flag socks. I invited the boys to watch a Fourth-of-July-themed movie, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July, but initially only Preston wanted to. He asked me when it was made; I said 1980, and he said, "It's pretty good for its age." Later, the other boys came in. When the bearded villain Winterbolt flew in on his sleigh, and Rudolph said, "It's a sleigh all right, but it's not Santa," Nathaniel said, "It is Santa Claus!" I had to explain it just looked like him. At some point that day, our AC broke. My mom and Ya-ping had gone shopping, and I stayed with the boys. Franklin saw a Monopoly game in our closet, and he wanted to play it, but I said it would be hard and complicated, but we could try it. Well, both Preston and Franklin were distracted by watching cartoons, so I basically had to do everything, which was annoying and stressful. Franklin wanted to buy every property he could, but Preston didn't. At one point Franklin said, "I like this game. You said it was hard and complicated," and I thought it was weird he said that, since I was the one doing everything in the game. Mom and the girls came home with hot dogs and a watermelon. Ya-ping cut the watermelon the weirdest way I have ever seen. She put the Monopoly game away, which I had left out in case the boys wanted to continue playing, but she put it away hastily, and I had to go back and organize all the money again. That evening, she was on the patio talking to David, and I was lighting the fire pit to roast the last patriotic marshmallows with the boys. When I started the fire, it flared up, and Ya-ping gasped--then I heard her saying my nickname in Chinese on the phone, presumably telling David why she gasped. We had s'mores, but some of the boys just wanted marshmallows. That night we went to Susanne's house to light fireworks. The first ones were parachutes, and the boys were arguing over who got them, since some exploded or disappeared. Sue said she would take them and later that evening there would be a number-guessing game to see who got them. My mom said she was just going to tell them it didn't matter, but Sue's idea was to make them forget about it. (It worked.) Susanne's neighbors had huge fireworks. I shared my red, white, and blue Tic-Tacs with the boys and everyone else, and when I was waving my sparkler, I pretended I was conducting music. Then we went home and I got on my computer, listening to a few of my Fourth of July songs before bed. Here's my journal entry for the day:
"An OK Fourth. I stayed home most of the day. When the girls went shopping, I stayed home with the boys. Preston watched Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July with me. He asked how old it was, then said, 'It's pretty good for its age.' Then Franklin wanted to play Monopoly, which kind of stressed me out. Then I had to grill on the barbecue, because Pops was trying to fix the broken AC. Then we went to Nan's and lit little fireworks while her neighbors did big ones."

July 5. My family was going to a wedding for my first cousin once removed, and we stopped at Susanne's house beforehand. I, on the other hand, was going back to Provo. I found that my clip-on sunglasses had the plastic coating melt so that they had a permanent smudge on them. I got back to my apartment, which was a mess because it had just been painted. I decided to try out Spotify, so I downloaded the program and listened to some odds and ends. I think I was discovering how useful a tool it would be to find holiday music, and I listened to Ed Sheeran's "Sing."

Real-life Snopes stories

On the internet, all sorts of crazy stories circulate. It's pretty easy to check Snopes.com and say, "Yeah, that didn't happen."

But on occasion, I've heard these stories repeated in real life, not on the internet (although in many cases I'm sure they originated there). So here are some I've heard in real life, and not just on the internet.

On Easter in 2010, I was at my aunt's house, and she was telling us how my cousin April shared an experience that supposedly happened to her friend. Her friend's son had Down syndrome or something, and one day he called his mom frantic at work and said, "Mom, everything's OK, but you need to come home right now. I've got a troll locked in the closet." Well, the mom went home, and it wasn't a troll, of course, but a midget Jehovah's Witness. They had knocked on the door and the boy took the small person and trapped him. My aunt said that the JWs weren't mad about the situation. Later, I talked to my mom about the story, and she had heard it too, and said that the JWs were actually mad and wanted to sue. These contradictions aren't the only red flag to this story. I think it would be pretty hard for an intellectually disabled person to wrangle someone into a closet, especially if a full-statured person was accompanying the small person. Lo and behold, it's on Snopes.

