A Few Days

Wednesday, March 19th
As you all know, I have two jobs. I've been working both of them quite a bit for the past few weeks, actually. In the mornings, I've been doing a lot of substitute teaching, almost exclusively at my favorite school, the Granite Technical Institute. And then I've been going to the call center in the afternoons. Generally, these two worlds do not meet. But today, they did.

As I was getting ready for my afternoon class, I looked up to see someone smiling at me. It was Ara, one of our newest employees at the call center. She was there for the Medical Terminology class.

It was fun to see someone I knew from somewhere outside the school, even if it was just from my other job. And her presence provided a funny moment. You see, at the call center, everyone knows me by my first name. In school, obviously, they call me Mr. M_____. So near the end of class, she came up to me and asked, "Mike...uh, Mr. M_____, can I go to the restroom?" She was a little embarrassed, I think, but we both had a good laugh from it. And we both laughed about it again later when she told my fellow supervisor D120 about the incident this evening at work.

Tuesday, March 18th
One of the classes I substituted for on Tuesday was an Anatomy and Physiology class. They were just wrapping up a unit on the cardiovascular system, and they had a special lesson for the day. They were dissecting a cow's heart.

Two of the other teachers from the school came in and led the group through a step-by-step tour of the organ in question. Each student (five showed up out of twelve that were scheduled) had their own heart to dissect. I don't know how many of you have ever seen a cow's heart (or any kind of heart, for that matter), but it was really interesting. Each heart was about the size of a football, with the major blood vessels (aorta, vena cava, etc.) still attached at the top. Using paring knives instead of scalpels, the students systematically made a series of cuts to examine the various chambers of the heart, the vessels leading to and from them, and the valves that separated them. I was a little surprised at the relative sizes involved. The atria were much smaller than the ventricles, and the muscles around the left ventricle (which sends oxygen-rich blood to the entire body) were more than twice as thick as the those around the right ventricle (which sends oxygen-deficient blood to the lungs, only a few inches away). And the valves, working on a positive-pressure system to keep the blood where it's supposed to be, were equally interesting.

It was amazing to me to think that inside of me and everyone else in that classroom, there was a smaller version of that marvelous structure, alternately pumping and relaxing but never stopping. Whether you credit evolution, an intelligent designer, or a flying spaghetti monster, it's an amazing little organ that's keeping us all alive. And there are dozens of others in each of our bodies, equally amazing. What a remarkable collection of atoms, molecules, and structures each of us is.

Monday, March 17th
As you may recall from a previous post, I've been in the process of getting back into graduate school. While the financing had been provisionally approved, I still needed to get the green light from the school to re-enroll. I'd talked to and e-mailed an enrollment counselor at the school several times over the previous week, and finally received confirmation by e-mail that I would be back in as of April 1st. Now I was just waiting for a paper version of that confirmation as the final bit of paperwork to send to the loan company.

When I arrived at the call center on Monday afternoon, I saw that the fax I had been waiting for had finally arrived from the school. Placing it in with all the other requested information, I faxed everything (7 pages total) to the loan company. Now I'm just waiting to hear back from them with final confirmation. With any luck, I may even have the tuition check by this time next week.

Sunday, March 16th
We had Ward Conference on Sunday. This meant, among other things, that the Sunday School lesson I was supposed to teach was pre-empted by the Stake Sunday School presidency. This caused some small consternation among some of the congregation (and the teachers, too) that I wasn't teaching. My lesson will probably be made up on the second Sunday in April. Anyway, instead of teaching, I got to spend the second hour of the block sitting on the stand (I'm the ward Sunday School president) with the Stake Presidency while the Stake Sunday School presidency gave a series of talks about teaching with the Spirit. They were good talks, but I probably would have enjoyed them more had I been in the congregation with Nancy instead of sitting on the stand and staring at the backs of the speakers' knees. You can't have everything, I guess.

I also made stew on Sunday. Not that this is difficult, of course. Stew is one of the easiest things in the world to make. (I understand that when Adam and Eve sat down for dinner on that first night, they had stew. It was all they knew how to make.) You just need the right ingredients, a good spice collection, and a Crock Pot. All of which we had. I browned the meat, cut up the vegetables, mixed it all up, and set the Crock Pot on high before we left for church. When we got back, the aroma that greeted us told me I'd done all right. And the leftovers have provided me with lunches for the past few days, too.

Saturday, March 15th
We celebrated Nancy's birthday on Saturday. True, the actual birthday was the Sunday before, and we had celebrated a little the previous Saturday night by spending some time with Krista, one of Nancy's old friends. But Saturday the 15th was the celebration with the family. We drove down to the new movie theater in Sandy for a showing of Penelope. It was fun. The main character was no Wednesday Addams, but she was all right. After the movie, we went over to Iggy's Sports Bar for dinner and some basketball viewing. And while I don't normally get too excited about basketball during hockey season, I was just interested enough in the two games we saw to be annoyed by the results.

