the 8-year old and the newborn

i sit here, typing at "my computer," staring at it with budding frustration and the foreknowledge that we will have to learn to get along.

you know when you're housesitting for someone and their pet dies? and you can go to the pet store and buy a hamster that looks like the one they had, but it still isn't the same hamster? (and, if you're my sister, the family comes home only to say that they didn't like the pet and were waiting for it to die, anyway).
well, that's my computer. it still looks like a nice, mac from the outside; the same that i've loved for the past few years. but on the inside, it's as blank and devoid of personality as the rebuilt "wall.e" at the end of the movie. so if anyone has a sleek and cute imac or ipod that can come and kiss my computer back to the one i love, please notify me in the comments section.

so far, this text composition is the most success i've had. safari either froze or crashed six times in a row, and the rest of the landscape here is so barren i haven't had the heart to start work yet. but, like the early utah pioneers, with a lot of cultivation, i can make this desert a blossoming rose.

until then, i'm living off of my dell laptop. that's right, the pc that my dad bought for me when i got off my mission eight years ago.
now there's a commercial for microsoft....

i seached the internet over for the picture i wanted. i couldn't find it. i had it on my old drive.  dag.  ; )

"the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing".

last night we watched bill and ted's excellent adventure for movie night- i enjoyed it from the bottom of my heart. not only was it a good choice because i just love the movie for so many reasons, but about a third of the fifteen people in attendance were first-timers. when i invite people, i let them know that these aren't your usual movies. but i never know what to expect when someone brings a friend who innocently wanders in and were watching wes anderson, or, worse, ingmar bergman. strangely, they often come back the next week. ; )
but last night the movie got more laughs than i've ever seen, and everyone had a blast. ...and most of the movies on february's schedule are relatively normal, should these newbies come again. (gosh i love punch drunk love....)

now, it's back to "the-project-which-must-not-be-named" (code name: nightmare).
things are looking hopeful for the moment, but everything that can go wrong, has.
i will not fully relax until the dvd is delivered and i will never speak of this again.

thank goodness for fried noodles, ikea dark chocolate, and the katamari soundtrack.

p.s. the mongols ruled china from 1206 to 1368.

the serial life

do you remember the "woody's roundup" show from toy story 2, where the episode ended with woody in mid-jump over the canyon to save jesse and the prospector before the dynamite exploded?  will woody make it??  of course he will, but it's still a lot of fun to go on the wild ride.

some things never change.

for years, 786 told me to get into 24.  it seemed that every time i stopped by his desk, he'd tell me again, "jeff, you've got to watch 24!"  i would thank him that he was concerned about my entertainment well-being, but i had no interest in television, and our conversation about movies would resume.

a few years ago, i was called to be the f.h.e. "dad" for (the dearly beloved) group 2.  our monday night activities were an idyllic time over the first few months, as attendance grew and we made new friends, until one night  when jen, my wife-in-calling, pulled me aside with a problem: the 2-hour season premiere of 24 was on at the same time as f.h.e.

good grief, was she one of "those", too??

i agreed to record it for her, so that she could watch it afterward, and life could resume.

after f.h.e., she came over and i watched the show with her.  this jack guy was in an airport with terrorists and jen was courteous enough explain who each character was.  still, when, after the first hour, she asked, "so, are you hooked?", i hardly saw what all the excitement was about.  i watched the second hour, had a dream that night that i was in an airport with terrorists, and the rest is downhill history.

each week, our group grew.  jen's roommate kristin came to watch.  it turned out that phil and scott were longtime fans.  mark got hooked.  trevor, nicole, collette, and corinne soon came too see what the ruckus was all about.  it was an unending snowball.  f.h.e soon became a meager holding time for the real activity of the night, and we would all be stealthily looking at each other with the unspoken unity of being "in" on something together.

and that's why i love it: we got into it.  every episode was a cliffhanger, with expected unexpected plot twists as often as the "wild mouse" ride at lagoon.  we talked to the tv like a harlem movie theater, calling out how long the recently introduced extemporaneous agent will last, who's really the spy and who's really a good guy, cheering and booing like a vaudeville audience.  i think it's no coincidence that my least favorite season was season 1, which i watched by myself because i was in japan when the rest of the group watched it.