In winter 2012, I had a semantics and pragmatics class in which our professor told a story that allegedly happened to a past general authority who had held a prominent position in a California city. They were hosting a dinner with a lot of important people and had some expensive salmon flown in. While they were making preparations for dinner, they found their cat on the table, eating the salmon. Well, it wouldn't do to serve the cat-eaten portion, so they put the cat outside and cut out the part of the fish it had been eating. The guests came and left, and then the hosts went outside and found their cat dead. Worrying it must be the salmon, they called someone about it, and they said they couldn't take chances, that the salmon might be poisonous. They had to call all of their guests and tell them they needed to have their stomachs pumped because their cat had eaten the salmon and died. It was obviously a painfully humiliating experience. The next day, their neighbor told them that he had run over their cat (which is how it died), but he didn't want to interrupt their important dinner party to tell them that. He then said that that story had been incorporated into a movie. I really wanted this one to be true, since I heard it from a professor who seemed he would do more fact checking, but it's on Snopes as well.

On December 20 last year, I went to a game night where a girl told a story that happened to a friend, or maybe a friend of a friend. She had filled up her gas tank, and an attendant in the store called on a loudspeaker to her that her card didn't work and she needed to come inside to pay. When she got inside, she learned that the attendant called her inside because someone had gotten in her car and was lurking in her backseat. The girl telling this story provided it as a warning to everyone. Then someone else said they heard that if someone drives without headlights, you shouldn't flash your lights at them, because it's part of a gang initiation--the new gang member has to attack whoever flashes their lights. I said, "That's sounds like a story you'd read on Snopes.com." I went home and looked at both of them, and they both were there. In fact, the gas station story had been quoted almost verbatim.

I'm sure there have been other times, but these are all I can remember now.

Baby birds

With it being spring, I thought I would reflect on times I've seen baby birds in the "wild."

When I was about six years old, we had birds that built nests in our roof. On one occasion, we found a baby bird lying on the ground, chirping. That was the first time I had ever seen a baby bird and learned how ugly they are. My mom called a vet, or maybe animal control, to ask what to do. We put it on a stack of toilet paper in the front yard and left it in the sun. But it died soon after that.

On my mission in spring 2009, we visited a less-active member who had a bird nest on her fence, so we looked at the babies. They had bugs on their faces.

During spring term of 2010, I came home from grocery shopping one afternoon and discovered a baby bird lying in a parking spot in our parking lot. It was placed at an exact position where a car's tires would go, and I didn't want it to get run over. I called animal control and asked what they recommended. They said they didn't take birds, and the guy told me just to leave it in case the mother decided she wanted it again. But after I hung up, I realized that I had forgotten one of the reasons I was calling. I couldn't just leave it, because it would get squashed by a car, but I didn't want to call back. So I put on a rubber glove and moved the bird to the grass next to the parking lot. I told my roommate Alex about what I had done, and then he went outside to look at it. I looked out our bedroom window, and he looked up at me and frowned. But then he looked more closely and smiled at me, indicating that it was still alive then. Later, it was gone. I assume it died and the groundskeepers got rid of it.

I think that's all. (I wanted to do a short one this week.)

Charlie's Chocolate Factory

When I was in second grade, we had writing times when we would write stories. I loved Roald Dahl, so I wrote a sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Here is a transcription of my story. I took many of the elements directly from the books, not really understanding the jokes of the book; for example, I thought Willy Wonka was genuinely going deaf, instead of pretending not to hear.

