Kimya Dawson

After weeks of staying at my parents house, I woke up this morning to find an apartment full of people. My roommate Pete was visited by his long-distance girlfriend Adriana (with whom I attended highschool). They’d been out lake the night before, and one of their friends had driven from Dallas and slept on the couch. So, myself included, there were four active, interesting people in my apartment. I just got out of bed, settled down on my home-made love sack, and started chatting it up. I felt like I was at The Office again. They were entertaining me their exploits from the day before. Apparently, they’d gone to a Limited store closing, “Everything must go!!,” and convinced a clerk to let them buy two of the mannequins, the new chic kind with the nipples, and spent the day posing them around town and taking pictures. Spent hours trying to get a fun picture of them going down a slide together. There were two exciting exchanges before I went to church.

First Pete, my roommate, had the Iron Chef challenge of cooking us all breakfast. Now both of us had been pretty absent for the Christmas break, and the pickings in our pantry are pretty slim when we’re both here. He prefers to buy his ingredients fresh daily. I’m a busy bachelor. To make matters worse on himself, he decided to make us Eggs Benedict. Adri, his girlfriend, told him that he was not allowed to leave the apartment for supplies. Post-breakfast internet research tells me that Hollandaise Sauce is made mainly from egg yolks, butter, and lemon juice. I know that we had eggs, but no idea on real butter or lemon juice. There was toast instead of english muffins. My favorite of the Iron Chef-ims, though, was peppered dry salami instead of Canadian bacon. Funnier than it was tasty, but I had eaten my last two pop-tarts the night before.

Second, Adriana is getting her MFA in creative non-fiction in Pittsburg, and to help subsidize her education she teaches entry level English classes for the university. She haaaaaapened to have a stack of final papers that she was grading from an intro to writing class she had been teaching the previous semester. Pete, well educated himself, was cooking, so it was Adri (a grad-level writer), Jesse (aspiring lawyer), and David (couch guy, who has a liberal arts degree from Rice). The hoot that we had reading these papers is ineffable. The writing geeks in all of us came out, and as trained writers we didn’t even have to communicate what ticked us pink. We just sat in a circle reading our favorite parts. What made me cringe the most, though, was the neglect of the rules. Quote in the second paragraph longer than four lines; Why isn’t it double indented and single-spaced?!?! Sure, e.e. cummings doesn’t have to capitalize his proper-noun of a name, but he, I’m sure, has proven that he knows the rules. Picasso painted plenty of realistic works before he hit cubist. I digress. This experience was a whole new look at the teacher as a person dynamic. I have friends who teach elementary school, but this hit way closer to home. The only consolation was the fact that my law-school professors probably sit around and make fun of me out loud because their wives won’t care. Whew.

Turns out, my exciting morning was only to prep me for what happened at church. It was the warm-up act. For those who went to an LDS worship service this morning, you know that it was Fast and Testimony meeting this morning…

(quick internjection, Pete just asked me a legal question and I found the answer to it on a legal blog, which quickly prompted him to make a Bob Lob Law, Law Blog joke. Hilarious).

…So, when I first moved into the ward, Lauren Moscon warned me about crazy girl. I’ve had several unfortunate romantic stints with crazy girls, so I thought that she was looking out for my wellbeing. Turns out, it was for my entertainment. She has notoriously zany testimonies every month. You can imagine my delight as crazy girl was the FIRST ONE out of her seat today. I had not idea what I was in store for, though. She opened up by, without an intro, singing a full chorus and then for good measure a verse from Battle Hymn of the Republic! In an inadvertent minor. She then spent the next 5 minutes calling us to repentance. The whole ward has been mocking God with our lackluster prayers. Lots of crying, and then closed with “I FIGHT IN THE NAME OF CHRIST, AMEN!!” Oh. My. Goodness.

Other exciting things at church: I’ve hardly been in my ward since Thanksgiving between traveling and going to my parents. But, in my huge ward, EVERYONE remembered my name today. I raised my hand to volunteer to read in Sunday-school, and even the girl with Tim-Burton-does-Provo-Valley hair, who I am SURE I’ve never properly met, said “Thanks, Jesse.” That was really nice. I like having my name remembered.

Fighting the good fight
-Jesse