the new season started this week.  with the exception of mark, it's a new group but the fun is still there.  theories are tossed around with joyful abandon, we yell with delight at the surprises, and cheer when old friends make dramatic returns.  

we're no different than the kids in the fifties, who ran to the saturday matinees every week to see if the cowboy arrived in time to rescue the damsel from the train tracks.  i don't think they ever feared he wouldn't arrive in time, but it's thrilling to see the adventure just the same.  there's something very cool about that.

what i'm listening to these days

"demon days" by the gorillaz

"prospekt's march" by coldplay

"autobahn" and "trans-europa express" by kraftwek

"modern times" by bob dylan

"human after all" by daft punk

"here come the ABCs" by they might be giants

"o brother, where art thou?" soundtrack

"kind of blue" by miles davis

"global underground #030: paris" by nick warren

"mass in b minor" by johann sebastian bach

"who's next" by the who

and tally hall.

take a sad song and make it better

on the first friday of every month, downtown provo's art scene comes alive- who knew?  i wandered through with cheryl and julie last night and we came to a gallery with several landscapes. at first glance, it was nothing that caught my eye.   so i decided to give it my attention, instead of demand from it.

have you ever stopped to just look at a mailbox, a tree, or your desk lamp? to watch all the different colors and light and shadows? subtle shades of dark and tones of color bounced from another object start to come out (i really dig the blue shadows of snow). i knew that's what this artist saw, and i looked at a few landscapes for a long time, following the variations in color in the different brush strokes, to see some of what he was seeing after sitting there for hours.

earlier that day, kristin and i were out roaming a few blocks west of there, photographing "found typography." or anything that looked interesting.  we did some more today, when we were waiting in line in the basement of ehT leonardo.  

again, looking at things i probably wouldn't have looked at

the year in review: 2008 (a.k.a. "the sheepies")

106 posts in 2008.  as i look over them, i smile.  i think i would still read sheep go to heaven if i didn't write for it, and that's a good feeling.  still, some are better than others.

i tend to judge the success of a post based on how many comments it garners.  which is not really a good way to do it; sometimes i'll just scribble something down for the fun of it, and it turns out to be a big "hit".  conversely, some of my favorites don't get a single comment.

the following ten are my favorite posts, the ones that conveyed most clearly what i wanted to say, in chronological order.  

actually, i like le collection fabuleuse de jeff best.  it's fun and came out exactly as i imagined it.  that's #1.

january 11: fond of strategem or a bit of a coward

feb. 1: praise to the man

feb. 13: the appropriately floating standard

may 11: someone like you

july 19: le collection fabuleuse de jeff

sept. 14: read directions carefully before operating

oct. 12: and it came to pass...

nov. 18: at home, at work, at play

dec. 2: the living Church

jan. 5: bleach (dated dec. 30, 2008)

duds

feb. 7-8: criterion pt.I and criterion pt.II- i hoped to write a glorious review of the collection and inspire people to discover new cinema.  didn't seem to happen. 

aug. 3: remember that one time- i posted it thinking, "it would be unfortunate if someone did this and no one comments."  i got two comments.

popularity contest a.k.a. most comments

tie: feb. 6: the dreams stuff is made of and feb. 14: amative me, with 11 each.  never would have guessed.

longest post

apr. 20: the illustrated trip to vegas- in lieu of my usual lengthy prose, i tried to be like posters who show a picture and write a brief caption.  instead, there were a lot of pictures and even more words.

who knows? post

feb. 10: learning from the past- occasionally, i will write obliquely, in a sort of parable for what's on my mind at the moment.  and i can usually look back and remember exactly what i was saying.  no idea what i meant with this one...