CHARLIE'S chocolate factory
CHARACTERS:
CHARLIE BUCKET, MR. WONKA, MR. BUCKET, MRS. BUCKET, GRANDPA JOE, GRANDMA Josephene, GRANDMA GOERGINA, GRANDPA GOERGE, OOMPA LOOMPAS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. PARTY AT THE WHITE HOUSE P 2
2. WILLY WONKA'S DEAD! P 5
3. SUPER SUCKERS! P 9
4. N-Suckers and square pops P 12
5. Mr. Wonka's funeral P 15

1. PARTY AT THE WHITE House
"Welcome, Mr. Wonka," Said President Gilligrass. "I'm very proud to meet you." "So am I." said Mr. Wonka. A bee fly flew in Mr. Wonka's ear. "Get out you stupid fly!" Snapped Mr. Wonka.
"Oh," Said President Gilligrass. "I have invented a fly killer. See. This is how it works.
[Image]
[2]

The fly climbs up the ladder and sees sugar in the bowl, so he climbs down the string and when he's at the bottom he says 'Ho ho, they want me to go in there.' So he climbs up the string. But I have left out one of the rungs out on the other ladder, so he falls and breaks his neck."
"Bravo! Bravo!" said Mr. Wonka, but Charlie, who had more sense than that, said, "Mr. President, the fly probably wouldn't go on that, and anyways, if he did, on the spot where you left the rung out, he would
[3]

fly and not break his neck."
"Oh," he said, "I never thort thought of that."
They went on wit
"Exactly what language were you speaking in Space Hotel .U.S.A.?" Asked President Gilligrass.
"Uh-uh-uh-uh-u---" "Oompa loompish?" asked Charlie. "Certainly not," said Mr. Wonka. "It's too close to english."
"Oh," said Charlie, and the party went on.
[4]

2. Willy Wonka's dead!
"We must go back to the factory," Said Mr. Wonka. "Bye," said President Gilligrass. "Mr. Wonka," said Grandma Josephene, "remember to call your ear doctor when we get back."
"I get deafer every day so remind me to call my ear doctor when we get back"
"Never mind, that's what I said." They went out side and got in the helicopter.
[5]

"I can't wait until I get back in bed," Said Grandpa Goerge. "Oh brother," Said Mr. Wonka. "you get out of bed for a party then you get back in bed."
"You meddling old mackerel," yelled Grandma Goergina. "Let's just get in the helicopter," said Mr. Wonka. One hour passed.  Then a mouse said to charlie, "There are two holes in here, and two of them are better than one."
"Mr. Wonka," said Charlie, "You know how you said two
[6]

[image]
holes are better than one? Well, I just heared heered heard a mouse say that."
"See, it's true."
Then they got back to the factory. "Mr. Wonka," said Grandma Josephene. "remember to call your ear doctor!"
"I get deafer every day," said Mr. Wonka. "Call your ear doctor!" Mr. Wonka went
[7]

towards the telephone. Then he croaked and fell down dead. "Oh no," said Charlie. I have to take care  of the factory now."
[8]

3. SUPER SUCKERS!
I'm going to make something, charlie thought. So he went to the inventing room. He put some rasberries and strawberry seeds in the pot, put the tempreture on 356° feranhite. In a minute there was a sucker shaped like this:
[image]
It's a pretty weird sucker, Isn't it? Well charlie sucked on
[9]

that sucker for 30 minutes, then he was finished. Then he made another one, but this time, it took 30 seconds. He ran to the Chocolate room with the Chocolate river and Chocolate waterfall. But this time, he ran twice as fasat. (Grandma Josephene, Goerginea, Grandpa Goerge were all in bed.)
[image]
[10]

"Grandma Josephene," yelled Charlie "I will give you this sucker and you will be able to run around." Grandma Josephene took the sucker and sucked on it for one hour, then Jumped five feet off the bed and ran around.
[11]

4. N- Suckers and Sqaure pops
I want to see how strong I can be, thought Charlie. He went into the inventing room. He tried to make a Super Sucker, but he forgot the recipe. This time, he put strawberries and rasberry seeds and turned the tempreture to 354°. It took 15 seconds this time. He sucked on it for 15 minutes, then he was done. He tried to run, but
[12]

he ran the same speed he ran before he had the Super Sucker. "I will call this an N-Sucker because it's the first letter of normal and it would be dumb to call it Normal Suckers. He made one for Grandma Jose phene. "Thank you dear," said Grandma Josephene. Then Charlie made another sucker, nobody knows how he did it, but this is what it looked like:
[image]
It's a cube, isn't it.
[13]

