The Readiness Is All

Happily, we did get to go to Bombay House tonight for my birthday, and Whitney and Lindsey gave me this new friend: 

This is my twin, Henrietta Fantastic. Her name is made up of two different inside jokes that wouldn't be that funny if I explained them here but are funny, and she's a librarian. You can't see it in this picture, but she's got a book and is wearing a pink shirt under her black cardigan... which is actually what I was wearing today. She's skilled in wearing her glasses on the end of her nose and being quiet. I'm sure we're be great friends. 

Meanwhile, Kinsey has started editing some of the pictures from our photo shoot. I'm going to post a couple (with her permission and with the understanding that she's amazing and you should all admire her work) that make me especially happy. 

It started raining. 

This will be our picture when our emo band releases its first CD.

Here's the winter playlist (in the hopes that winter doesn't last too much longer):

Add to that the fact that my mom and I came up with a genius menu that includes real food that I love for dinner and some good appetizer/superbowly type foods (cream cheese shrimp dip . . . mmmm) and you have a recipe for pure awesome. 

That's all for now. Back to applications and reviews!

We frantically pulled out our film guides and decided to try for the 11:30 pm showing of a documentary called Prom Night in Mississippi. After an arduous search for parking, we managed to get into the second wait list line at numbers 10 and 11. We were shoo-ins. 

The movie was great. It was about this little town in Mississippi where they still hold segregated proms. It turns out this town is actually where Morgan Freeman was born, and he went to them in 1997 and said, "Um, this is stupid. Schools have been integrated since 1954 (although in this town it wasn't until 1970), and there is no reason for you to have a white prom and a black prom. I will pay for your prom myself if you'll have an integrated prom." And here's where it gets really ridiculous. They said no. So last year, 2008, the year we elected our first black president (remember that year?) Morgan went back again, and this time they said yes (maybe the camera crew had something to do with it) and they started planning an integrated prom. And some of the white parents STILL threw a white prom, because apparently having their white daughters dance with black boys was a recipe for their daughters' instant impregnation with mixed race children. ARGH!! 

The kids were mostly cool about it, and it seemed to be a huge success, but what really struck me is that everyone kept talking to them about how they were making history and all of this stuff, and I'm thinking, "No, history was made FIFTY YEARS AGO when we stopped with the whole 'separate but equal' thing." Better late than never, certainly, but GET A GRIP! The quote from the title here was one of the parents, whose daughter was dating a very nice black boy named Jeremy, and who was utterly ridiculous. I'm sad about how many people shared his stupid, out-of-date attitude. (He insisted he wasn't racist. He was.) 

It was a great movie. I got home at 3 am. :) 

I feel that I should also mention that Ty saw Chris Rock and the lead singer of Everclear (he admitted that he was probably the only person in America who would recognize him) while I was using the ladies room. Curses. We also stared at a guy in the wait list line who looked like he may have been someone famous, but all we could come up with was that he kind of looked like Damian Lewis or Toby Stephens or The Man from Snowy River, and he wasn't any of them. (And he may have looked like TMFSR because of the hat. I could just see him riding down that mountain!) 

Bottom line - I'm in love with Sundance, and I want to send Robert Redford a little shout out of gratitude (not to mention my dear brother, who taught the young grasshopper the ways of the wait list). 

As much as I love singing Whitney's praises though, the post is about her glasses and her insights concerning them more than it is about her hotness. 

On the first morning that Whitney woke up and put on her tres chic glasses, her vision seemed a little funny, and she thought, "Shoot! I got the wrong prescription!" However, when she took them off and put them back on again, she could tell that they really did make her vision clearer than her old pair of glasses did. It was then that a profound thought came to her: sometimes, it just takes time to get used to something new - even if it's better. 

For Whitney, this was especially profound, because she has been trying to get used to the difference between the grad program she just began and her undergraduate experience, and she realized that it really is better, but that doesn't mean it's instantly going to feel better than what she was used to. She shared her thoughts with me about some of the things I've been trying to figure out, and it turned out to be applicable to today's Relief Society lesson as well. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that it applies to virtually every change in our lives (or at least the better ones), whether it be moving to a new place or adding a new member to the family (pointed looks at a few members of my family), starting a new job or starting a new relationship. Even if we are really excited about these things, that doesn't mean they'll seem better immediately, especially if our expectations were high. We are bound to miss things about the old glasses, because we were used to them. But even if we have to go through that adjustment period where everything seems a little off, eventually, the new prescription really will be better. And eventually we will need another new prescription, because our vision will change again - and when that happens we'll probably need to give the next new thing a chance before we believe that it's also better. 

