Oh M.E.

Well I did it. I built a robot.

Rather, my team of 4 built 4 robots. We competed yesterday in the campus-wide Egglympics Gymneggstics competition…yeah, I don’t come up with these things. The competition included 4 events: balance beam, uneven bars, vault, and floor exercise. My team met almost every day for the last week and a half, including staying up ‘til 2:30 the night before building and building and reconfiguring and not sleeping. All for almost naught.

Our robots only kind of worked.

As luck would have it, neither did my camera. I was excited to document this momentous occasion with video and pictures and stories galore…and I forgot my memory card. Thankfully I found an Asian with a very large camera to take pictures for me.

Just so you know, each event involves certain objectives—like traveling the length of a beam and completing a flip or going from one corner of a taped-off square to the other and performing a 180 degree rotation—all while not breaking an egg...and all by itself. Perhaps I'd be more sure that this is what I want to do if we had been a little more successful...

Duct tape and hot glue. That's what our robots were made of. This picture made it onto the Daily Utah Chronicle's website.

One for the storybooks.

I walked briskly to class (everything on a cold morning happens briskly), reviewing in my mind all the math that might be required of me for the test. Briefly, I slowed down so the guy crossing the sidewalk in front of me could enter the building to my right. That’s where I thought he was headed anyway. Instead, he greeted me cheerfully and matched my focused steps.

He asked me what class I was headed to and replied with an, “Awesome!” punctuated by a fist pump when I told him, after which he informed me that calculus was probably his favorite class ever. He was nice enough and normal looking enough—you know, neither repulsive nor attractive—and in the next minute and a half I found out that he was also studying mechanical engineering and had postponed his graduation date for a year by missing only one prerequisite. This is the future I have to look forward to, folks.

When we arrived at the math building I told him that I was sure I would see him around to which he said, “I’m not sure I will, I mean, I’d like to…can I have your number?” My mind raced to find an adequate joke about how we just met but apparently I was so surprised that I had no choice but to politely comply. He promised he would call within the next couple of days and…he did.

That very afternoon, in fact, I got a call. He was planning a double date for the next day and was wondering if I was available…because, as it turns out, he had a friend in need of a date. Uh huh. Not to be intimidated by a double blind, I again politely complied.

…the date was fine—we hiked Ensign Peak and talked about family traditions, German culture, being “green”, and how many TV shows I watch that none of them have heard about—it only got weird when, at the end of the date, they both got out of the car to walk me to my door…

Since then I have run into my date and he has asked me if his friend—the one I met originally—had called yet. Apparently he was wanting to do something “in a week and a half or so.” I’m not sure which guy the getting together would be for but maybe that doesn’t matter. You know, I’ve never tried to date two guys at once. It seems like a challenging balancing act…an unfair balancing act. However, if all the dating is happening on the same dates…it really is too bad I’m not interested in either party.

When words fail.

I wrote this a while ago but hesitated in posting it, perhaps because I’m not sure why this has ever been inside of me. The hope is that someday this will actually mean something to someone and the sentiments will be returned—a relationship I’ve never had, a relationship that will require all of me…a relationship that will hopefully end in wedded bliss and lots of babies. In the meantime, I wrote this for anyone I’ve ever felt deeply for. I wrote it for a need; for a desire to do good. I wrote it…and I mean it.

When words fail me I would hold your head in my hands. I would quiet your silence, your wandering thoughts, your blanketed eyes. I would take them into myself. I would swallow you up in the hollow of my idle compassion and light a fire to shield you from the darkness. I would mingle your tears in the urn of my intentions and create a panacea to salve your unseen wounds. I would give you the philosopher’s stone. With the force of my aching love I would liberate your pinioned heart and banish the cumbrous millstone pulling at the edges of your smile. I would drown myself in the depth of your pain to buoy you above the rising moon-tide. Covering you tightly in the warmth of a moment I would direct you to shore. Then at last, I would lay your head in the cradle of our combined strengths and listen to you breathe as you strike a path amidst the clouds.

With a touch, with a look, with all that I can…but I am not the one you need and words are all I have.

Am I depressed?!

This from a New York Times article:

"All of the muscles in the tension triangle are particularly vulnerable to pressure. Corrugator muscles, the ones that knit the brow into a frown, tighten in response to emotional tension. A study done at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston shows that depressed people have chronically tensed corrugators, even when they do not look as if they are frowning. Tension in the corrugators, along with the nearby frontalis muscle, is such a good gauge of muscle tension throughout the body that forehead muscles are used in biofeedback training to monitor overall tension. As the muscles throughout the body relax, tension also drains from the forehead muscles."

With furrowed brow.

This past month has been one of self-discovery. Through no fault of my own, I’ve been learning things about myself that I never knew before. Which is weird, because I think about myself ALL the time.

Admittedly, I’ve never been all that aware of my facial expressions. Unless, of course, someone’s taking a picture of me, in which case that’s the only thing I’m aware of. Otherwise, however, my thoughts—my intended private thoughts—have been emblazoned all over my intractable face. This fact I’ve known, but what I didn’t know is that I spend most of my life with furrowed brow. Yep, that’s it. That’s the most interesting thing about me. Apparently I wrinkle my forehead a lot. All it took was a couple people telling me I looked angry at times when I knew I wasn’t angry at all—like in church. Then, I would start catching myself at it…a lot…like all the time. I think it gives me headaches. So every time, I make a concerted effort to relax. It would seem, though, that my facial muscles are so thoroughly trained that “concentrated” is now their comfortable position. You would laugh at how many times I go through this cyclical process in the seconds that follow catching myself with a wrinkled forehead. So, until I conquer these indomitable corrugators I thought I’d post a little guide to show the difference between my angry face and my thinking face—because they are different.

Thinking:

Angry (including two gems from high school):