Good Times

I have been alternately grumpy and mopey for the past few days, mostly because we have been entertaining friends and relatives for the past fifteen days and I'm the sort of person who needs a lot of solitude to stay sane. So I've come up with a few reasons to be happy for the next few days and I thought I would share them with you.

This is my new best friend. I worked up the courage to try it and it works, so I can now enjoy all the wonderful dairy things I had to give up a few years ago. I had a milkshake this weekend and it was wonderful! I can actually eat things like enchiladas and eggplant parmesan again. I'm so very, very happy about this lovely drug. If you know anything bad about it, please don't tell me.

In related news, this morning the scale told me I had lost two pounds, despite the fact that a) I was so busy helping to entertain guests I didn't work out once and b) I ate my weight in Easter chocolate on a daily basis. Maybe an all chocolate diet IS the answer. I could make millions!

During the weeks of entertaining, it was hard to get to all my TV addictions. This was especially harsh, since The Office came back from a long hiatus that began after Roy issued the terrifying words "I'm going to kill Jim Halpert." So obviously I was anxious to see the returning episodes. I set the VCR, double checked and then hoped it all went well. It did NOT go well and I missed the super-sized return episode. I was beyond bitter until I remembered that you could buy episodes on iTunes. Which I did. It was totally worth the $1.99 to hear Michael Scott utter the immortal words "I cross-dressed by mistake."

We all know I have a lot of time on my hands. You can tell by how much more often I post and how much longer my posts are. But I decided to do some things to fill up my time and I started piano lessons today. I never took them when I was young, what with not having a piano and being the kind of child that only asks for something once, if at all. There is a woman in my ward who teaches all the kids in the ward and so now I'm her student too. Which I am very excited about. I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Friday, I got an envelope from the BYU Copyright Licensing Office, about which I knew absolutely nothing. Inside was a letter asking for permission to publish a paper I had written for a religion class in 2001 on a website they are creating called Global Mormonism. The paper is entitled "The Impact of Emigration on the Church in Britain" and discusses how Church growth in Great Britain was affected by the mass emigration of converts to the United States. I get to keep copyright ownership and they are keeping a hard copy on file in the HBLL's L. Tom Perry Special Collections. I was giddy for a day and a half. I also had to search through all my disks, since I had only a vague recollection of actually writing the paper.

Finally, I found a very cute hat at a store in Leavenworth, Washington. Leavenworth is an old logging town that almost died when the logging industry left, but decided to reinvent itself as a faux Bavarian town. All the buildings look like ski lodges and Swiss chalets and they contain restaurants, specialty shops, and galleries. It is fun to go there about once every five years, but because of the several shifts of houseguests, I went twice in five days. This hat was the exciting part of the second trip. I found it in the Australian shop and someone needs to throw a tea party so I can have an excuse to wear it.