Dream Shard Blog: The Scintillating Adventures of Our Household

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Tue
26
Sep '06

We have water, whoo hoo!

On Sunday afternoon John and I were lounging in our living room post-church wondering why we heard water running through our pipes. Nothing was on in the house. Nothing was on outside the house. Where was that sound of water coming from?

After extensively checking and rechecking everything we could think might be the culprit we finally got our home teacher over. He’s sprinkler foreman at BYU, so he knows his pipes. He pulled off the top of the water main outside the house and pointed down. Sure enough, there was water gushing out of a broken pipe. He got a shovel and dug out a nice big hole to get a better look, and he said that he’d have to get a mini track hoe to dig an even bigger hole to actually fix it. He thought he wouldn’t be able to get to it until Wednesday.

We calculated that our water bill was at least $200 from the water lost during the week before we found the leak, so we turned off our water on Sunday night. At first having no water made me grumpy. But it is surprising how quickly you can adapt. I feel almost pioneer-ish. I even showered in the RB today on campus! I actually really like showering there, even with the whole lack of privacy thing because of the open showers. It’s like showering outside. Or in a palace. Without doors.

Except that today when I went I discovered that they’ve added shower curtains! They’re only on a few, seemingly randomly selected showers. But still, that’s progress. I haven’t seen shower curtains there in all the seven years I’ve been around BYU.

So I had a lovely palatial outdoor experience with a shower curtain in the RB. Came home, and our hometeacher was able to fix our water tonight after all!

John just came in and turned on the faucet. Water! Blessed, beautiful, wonderful, wet wet water, all ours to drink and bathe in and cook with and it’s all coming out of the faucet like it’s supposed to!

Conclusion: I can be a pioneer woman when required, and mostly ungrumpily, too. But life is so much better with running water!

Wed
20
Sep '06

Update

So we’ve been a little out of touch with our blog lately. That should change.

Whether “that should change” means “that shall change” or “it would be nice if that changed, but I can’t control the fates” remains to be seen.

Also, some have wondered why we don’t have links to all our wonderful friends’ blogs. The answer is: It’s John’s fault.

Okay, no, it’s actually my fault for not being as brilliant with working computer code as he is. And since altering code is the only way to add links to the side of this page (versus pushing a button so the links magically appear) we’ve gotten up just a couple and we’ll work to get the rest on ASAP.

Rest assured, we love you anyway. And sometimes we even check out your blog.

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Mysteries of the Woman, Part 1

Why do we women…

…buy a bunch of bananas because we know they’re good for us and then eat one and let the rest brown on the countertop because we don’t ever feel in the proper banana-eating mood and end up tossing them out once they’re black and totally inedible?
…go out and buy a bunch of bananas again even after last week when we threw out the previous bunch, minus one?
…never get around to making the sixteen loaves of banana bread possible from the umpteen frozen bananas tucked in freezer when were too guilt-stricken to throw away more black bananas than already have?

Sat
16
Sep '06

Peter Breinholt

Sundance

Last Friday we went up into Provo Canyon to Sundance to see Peter Breinholt in concert. I keep thinking about it, even though it was over a week ago, because I’m so glad we went when we did. Peter had concerts last Friday night, Saturday night, and then they added a bonus concert last night because there was so much demand for tickets.

We were thinking of going to the Saturday night concert but we didn’t want the concert to interfere with the BYU game that afternoon. Good thing we went last Friday instead. It turns out it was the only night with decent weather. We dressed in long sleeves and took up our goat-hair blanket from Guatemala (that thing could keep an ice cube from melting). We bought bench seats, which are first-come-first-serve, so we went up early and got good spots in the middle of the fourth row. It was fun to snuggle under the blanket, under the stars, listening to happy folksy music.

Although every time I see Peter Breinholt I think of the Peter Breinholt concert I saw my freshman year in the De Jong concert hall at BYU. I was sitting up in the balcony, and during one of Peter’s famous “dancing songs” (where traditionally people run up to the base of the stage and dance) Peter started laughing in the middle of the song and pointed out into the audience. The spotlight followed and landed on this tall, gangly blonde guy dancing with limbs of Jell-O in the middle of the audience. I peaked over the edge of the balcony to watch. It was awesome.

Fast-forward a year or two. My roommate Angela introduced me to her good friend who was basically in love with Angela’s sister. His name was Pat. He was the nicest guy ever. One time I was on my way home from work, walking down 900 East, when suddenly an old Buick did a U-turn and pulled up along-side of me. I looked over and saw with surprise Pat beckoning me to get in. It was so nice of him. One day Angela and I were talking about Peter Breinholt and she started laughing and said that Pat loves Peter Breinholt. She said he goes to dance and that he has limbs of Jell-O.

Limbs of Jell-O? That was Pat?

Yep, that was Pat in the De Jong Concert Hall. I mentioned it to Pat once and he said, all nonchalantly, “Yeah, me and Peter are tight.” I don’t really know where the years have taken Pat. He didn’t marry my roommate’s sister, even though he desperately wanted to. But maybe he still goes to Peter Breinholt concerts and dances?

This picture is from the concert we went to:
sundance 2