 

best post outside of sheep go to heaven

in search of a muse: salt- i thoroughly enjoy reading all of my friends' blogs, and there are several  posts that i really like.  but tim's essay on religion was spot-on in all respects.

i thought of giving a name to these awards, but then it feels even more pompous than it already is, giving myself awards.

still, if i was going to the name them, they'd be called "the sheepies."  

that, or "the cake-bakies."

cold shower

date: jan. 1, 2009

the hot water was already partially gone when i got into one shower this morning and he got in the other.  he can shower much quicker than i can, and it was soon evident that there wasn't going to be enough to make it to the end.

and so i just huddled to the side of the tiled wall, and no matter how cold i felt, the water always seemed to get colder.  despite having twenty years' experience with this plumbing, i clung to a hope that i would find a secret reserve tank of hot (or even lukewarm) water.  there seemed no way out of this until i found myself under the water, rinsing off with no recollection of having given any sort of executive order.

i hope that's the coldest shower i have all year.

the skinny black pant

date: dec. 31, 2008


tim and i went out shopping during the glorious after Christmas sales, when one can get a $20 shirt for $5. walking past aeropostale, the big red window signs advertised "all jeans $19.99!!" that was what i was looking for, as most of mine were starting to develop holes, and the ones i bought with holes how had much larger holes.

i walked out of my first experience in that store with two pairs of denim pants, one of which are slender and black. wearing them today, i have to acknowledge that i don't have the style of audrey hepburn;  i look more like one of the ramones.

bleach

date: dec. 30, 2008

evidently a lot of noteworthy things happened in my life ten years ago, because i've been commemorating events lately.
it was ten years ago today that i went into the missionary training center,  called to the japan kobe mission.

i've never talked a whole lot about my mission.  mostly, i didn't want to be another byu student continually talking about his mission and how wonderful it was.

but, similar to one of laurie jayne's recent posts, i'm going to break the silence.

this has proven to be one of the hardest posts i've even written.  nothing has come out right.  perhaps the hardest reason to talk about a mission is that it can so quickly become cliche: "i grew so much;" "my mission president was amazing;" "i wasn't prepared for what i was getting into." anyone could say that.

i'm going to say what i want; they are my own words and not of anyone else.

i learned a lot things in japan.  skills across the entire spectrum.  learning to live on my own, to wisely buy groceries for myself, and how to actually cook some things.  i biked more than i even had, so much that my legs hurt for the first few months.  certainly i learned how to speak and read japanese, but that seems so narrow when compared with all other skills.  being placed around all sorts of people very different from the circle i grew up with, and learning how to work with them.  i learned to responsible, honest, and to value integrity.  i saw wonders of the world, and learned met people and friends from all over the globe.

in the mtc, we were once asked to write down all the things that we were grateful for.  i listed my friends, my family, my car, my cds.  i wasn't being materialistic; rather, i was trying to be grateful for what i did have.  the speaker then helped us review our list.  did we list our families?  yes.  the church, the priesthood?  i think i listed those.  Jesus Christ?  His name was on my jacket, but not my list.

that exemplifies how i grew most during those two years.  never again would i make that mistake, and not for fear of a social faux pas.  i had always held a testimony of the gospel and been active in church.  i went on a mission because it was the right thing do.  that's a good reason to go, but i came home with a much deeper understanding of it all.  the scores of bricks that made up my conviction of its verity were now cemented together.  i began to understand and really love the scriptures.  i was aware of what the gift of the Holy Ghost could do for me and how important that is.  and i held in much more hallowed reverence the Name of Jesus Christ and a solemn gratitude for what He did, with an active desire to keep following Him.

during a personal interview, a teacher described a serving a mission like tempering steel: people will look at you and remark that you're still the same person, but you know that you've changed.  walking through the byu bookstore a year or two later, i found myself thinking about something, and realized that i learned it on my mission.  it was something mundane, like how to shop for groceries or learning to read a map when you're trying to find an address in a big city (or old country village, for that matter); i don't remember what it was, but it was something i learned as a missionary in japan.  and i remembered how i once kept a bottle of bleach under my bed.  it only fit on its side, and despite the cap being tight, some had leaked out, which we didn't discover until the chris rearranged the furniture.  part of the spot had been turned white, but there was a hole where the bleach had eaten away entirely.  it didn't happen all at once; it continued to react with the carpet long after i'd stored the bottle somewhere else.  such is that black name tag.  
an elder in my mtc district came from a family long in the Chruch. as i commented on how cool it was to be carrying on the family legacy, he saw the glory of my situation, of being the first person to wear the "elder gustafson" badge.

high school never ends

date: dec. 27, 2008

author's note: this post is a pre-destined failure.  tonight was so awesome, my best writing cannot capture it.  if you get me with a good hot chocolate and plenty of room to stand, jump, and flail my arms, i may come close.

