This is a pretty good post

Remember when people paid 15 cents per word for a classified ad in the newspaper?

Does anyone remember when there were classified ads in the newspaper? Anyone?

Remember when Craig's List stepped in and suddenly newspapers were making billions of dollars less than they were before? Remember how everyone figured out selling things online was SO much better than selling it in a newspaper? That was a good idea.

But I'm a little bit afraid that people aren't using online ads' free space to its full effect. Case in point — this ad that Ryan found on BYU-Idaho's Bulletin Board:


Excellent. I think I'll take it.

Still old.

Yesterday, this guy came into the office when I was proofing pages before we sent Scroll to print. This guy came in and was trying to get my attention.

Me: Can I help you?
Guy: I have a question, when you get a minute.
Me: Go ahead.
Guy: But first — how old are you?
Me: (thinking, huh?) Twenty-one.
Guy: Oh, you're only 21? OK.
Me: Why?
Guy: Oh, I'm doing a project on alternative students, and I thought you could help me.

Alternative students? That's the word people use for moms who didn't finish school and come back later. Alternative students are old — though, I admit, my bad hip wasn't helping me out on this one.

Me: You thought I was an alternative student?
Guy: Yeah, well, 24 or 25 at least.
Me: Thanks?
Guy: Yeah. Uh, you're welcome. I'm not sure if that was a compliment. My wife would slap me if I told her that.
Me: Yeah ...

Thus ended the most awkward conversation of the day. And thus I became self-conscious the whole time I was getting ready this morning. "Ryan? Does this make me look old? Do pearl earrings make me look old? Should I put a little bow in my hair?"

Maybe I should skip getting a job and jump straight to retirement.

Disclaimer: I realize that 25 is NOT old. It's just the idea of "You're only 21? You look like you're WELL past that!" that bothers me.

Old.

I feel sort of like this picture today.

Yesterday, my co-worker brought his adorable little girl into the office. As I was getting ready to leave, I bent over and said, "Hi, Ellie!" I tickled her belly and then ...

My back burned. It pinched, it cramped, pain shot all over. I stayed bent and somehow scrapped my way into a chair without using my legs or lower back too much.

Ryan's uncle Jeff, who's a chiropractor, gave it a fancy name for "your hip is rotated too far forward." He popped it around and back into place, gave me some medicine and told Ryan he had to do the dishes today.

My family does have a history of bad hips, but I'm already laying on the couch waiting for my left hip to heal. And I don't turn 22 for another month.

I am officially old.

A little bit obsessed

So I kind of get on "kicks" about things, and I had to share these two little bits of YouTube that I can't get enough of.

First: Michael Bublé's new single. This song has been in my head for 48 hours. And I'm not tired of it. I know it's about waiting for love to come along, and I've already found Ryan, but somehow listening to this song makes me relive it or something. Basically, this song is amazing even if you HAVE "met him yet."

The video is good too. Isn't it refreshing to see a girl wearing jeans on one of these videos? She's, like, normal. Except that she's ridiculously beautiful. But I'm willing to overlook that.



Second: Google's Super Bowl ad. This is the first time Google's EVER advertised in TV (or advertised, period?) and I think it's awesome. Some of the guys in my Media Management class thought it was lame, but I LOVE IT. And, yes, we do watch and discuss Super Bowl ads in my Media Management class. Being a comm major rocks.



I hope you like these as much as I do. :)

Vowels

I've decided every mispronunciation and "hard word" in the English language can be traced back to one part of out lovely English language — vowels. Two epiphanies led to this realization:

1. Our last name is exactly half vowels and half consonants (count: Olaveson).
2. No one can say our name.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard, "What is it? Oh-lay-vuh-son? Oh-love-son? Ah-lay-vuh-son? Lav-en-der?" (Yes, someone really said that) we'd be eating at Applebee's every night. I think everyone likes hard and fast rules, like the sound for "r." They always know what sound it's going to make. People are so crazy about "r" that they toss it haphazardly into our name all the time. "Oh-law-ver-son?"