Isn't Whitney hot in her new glasses, though? I think that's good incentive for us all. :)

By the way, this is post number #299, so I can't dilly dally about my 300th post anymore. Hold your breath - I hope it ends up being amazing. 

And in conclusion - my favorite postsecrets from this week.

I've always thought that it was kind of annoying when girls got married and didn't leave their maiden name up for at least a little while. I understand if people feel differently, but sometimes I didn't know they were getting married at all, or someone from Jr. High adds me and I have no idea who they are because they are now married and have some crazy last name or whatever. (This is worse, by the way, when their picture doesn't clear things up, i.e. it's too far away to see who it is, or they are kissing their now hubby in the picture and all I see is closed eyes and lips, or it's just a random picture of something else. But I digress.) In any case, I'd prefer it if girls would leave up their maiden name as their middle name to avoid confusion, but I guess if you don't know who they married, you probably weren't close enough for it to matter anyway.

Now to my question. The latest trend I've been seeing concerning this issue involves people whose maiden names are in quotation marks. So it I did it, my name would appear as Megan 'Winegar' Pumpernickelbreadmaker. Now, maybe this is a function of facebook where you enter in your maiden name and it just puts it that way, but it looks silly to me, as if that isn't a real part of their name at all, but they are pretending for the sake of the masses. If it's going to look like that, I'd rather they just chopped out the middle name altogether. 

Yes, I have issues. I'm working through them.  

On a completely unrelated note, this is post 297 (now that I have deleted some never-posted drafts) and I still don't know what to do for my 300th post! The pressure is killing me. It's at least as stressful as my grad school personal statements, if not more so. :)

In January, I had to come back to Provo early to start student teaching. I hated the last semester before it started, so I wasn't even remotely excited, and I was not super happy about coming back to my cold, empty apartment before anyone else was back. I spent the first two weeks observing and writing lesson plans, and then just got thrown into the whole thing. It was ultimately a good, if often traumatic, experience. 

I also started making plans to go back to England, and worked as a facilitator for the program in the preparation stages. I started on my journey to being the program's Google in human form, and I loved it. 

Whitney and I went to see a play in Cedar City called "Art," at some point early in the semester, and we started to discover that we were kindred spirits (a phrase I can us in reference to Whitney because she pretty much IS Anne Shirley). This was a good thing to discover, because Miri and Lili were making wedding preparations, and Jennie didn't want to hit all of the obscure movies at international cinema with me. 

In March, I was sick for pretty much the entire month. It was delightful trying to teach through the coughing. 

I graduated in April and started the discouraging process of applying for jobs. I drove down to Utah county several times and then had several phone calls telling me that I didn't get the job. By the time I went to London, I just had to tell myself not to worry about it.

London was great, and at some point the Google thing must have gone to my head, because I decided to look into the whole librarian thing. I managed to secure myself an internship as soon as I got back, and spent many happy months working in the Music and Dance library. I moved in with Whitney, and we got really lucky in the roommate department with Amanda and Torie. Lindsey moved back to Utah, Jennie got engaged, and Miri moved to Texas. I got a new nephew and am eagerly anticipating another. I finished out the year by changing my mind about doing an online MLS program and switching all of my applications to different schools in places where I wanted to go (which meant not so much the University of Alabama). 

I've been thinking about the strange course of this year a lot lately, because for so many years it felt like I knew exactly where I was heading (at least as far as the school to work continuum was concerned) and now I feel like I'm exploding in so many different directions that I don't even know what I want. I feel good about the grad school applications, but I'm scared to death, and I keep wondering where I'll actually be in September - if I'll really leave or if something completely different will come up. I suppose that should seem exciting, all of this uncertainty, but it's making me approach 2009 a little warily. I suppose that overall 2008 was pretty wonderful, and no matter what happens, my guess is that 2009 will be as well. I just wish I could see why now. 

In any case, bring it on. I can't stand the wait much longer.