i've been looking forward to today for several years.

moving to japan when most of my friends were moving to minneapolis expanded my horizons. leaving my circle of friends, my hometown, and my hemisphere to live on my own and work among strangers from around the world caused me to open up, to be friendlier to those i don't know, and to think differently about those i do know. and, when i came back, i was in moorhead for only a few days before moving out to utah, where i met more wonderful people and had a lot of really cool opportunities. i would come home at Christmas, as well as that summer in 2001, when i found summer vacation was different than in high school. by winter of 2002 or 2003, it was apparent that there wasn't much for me in moorhead anymore; one of us had changed.  it was still home (and always will be), but only in the past tense.

being away and seeing new changes had made me think about where i had come from, and what i'd seen along the way. and with whom. while it was not without rife challenges, i loved high school, and was soon interested in seeing those people again. i wanted to see my old group of friends and tell them what i've seen, and to get to know those people with whom i was too shy to talk until the last few months of my senior year.

2008 finally came around, and i looked forward to may for my 10 year high school reunion.  and didn't hear anything. no e-mails, no letters arriving at my parents' house, nothing on the high school website's "reunion" section. it seemed i was cursed with a lame class.

as december was rolling around and i started e-mailing my high school best friend, jon, to see when he would be in town, he mentioned wanting to do all that he could to avoid some horrendous event on the 27th. all i knew about that day was that it was tim's birthday, and, last i checked, he and tim had had no mortal feud.
inquiring, he told me it was our high school reunion, and was surprised i hadn't heard already, as i actually wanted to go to the blasted thing. once again, i was reminded that i am one of half a dozen people on the planet not on facebook, and therefore, am completely out of any and all "loops."

jon was decrying the reunion for a list of reasons, despite having been by my side for nearly every awesome memory since sixth grade.  during the reunion's preceding weeks, i debated back and forth with jon, hearing his reasonings and treating them, conceding them yet still insisting we go, or ignoring them altogether.  i like to think that i knew jon well enough that i would get him to go when the time came to it.

in the midst of this, he told me that one of our other friends was going, hoping to pawn me off onto him.  i counted myself grateful to have some re-enforcement on my side, until i found out that rob, too, was avoiding this as he would a plague.

man, how did i end up with all the wrong friends?

i r.s.v.p.-ed to the e-mail address, and the reply (from a name i did not know) said "excited to see you there!" and gave me two links, both to facebook.  which did me no good, as only facebookers can facebook.

today, the day that i had looked forward to for upwards of five years or more, i found a myspace page for the moorhead high school class of 98 reunion.  there were eleven people confirmed as going, and most were girls with pages of pink and glitter.  it was looking like jon may win and i wouldn't even care.

tim let me use his facebook account to find the "real" page, for all the cool people.  90 people were confirmed, with about 60 "unsure" and another 60 "not attending."  i always thought i knew my class pretty well, yet there were a lot of people i didn't recognize.  still, perhaps i had a chance to win jon over yet.  looking through the "no goers", i found most of the interesting people.  the "maybes" had a couple notables, and the "confirmed" had, at best, and handful that i would categorize in the fringe group "might be fun to see again." i was surprised at how many people were still living in the fargo-moorhead area, and a great percentage more were in the minneapolis-st. paul area.  and there seemed to be a loose pattern that those with more artistic profile pictures (often black and white) were usually the same ones living out of state.  as a bonus prize for oddness, however, there were two girls whose last names were now "gustafson."

nevertheless, the scales were tipping against me.

further lead was added when i noticed that "if you have not already purchased your tickets for $20 [this was dated dec. 22], admission will be $40 at the door."

the anticipation that had been deflating now sputtered its last breath.

out perusing the clothing stores for clearance clothing, jon and i realized we were on the same page, just different ends.  i wanted to go the reunion to see all of our good friends from high school again, and to talk with some i didn't talk with much before.  and if those people were going to be there, jon noted, it would be tremendous, indeed.  but they weren't going to be there.  that's what he'd figured and i just learned.

i suppose that, had i started working on this a few weeks (or a month) ago, i could have rallied all the cool troops; a sort of "i'll only do it if they're in" situation, not unlike producing a movie sequel.

