She's Hearing Voices

Picture this:

A group of men sit at a table in a restaurant/diner/coffee shop/some sort of eating place. The average age of these men is 77. (The oldest is 90, and the youngest is 66.) They talk about the food they'll order, the way they're going to spend or have spent their day, maybe a little bit about their jobs, family, or friends. Nothing incredibly earth-shattering is discussed; it's just a pleasant meal among friends who come and go at their leisure.

All right, that doesn't sound too interesting, huh? You probably wouldn't be tempted to eavesdrop and listen to their voices and stories.

But what if those men were Morgan Freeman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Sean Connery, James Earl Jones, Christopher Lee, and Alan Rickman?

Seven men with incredibly distinctive, awesome, and dare I say it? legendary voices. Who wouldn't want to listen to them, even if it's about something as seemingly mundane as their favorite food?

I'd willingly pay to see that movie, if ever a movie there were. And not just to see them, but to LISTEN and enjoy. I could close my eyes the entire time and still be perfectly contented.

That was our dinner conversation tonight, Glen's and mine. We especially liked the idea of getting them all to sing together, but I honestly don't know how many of them can carry a tune.

 So we know Patrick Stewart can.

*others who we considered, but who probably aren't as "legendary" (or as easily parodied): Kelsey Grammer, Sean Bean, John Rhys-Davies, Anthony Hopkins, Tim Curry, Richard Armitage (the inclusion of richard is simply because i melt every time i hear him speak any of his lines in the final scene of north and south. yum).

-Me

"Actually, I think the average voice is like 70 percent tone and 30 percent noise. My voice is 95 percent noise." -Harvey Fierstein

An Innocent Man

While we were still engaged, Glen and I started reading books together. Maybe it's not the most exciting of activities, and so far they've all been books that I've read before, but it's a nice thing for us to do together. We started off with Lord of the Rings (finished fellowship on our honeymoon, in fact), and have since gotten through The Hobbit, The Princess Bride, and Pride and Prejudice (which, surprisingly enough, was glen's choice).

This may not sound like much (especially to me, who goes through that many books in about two months in my personal time), but Lord of the Rings is kind of long, and reading aloud takes time. Add in the fact that we basically stopped reading together while Glen was taking classes and getting quite enough reading material from school, it kind of makes sense.

Our latest endeavor has been Harry Potter. Again, not too glamorous, but kind of fun. We whipped through books 1 and 2 lickety-split, and are pretty close to finishing up numero tres. And Prisoner of Azkaban has given us a new-found level of enjoyment we didn't expect -- the introduction of Cedric Diggory. Maybe he doesn't play a significant role in Prisoner, but whenever he's been mentioned, Glen and I haven't been able to stop ourselves from sniggering. Just wait until Goblet of Fire.

Poor innocent Cedric. We have Robert Pattinson to thank for our mockery of you.

 
-Me


"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me." -C.S. Lewis

Just the Two of Us

It's really official. We've made it a whole year. (plus two weeks.) To celebrate on the actual day, we went out for Indian food, because it sounded REALLY good to me at about 11:30 the night before. Fortunately, being Indian food, it was still really good on the day. But our real celebration didn't take place until the following week, when we took a little excursion down to Manti. Some new friends in our ward recommended this bed and breakfast to us, and let me tell ya . . . we're sure grateful they did.

The woman who owns the place greeted us like old friends and showed us around when we first arrived, and all I could do was mouth to Glen, "I love her!" She was so incredibly sweet and grandmotherly; we just wanted to adopt her right then and there. There was a balcony library complete with grand piano that, naturally, I couldn't resist, and I loved our room. We splurged and went for a suite, complete with jetted tub (big enough for two, wink wink).

There really weren't any downsides to the whole trip -- it was just a relaxing evening and wonderful breakfast in the morning. Although we do wonder if there is such a thing as a bed and breakfast that decorates for men . . .

 Our pretty frilly room

This is the reason we got this room. Skylights above the bed.

Romantic evening, anyone?

Took a quick walk around the temple before heading home again. Beautiful.

It's been a really good year for us, so I think we're both willing to give it another year . . . and lots more!

-Me

"Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots." -Hoosier Farmer

Kiss the Girl

The other evening, I was setting up for a Relief Society activity at a local park. I was talking to my pal Kathryn as we searched for a water spigot and telling her briefly about the anniversary get-away Glen and I had gotten back from that day. Out of nowhere, Kathryn started to laugh. She reached for the collar of my shirt, and I assumed that something had inadvertently gotten stuck there and she was removing it, but it became clear pretty quickly that she wasn't "fixing" anything on my shirt -- she was just kind of jiggling my collar. And she kept giggling! I was extremely confused until she said, "Looks like you and Glen had a really good time." And then I realized . . . she'd spotted my infamous birthmark.

The one that looks exactly like a hickey.

In the exact spot on my neck you'd basically expect to see a hickey.

This birthmark was once a cause for embarrassment, like the time I was in Sunday School when I was 14, and Brother Pratt, who never looked up from his lesson plan while teaching, asked me totally out of the blue who'd been chewing on my neck. Cue the boys in my class to suddenly want a look at it.

It has since progressed into a joke, like when we learned the German word for "hickey" in my 101 class (knutschfleck) and my skit group exploited the birthmark to make me appear an even more villainous roommate (in the skit, i had stolen a roommate's boyfriend and come home with a "knutschfleck").