I learned in my New Testament class that the Hebrews (or Greeks, or someone like that) didn't use vowels, and that's why we're not really sure about what some Bible names are. For example, we call the Old Testament Christ "Jehovah," but all it really translated to was "JHVH," so it's more of a best-guess sort of thing.

I think the Hebrews had it right. Just call me BRNN LVSN from now on.

(Oh, and for the record, you say our name "Oh-LAW-veh-son.")

We Thank Thee, O God

As some of you may know, we got to have lunch with Elder Russell M. Nelson this Tuesday. This is a column I wrote about it that will be published in Scroll this Tuesday. Enjoy. :)

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Last Tuesday, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles stood in devotional and said, “If I had my preference, I would hear from each of you. I would like to get to know every one of you. I would like to learn of your faith, of your goals in life, and of your challenges.”

He obviously didn’t get his wish, but he did sit down to lunch with some students — 14, to be exact. I was one of the lucky ones.

My husband and I met with the other 12 students in the Manwaring Center before we were led to the conference room where lunch was served. When we sat, I saw Elder Nelson without a pulpit between us. There were no Teleprompters, no satellite transmissions to make communication possible. He spoke to us face to face, and something about his candidness made me feel at home.

Elder Nelson and his wife spent the hour answering our questions. One student asked him what it was like to work with the other members of the Twelve. He smiled, and responded, “I still have to pinch myself.”

That was funny, because I was doing the same thing. I took the occasion to ask him how we could learn to best balance our time, and as I phrased my question he looked at me directly. I was suddenly uncomfortably aware of my grammar and word choice, but he took my fumbling in stride. I felt that if any BYU-Idaho student had asked him a question just then, he would have listened with that same intensity. (And by the way, his answer was, in essence, “Schedule the important things first and everything else will fall into place.”)

More questions followed. We asked him how we could help make the Apostles’ job easier (“Be part of the solution”) and what kinds of challenges the Church will continue to face in coming years (“Growth”). His answers were thoughtful, and he took time to explain them. It felt more to me like we were having a conversation than a question-and-answer session.

As he answered our questions, I watched him eat. Though I knew members of the Quorum of the Twelve had to eat, something about seeing it made him seem more human to me. Elder Nelson is a prophet, but he’s also a man, and seeing that side of him somehow endeared me to my leaders. The sacredness of his calling was apparent, and he was simultaneously quite personable.

As members of the Church, we sometimes maintain a relatively flat image of the brethren. We see them as well-dressed men standing behind a pulpit and we somehow imagine that’s how they really are. But there’s more to the brethren than we see at General Conference. They are living, breathing men with families and concerns.

When we finished our lunch, Elder Nelson asked if he could take time to shake our hands. His humility and kindness were incredible and his love tangible.

If I could put into simple terms everything I learned from Elder Nelson, it’s that when he said, “We love you!” he really meant it.

I think I found a way to get rich

I have a cluster (that's "half-a-minor" to you non-BYU-Idaho folks) in English, and I'm finishing it up this semester. I'm taking Advanced Creative Writing — Fiction. The funny thing is, I've never actually written any fiction. Except a couple little somethin-somethins in second grade called "The Ghost at Julie's House" and "Amber's Bike," but my mom was the only one who read those (I sold them to her for 75 cents apiece.)

Anyway, this fiction class is AWESOME because I can write whatever I want. I can throw all that "maintain journalistic integrity" and "check three sources" caution to the wind and make stuff up. And it's encouraged.

I've found that most of my "fiction" is just like my non-fiction, only cooler. I can tell stories about my elementary school days that are 95 percent true and then throw in some extra humiliation and call it fiction. It rocks.

The best part is that you can get rich doing this. And your stuff doesn't even have to be that good. You can just have a weird dream one night and then write about it the next day and make bajillions of dollars when they make your weird-dream (bestselling) novels into movies that gross $72.7 million dollars on their first night (where have I heard that before?).

And for the record, I wasn't making that last part up. New Moon really did gross that much on opening night. I still have SOME journalistic integrity.