with plans of attending the official reunion now defunct, and knowing the real reason for the reunion--to see people we like--jon offered to call and see who was still in town and get them together.  jon called because he lives in minneapolis and still sees people from time to time.  i haven't seen anyone other than him since two friends were married five or six years ago.

it was decided we go to "the bowler" one of the f-m area's aptly named bowling arenas, catering to the standard accompanying demographic.  tim and his friends came along, too, and only one person from our high school group, but it was the best person who could have come.

jill is awesome.

jon was one of two friends in my innermost circle; jill was in the next set, and, while i can't really remember when we became friends, she was part of our state-competing "knowledge bowl" team and is one of my favorite people.

in short, tonight could not have been better.  at all.

the big dude at the counter preferred we not pay individually, so i handed him my card, and everyone else paid me.  i paid for tim (birthday) and for jill (just thrilled that  she was here) and i still think i lost a few dollars in the process, but i didn't care; i saw it as money far better spent than  were i at the americ-inn with a room of married girls i never knew.

it took me a while to find a decent ball.  i found a mighty orb christened "thunderball", but soon swapped it when the too-widely-spaced holes left me with a sore thumb and gutter balls.  it was a shame that only the three of us were on the lane, as jill and i talked as fast as we could while jon bowled, only to have one of us get up, and then the other.  still, being there was unexpectedly refreshing, being everything that i had looked forward to at the reunion: talking with old friends in the light of new changes and understanding.

well, that, and the jukebox.

i was pacing out to shoot another strike when meatloaf's "i would do anything for love" came on (a song that connoted plenty of junior high memories for me) and i looked at tim, as he has recently developed an affinity for the singer.  he smiled and pointed to lee, saying he chose it on the jukebox.

they have a jukebox here??

people handed me a few dollars, and, after lee's 12-minute version of the 1993 mega-hit, everyone was singing along to r.e.m.'s "man on the moon."  not just our group; i looked down both sides of the alley and grinned as i saw bowlers united in song (i chose it because the video has everyone singing along in a bar, and i had a little hope in my heart...).  "sheep go to heaven" didn't have as many fans, but boston's "foreplay/long time" was for me, while journey's timeless "don't stop believing" was for my brother on his birthday.  and, because we were in a bowling alley, everyone else, too.

when our pre-paid hour ended, tim and his friends went off to rock band, and jon and jill and i went off to perkins.

perkins.  a 24-hour restaurant that was the place to go in high school.  not just for me, but for my sister and brother, too.  and a good chunk of the rest of the underage student population.  driving there, i was on cloud nine, thrilled and loving this with all my soul.

the appetizer sampler has gone up in price since 1998, but they've still got vanilla coke, and i downed three drinks plus two more waters as we talked until 2 a.m.  and it was there that i realized why i loved it so much: i was me again.  i didn't know that i wasn't me before, but i haven't felt so free, so open in a long time.  because i was with people i'd know twice as long as anybody i know in utah; because i didn't need to worry about looking like i have it all planned out, no appearances to keep up, no one to impress.  sitting with my best friends from high school in perkins, i could be 18 again.  i wasn't immature or a complete idiot--quite the opposite actually.  i shed the accumulated paste of the stresses being out of college, of being single in utah valley, of not having a clear plan of my life for the next ten years--i felt just like my old boney self again!  pure, undiluted, free and clear.  like when pepsi became crystal pepsi.  

and we talked.  we talked about everything, flowing wherever we wanted, free an open, everyone having different ideas and experiences.

i could have talked until the sun came up, but jill noted that she had to be at church in the morning, and i conceded that i did, too.

a few days later, my dad asked what were the three best events of 2008.  without a second thought, i answered:

*caleb being born

*the tally hall concert in march

*going to perkins with jon and jill

my ten year high school reunion was nothing like i imagined, yet it couldn't have been better.

a note from the editor

dear readers,

during the past few weeks, our senior reporter has been on location in northern minnesota.  while our policy here at sheep go to heaven is that the news does not stop, our correspondent seems to have thought otherwise.  jotted notes are all that we have to show in the place of missed deadlines.  that, and the (wholly un-consoling) knowledge that said unnamed reporter successfully helped guide his younger brother though several dungeons on the 8-bit nintendo classic, "dragon warrior 2".  indeed.