It really doesn't show up in pictures, mainly because of a mixture of 1) being photographed from the left, 2) cruddy cameras, 3) shirts that manage to cover up that part of my neck, or 4) my hair covering up that part of my neck. That didn't stop my sis-in-law Jami from covering it up when she did my make-up and hair for the wedding last year, mainly because all four of those fortunate circumstances wouldn't be coming into play that day. Seeing that in all my pictures would bug me, she said. (She was right. It would have.)

 An instance of "cruddy camera", so you really can't see it too well . . . but it's the best one I could find in a one-minute search.

I've gotten pretty used to this mark being a part of my life, but I sometimes take it for granted that other people don't immediately know it's a birthmark, like Kathryn. So once I realized what she'd been assuming, I laughed, too. And I had to tell her the sad truth that my husband had not been responsible for it. Although maybe I should have just let her think so. It's good for people to know you and your spouse get along.

-Me

"A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop words when speech becomes unnecessary." -Ingrid Bergman

So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star

I'm never going to be a celebrity, and I'm pretty happy about that. I think my life will be a lot more hassle-free if I remain that way. But if ever I were a celebrity, I would have wanted to be one in the late 70's.

"Why?" you may wonder, as well you should.

Because if that had been the case, I could have done something like this.

That's right -- be a guest on The Muppet Show. I think Rowlf and I could have played a lovely duet together.

-Me

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault." -Henry Kissinger

Up the Ladder to the Roof

For anybody still waiting on the edge of their seats for an explanation of why we were rudely awakened at one a.m. a couple of weeks ago, I hereby give you: The Roof Saga. It's long, and I'm sorry for that -- I sincerely wish it were shorter, for my sake.

March 28th: I arrive home from a trip to GJ with my mom and sis and see through the kitchen window that there's something hanging off of our roof. Little do I know that it is, in fact, the roof itself, which has been severely damaged by windstorms that came along while I was out of town.

April 5th: Brief snow storm.

April 6th: The snow melts, and while I am working, I hear dripping sounds coming from the living room. Yep, it's leaking through my ceiling, and soon enough the dripping becomes a deluge, coming into my living room, my furnace room, and the office. Cue Megan panicking, phoning the manager/maintenance guy, texting Glen to come home, running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to stay on top of the leaking (which is next to impossible when the leaks are at their fastest and i'm not sure of where all the leaks are coming down), and refraining from strangling the downstairs neighbors when they come upstairs asking if I know anything about a leak. "No, I had no idea water was invading my apartment! Thanks for letting me know! AARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!"

By the time Glen comes home an hour and a half later (and i spend about ten minutes crying from stress once he does), the worst is over and he probably doesn't believe how bad it actually was, but we spend the rest of the afternoon/ evening mopping up the carpet and the spot on the ceiling where there has been an obvious pooling of water, thereby missing the first performance of the Easter cantata we've been preparing for for the previous two months.

April 10th: My manager finally has gotten a hold of the owner of the building, who will send roofers. (i've been bugging my manager every day about this, and the weather has fortunately been nice, but that's not going to hold.)

April 11th: Rain starts again. Nobody's come. Glen gets on the roof with a couple of guys from our ward, and they pull the enormous and heavy rubber sheeting back over our roof that had been blown over (exposing most of our apartment) and weigh it down. No leaking. Yay! Glen is my hero.

 Glen after his exploits on the roof

April 17th: The maintenance guy finally returns my call. Thanks so much.

April 19th: I hear strange noises on the roof. Hope rises, but nothing happens.

April 23rd: Manager tells me the owner is getting roofer estimates, but they all seem too high, so he's still getting estimates. Good grief.

April 25th: Owner himself shows up, is a personable older gentleman, and I manage to not snarl at him. He finally realizes that the reason why the estimates have been so high is because the roof is VERY damaged and needs to be completely replaced, as opposed to the little hole he must have thought was there. Light bulb! He gives me money for us to buy ourselves a pizza because of Glen's efforts on the roof. Yeah, that makes up for it.

April 30th: Owner shows up again, this time with an insurance adjuster, who takes photos of the roof and the interior of my apartment. Could a fix be coming soon?

Month of May . . . nothing, nothing, nothing . . .

May 29th: Hallelujah! There are roofers! They're making a TON of noise, and making me think they're going to drop equipment through our ceiling, but hey, it's finally getting fixed after two months, so I'll put up with it cheerfully.

May 30th: 1 a.m. Someone comes banging on our door, and since they're not stopping and banging on all the neighbor's doors, as well, we figure we should actually answer it. We're told to evacuate the building because the roof is now smoking, and has been, it seems, for several hours. There's no fire that we can see, but there's definitely smoke, even though we couldn't smell it from inside. A neighbor's brother goes up and see a big smoldering patch in about the middle of the roof (finally, a part of the roof that isn't directly over our apartment, i kind of think to myself). Three or four fire trucks show up, they hose it down, try getting information from us about our owner/manager, the roofing company, etc. Several other neighbors come out, thanks to all the bright, flashing lights. After about 45 minutes, we're allowed to go back inside, but now we're wide awake. Glen and I try to make ourselves tired by watching the last hour of Pride and Prejudice, and subsequently go to sleep at about 3, but it still takes me a while to actually drift off.

The roofers show up at about 7 a.m., not having a clue about what went down last night, but one of our neighbors goes out and informs them, in case the black patch on the roof doesn't clue them in. I see two of them exit their truck, smoking. And I think, if that's why our roof was smoking last night, they're dead meat. In the end, we never hear about the real reasons behind what happened, since they were already fixing the roof and so they just replace that portion, anyway. But the rest of the week that they're working, I'm a little more resentful each time they crash around up there.

June 1st: The roof is finished.

So concludes the Roof Saga. Would that it were shorter . . . or non-existent.

-Me

"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." -George Carlin