(This is charlie's chocolate factory.) [Inserted because another story was in the notebook]
He sucked on the sucker. When he was done he was all square.
[image]
[14]

5. Mr. WONKA'S FUNERAL
Charlie went to show his Grandparents. "We must get you in shape," said Grandma Goergina. "Do a somersault." Charlie tried to do one, but since he was sqaure, he stood on his head.
[image]
"Uh oh," said Charlie. "Today is Mr. Wonka's funeral, And I wo'nt be able
[15]

to go to it,"
"Do'nt worry dear," said Grandma Goergina. "We'll round you out."
"But how will you?" Asked Charlie.
"I'll rub your head," said Grandpa Joe. "But how will you if I'm up-side-down?"
"I'll pick you up," he said. And then Charlie felt himself being twirled in the air.
[image]
[16]

"You're rounder!" exclaimed Grandpa Joe. So he kept twirling him.
[What follows is an extremely OCD depiction of every single body part and an attempt to show how Charlie gradually got rounder. Eventually I got tired of doing that.]
[images]
[17]

[images]
[18]

"Youre very round!" shouted the twerler.
[images]
[19]

[images]
Now I'll show the eye, so you can get a better view.
[image]
[20]

[images]
[21]

[images]
See Charlie [inserted because the story was interrupted by "My Leprechaun"]
[22]

Charlie
from #23 in eyes
[images]
[23]

[images]
"You're very round" shouted Grandpa Joe. It was true.
[image]
Now im going to show the lips.
[24]

[images]
[25]

[image]
They did his neck, which took 4 twirls. The did his armpits, which 2 for each one. Then they did his hands.
[images]
See Factory [another interrupted story]
[26]

Factory
[images]
[27]

[images]
Well he was twirled many times and when he was round, he was glad, for he was very dizzy.
[image: "The world is turning"]
"Let's g to Mr. Wonka's funeral now, said charlie.
[28]

His parents came in when he said "Funeral now."
"What Funeral?" his mother asked. "Mr. Wonka's" he answered. So they started to leave, but an oompa-loompa said, "Where are you going, Charlie?"
"Willy's Funeral," he said
"The drums," said Grandpa Joe
Than the oompa Loompas began to sing:
"Boo Hoo, Are Willy Wonka's Dead. But Today We Will see him again with Charlie."
[29]

"Short Song!" Said Charlie.
Then they left. At the Viewing, Charlie could see him smile.
[image: "Wonka Bar"]
In the funeral he heard the person in charge say, "The 5 Children who got the golden tickets will speak. Augustus Gloop." The fat
[image]
See Charlie's
[30]

Charlie's
boy went up. "I hated Mr. wonka, because he would not let me drink out of a chocolate river! I'm glad he died! He deserved it!" then it was veruca salt. "I hated that Mr.! He would not let me have a squirrel!"
Then it was Violet Bearegaurde. "I hated him! He wouldn't let me have a piece of Gum!"
Then Mike Teavee. "Willy! I hate him, because he wouldn't let me go on television!"
[images on side]
[no page number]

Then Charlie. "I loved that wonka man. He let me own the factory." [image on side]
[no page number]

[image]
The Headstone
After the funeral they they put him in the hurse.
[image]
Charlie had to make up a headstone. So he did.
[no page number]

This Is What It was
FRONT
[image: "MR. WONKA THE BEST CHOCALATE Maker In THE WORLD"]
BACK
[image: "WONKA BAR"]
[no page number]

[image]
"NICE stone!" said Grandpa Joe.

This is as far as I got on the book. If I recall correctly, the OCD part with all the body parts took me until the last day of school. Everything after that was written at the beginning of summer vacation.