during the two weeks of the now-published "horrorshow diaries", we promised that such lag-posting would not again occur at a blog with such esteem as sheep go to heaven.  in light of such circumstances, i personally offer our official response:

dang it.

some readers may wonder how this sort of un-professional behavior can allow such a writer to continue working here.  i have to concede that he is, along with all other things said about him, the best darned writer we've ever had here, and we simply cannot afford to lose him.  such is the business.

now that he is back in the office, the notes of the past week will be developed into full posts appearing over the next few days.  such posts will be dated on those days, so that those following with rss feeds will not miss a posting notice due to its being listed as "5 days ago."  each post will begin with the date of its genesis, so that the immediate tone of the writing may be preserved.  it is our aim to have the first up later this evening.

if this happens again, he will be horse-whipped.

happy new year,

jeff gustafson

editor-in-chief

sheep go to heaven

the mega mall

last night as i was fighting to stay awake while tim and my high school best friend, jon, were playing zombies ate my neighbors on the super nintendo, i didn't think i would be going to minneapolis today. as had happened a few years ago, scott was at his sister's in
wisconsin and suggested we meet up at the mall of america, coloquially known as "the mega mall."
it wasn't that i didn't want to go; i did. it was more a combination of it was becky and brady's last day in town (not that i don't see them often in provo; it's just... different in minnesota), they were staying the extra day because the roads were looking bad, and, perhaps the deciding factor, it was already 1:30 a.m. and i didn't look forward to getting up 6 hours.
surprisingly, the sleep issue was overcome, although the road concern was not frivolous. i checked numerous weather report sites, and chose to disregard the bold red line on the map, running from my house to the twin cities, signifying "severe road conditions", deciding that the other three reports that don't show any dangers can't be wrong.

3 out of 4 websites were right; i went 77mph the whole way.
the roads were wet, and when the sun broke through, landscape in front of me became brilliantly blinding. i've let owning glasses exclude me from owning sunglasses, and now i was paying for it. so much, in fact, that i gave way to complete humilty and fumbled around for my father's "old man" sunglasses--the over-sized kind that fit over a pair of standard spectacles. the tragedy is that, despite my having only ever seen them worn by aarp card holders, they are actually very convenient and effective. and, since i wasn't trying to impress anyone on the now sepia-toned great plains, i didn't mind like looking like willy wonka.

driving past the town signs, it's easy to see that this is indeed the land of 10,000 lakes: detroit lakes (great swimming), pelican rapids, fergus falls (they were "the otters", and our pep band would cheer for them, too, because it was fun).
i love this state, and every year that i come back, that feeling deepens. i want to photograph it as i see it, the magic what i grew up with and now appreciate, and i drove though beautiful cold fog this morning. i wished for a camera and a place to shoot the trees diminishing into the white atmosphere.

in my mind, the trip takes four hours. but that was under "60 mph" rules. now, it takes three. to get to the belt route, anyway. another 20 minutes to the mall, and then 40 minutes to move from the off ramp to the mall parking ramp, the distance of a ten-minute's walk. we used to stop here the day after thanksgiving, and i loved the energy of it all.
patience provided me a parking spot, and i texted the location of my car to myself, knowing i would otherwise forget the cartesian coordinates: "P4-D8-florida".

i found scott and his wife near the entrance to bloomingdales, looking over the shirts and asking why anyone would pay $247 for a t-shirt. i didn't have an answer for him, but i did want to grab something to eat. as with every other aspecy of the mall, the mega mall boasts two large food courts, epitome's of the mall rat culture in all it's fast food glory. we opted for the fifties-nostalgia burger joint, "johnny rockets", and paid three times what we would for the same meal deal available at in-n-out burger. so be it.

i've never been a mall junkie, yet i often enjoy seeing the great commercialism that makes up so much of who we are, and i like to dip my feet in it. and if you're going to do that, why not enjoy it at its best?
the mall was surging with people. people, people everywhere, and still everyone seemed to fit and make room. every store was advertising sales, usually 50-70% off. i wandered into a jeans store and came out twenty minutes later with what are now my favorite pair of jeans. lucky, indeed.