First, BYU lost to UNLV in the Mountain West Conference tournament championship game. BYU was the top seed and UNLV was seeded second, but the tournament was in Vegas, just like last year. So UNLV won what was essentially a home game for them...just like last year. Bother. They need to find somewhere else to hold the tournament. Fort Collins, maybe. Or at least Reno. Anyway, the TV was then switched over to the Jazz game, where we got to see Utah lose to New Jersey. What the...? How does a team go into Boston and beat a Celtics team with the best record in the NBA, and then to lose to the Nets twenty-four hours later? Ish.

Oh, and it snowed last Saturday night, too. A lot. Which is funny, because the last time we went to Iggy's and this theater, it was on a Saturday night a few weeks ago. And it snowed then, too. Just for the record, we will not be holding my birthday celebration there.

Friday, March 14th
In previous writings, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Lula, the silver 1990 Dodge Dynasty that used to belong to Granny. After her death, we were sent home with the car. At that time, it was registered in Montana until October 2007. So we figured we'd have plenty of time to get things taken care of to get it registered here in Utah. As soon as my aunt, who was the executor of Granny's estate, sent down the title, we could just go ahead and change it over. Of course, we'd probably wait until the end of October 2007 to do that. We'd already paid the registration for that period, after all. So we didn't think too much about it until about late August.

At that time, we started a series of e-mails with the aunt in question to arrange to get the title sent down. Unfortunately, she told us she'd found out that being the executor of the estate did not necessarily give her the power of attorney to sign over the title. She was going to look into it, so we waited...until the end of September...and then until the end of October. And then into November.

Long story short, she did figure out how to transfer the title, and we got it in January. From there, it was just a matter of paying all the appropriate fees. Unfortunately, with Nancy having lost her job and my experiencing the downturn the market research industry usually experiences between November and February, we were a little short on cash. Registering the car was just not our highest priority.

Well, several weeks later, Friday finally provided the opportunity to get it taken care of. So I left the house around 11:00 a.m. and headed to Jiffy Lube for the state safety and emission inspections, preparatory to registering the car in Utah for the first time. Lula passed the emissions test with flying colors...but failed the safety inspection. Why? Because the passenger's side mirror wasn't properly secured. The hard plastic mounting bracket that holds the mirror onto the door of the vehicle attaches at three points. Alas, the bracket was cracked, and attached at only two points. So they told me I either needed to find a way to re-attach it, or just take it off completely.

I made my way down to Pep Boys just a few short blocks away in search of advice and supplies. I had one of the sales associates come out and take a look at the mirror bracket. His diagnosis: there was no way to fix it short of replacing the whole bracket. So the question became to wait another couple of weeks and buy a replacement bracket with my next paycheck (it's a dealer part, after all), or just take it off and get registered that day? I decided to take it off.

So there I was, parked in the Pep Boys lot, taking apart the interior door panel so that I could get to where the bracket was attached inside the door frame. Fortunately, I had just the right combination of tools and know-how (I won't say 'expertise') to get it done. And it only took until about 1:00 p.m. to accomplish it. I headed back to Jiffy Lube, where they declared that my car was now safe enough to drive in Utah after all. The hard part was done. I thought.

I made my way to the DMV. Work was supposed to start for me at 2:00 that afternoon, so I called my boss to let him know where I was and what I was doing. Having gone through this whole song and dance himself just a couple of weeks before, he was quite sympathetic. So I went up to the reception desk, told the lady what I needed, and got a number. It was number 591, time-stamped at 1:36 p.m.

The monitors said, "Now serving 570." Unfortunately, at the Utah DMV, they run four or five series of numbers at the same time, depending on what different people need to do. That day, they were running a 000 series, a 400 series, a 500 series, and a 700 series. So assuming an equal distribution, there weren't really just 20 people in front of me. There were more like 80.

I finally made it up to the counter at around 2:45 p.m.

Once there, I found that the lady I was dealing with didn't really have a clear grasp on how to deal with out-of-state titles. She had to leave me at the counter and go into the back room to ask her supervisor what to do. Twice. In the end, though, I left the DMV with the registration completed and new license plates in hand. And my boss was completely understanding about my being more than an hour late for work.

When I registered the Dreadnought for the first time, I chose the 'Utah Centennial' license plate pattern, the one featuring a picture of Delicate Arch. This time, however, I decided to go with the new 'Life Elevated Skier' design. It looks like this:



The red-orange area on top shows pictographs reminiscent of those found in the Canyonlands of southern Utah. And of course, there's the skier. It's a nice plate.

I thought about getting a vanity plate, but ultimately I decided I didn't want to pay the extra money each year. But it would have been fun. I'd already decided how it would read:

YYZ 2112

A vanity plate that doesn't look like a vanity plate. Someday, maybe...