scott was a great roommate for several years, and got married after he graduated and moved to texas. there's so much to like about him, and his steady and stable disposition make a good addition to any group. i had the chance to briefly meet his wife, angela, over some cheap chinese food earlier this year, but it was fun to get to know her more in the mall. they are perfect for each other, having a nice balance of matching corresponding attributes while alligning together in other traits. being with cool people like that makes me smile.
angela noted that gamestop always smells like smelly boys. i had never thought about this, and wandered in. and then wandered back to her and promptly agreed.

we met up with scott's older siblings and their respective offspring and found the disney store. the youngest got excited over the camp rock paraphenelia while i got excited over the wall.e paraphenelia. the nylon wall.e doll almost won my $9.99, as did the equally-priced eve notebook/journal. i think had wall.e been plush, i would have gone for it. he's a robot, but he should be tactile.

it was a bit of a shame that i drove for fours only to spend three with my friends, but the roads were becoming potentially precarious. i was enjoying the mall so much that i would have liked a friend to go meandering with for another hour or two, but now was not the time. i said goodbye to scott and soon realized that, despite have the location written down, i could not find my car.

ten minutes later and one level down, i was in the car and out on the road. i took 494 west to get here, so i would take 494 east to go back the way i came, right? made sense to me, but either i misunderstood or the civil engineering committee of minneapolis disagreed, because i took a different and longer way back to I-94. don't get me wrong, this was the scenic route, and i got to see the unniversity of minnesota, augsburg college, the state capitol and catherdral in st. paul, and much of the downtown area; it's just that a four-hour drive can get long without anyone else to sing along to the ipod with.

and i got lost again in elk river when i stopped for gas.

eve

certainly the most magical night of the year, anyway.

a few years ago, my friend sent me this as his family's Christmas greeting.
i think it's wonderful.

merry Christmas = )

Christmas card rejects

for whatever reason, i ended up with my hands on the keyboard when it came time to write the caption for the family Christmas card. after much deliberation, we went with listing our names.
my favorite (serious) suggestion was "the gustafsons: so much more than just a Christmas card."
other ideas that didn't even get that far:

we like you.
love, the gustafsons

a lot of effort for a little card.

the frozen chosen

warmest wishes from 20 below

who knew so much could happen in 365 days??

another without police involvement;
there's so much to be grateful for!

what a long, strange trip it's been...

the people we don't like got an
envelope of coal.

we're sick of doing Christmas cards.
enjoy this one.

everything we thought of was boring
or immature.

how many of us can you name?
(middle names are double points)
answer key next year.

we've made it another year!
did you?

happy hanukah, kwanzaa, festivus, and tabernash

join the mormon church

you never visit.

a lovely new mom, an eligible bachelor,
and, well, we love jeff.

photography by the cats.
they're getting better.

bah weep granah weep ninni bong

love, the stevensons

a picture's worth a 1000 words.
write what this says to you.

jeff and tim's lovely wives took
the picture.

tim's not wearing any pants there.

chungking express shipping

the short before the show: i was in a crabby mood today. i don't like being in crabby moods. i'm trying to work on that.
but i went to see wall.e in the dollar theater here. there's so much i love about that movie... at the core, i love wall.e for the same reason that i love ducks: he's just doing what he can do and being the best at it.

the feature presentation: when we arrived here on friday night, i was expecting to have a few packages waiting for me. one was in my room, but nothing else had arrived. strange, but i decided to give the shipping industry some more time.
today i checked my criterion order and it said that it had been delivered on the 16th. to the office. and signed for by "muller."
i had had criterion change my shipping from utah to minnesota the day it shipped (turns out it would have arrived in provo before i left), so sent them an e-mail to find out where they had shipped the box and were things got mixed up.
i thought about it.
ok. "office"/"house", tomato/tomato, fine. whatever; it got delivered. and with their electronic signature thingers, maybe "valerie" read as "muller."
i mentioned to my mom that the tracking number said it had been delivered here days ago. she asked what movies they were, (criterion's first blu-rays, chungking express and the third man, for those of you interested), and then said that they had arrived. but, in the flurry of package activity that is Christmastime at the gustafsons, it seemed that they had been wrapped and were probably under the tree already.
i had a good laugh about this and smiled in the false sense of security akin to when a movie seems it's over, but there still 20 minutes left.
i came home from some friends' that night and there was chungking express, shink-wrapped and lovely on my desk. everything was solved and it was a happy ending.
like an fbi detective rushing in with new lab results, criterion had returned my query. the address they had shipped it to lacked the starting "2" of my parents' house. they had called, and found that this muller character had, indeed, signed for it at the office, which was probably two miles west of here. the criterion rep offered to do further research and track down the fedex driver and find out just who gave it to whom.
to quote alice, "curiouser and curiouser...."

where did this disc on my desk come from? mom said she must have ordered it for me, but i never told her that i wanted it. is the third man wrapped under the tree? what is "muller" doing with my movies?

my mother is very good at keeping track of all the Christmas inventory, and she has it all logged somewhere, we just haven't bothered to check yet. afterall, nothings going to change much in the next few days anyway. so i'll wait until everything under the tree is revealed and go from there.

further, my dad's present that i ordered on dec. 2 hasn't arrived, and i haven't heard back from the company on that one. maybe he's on the naughty list and santa intercepted it?

warmed up to zero

in my junior high health class, there was a kid named paul. i don't think i ever said much more to him that "hi", if that, even though he was in my grade through high school.
when i walked into sacrament meeting today, amidst a pleasant flurry of excited greetings from friends, i noticed paul, sitting in the back. i hadn't seen in him ten years, but it was unmistakeably him. it seemed as if he was meeting with the missionaries, and i made it a point to talk with him, even though i didn't know what i'd say.
the ward's Christmas program ended, and my time was taken up with laughing with old friends and new babies; a good while into sunday school, actually. and paul was gone.
coming out of sunday school, i about walked right into him. i didn't think he'd remember me, and he didn't, but when i asked him what he'd been up to, he said that he and his dad had been baptized in may. i've sometimes wondered what it would have been like if someone from school (of 1500 students and 2-6 mormons) had joined the Church, but never did it occur to me it would be paul. probably because i never talked with him.
there was something very cool about the whole thing.

a few years ago, becky and i got to accompany my dad on one of his high council visits out to a little branch about an hour from here. we got to speak along with him, and i really enjoyed that. (so did the branch; they liked having new people around) while it certainly wasn't going to happen, i have a secret desire to teach a week of sunday school here in fargo. ...a secret desire publicly posted on the internet. it would be fun to come back to my old ward and preach.

i'm home. and i love it.
the longer i'm away from the area, the more i notice and appreciate the culture here: a staunch community adapted to cold, harsh weather, kept warm by kindness and hospitality. i loved being at the mall yesteday, bustling with Christmas shoppers. the snow is so cold that it doesn't stick, but blows in great drifts across the parking lots and yards. i grinned as i wrapped my long coat around me and ran to the car: this is what winter and Christmas feel like, and it's wonderful. today i found out that tim was similarly elated when he stepped out of the airport last night. it's part of being minnesotan.

i like being in my home, too. my mom is being an excellent hostess to everyone, and as she was exlpaining to me that she had set out a towel and where to find a washcloth should i need one, i reminded her that i'm not really a guest--this is my house.
which souded a little weird. perhaps it isn't my "house", although it still feels like home. mom has been excellent in redecorating and remodeling over the years (so much so that, when i got a picture of becky's graduation reception during my mission, didn't recognize the house until i noticed the dishwasher), and some room looks new everytime we come home (this it's the main bathroom).
but with a little memory and imagination, it's easy to slowly wind back time, to remember the children that used to run through the halls, the furnace room that was scary with a sense of imagined adventure, the laughter and fun of being with my friends. i've lived in each of the three children rooms, so much that it's getting pointless to say "jeff's room", because we're not sure which one that is anymore.

it's home. it looks different, but it feels the same, and i like it that way.

813 mile car trip*

i'm in nebraska.
i slept for about 2 and a bit hours last night, which made me a more docile co-pilot that i usually am. but brady and i crossed wyoming without any forboding snow sightings. actually, that's not accurate. we did see some snowy, stormy clouds, and, with the sun breaking through, i got some good pictures. i was wishing i had someone else's lens, but i made due with what i had.

if you've ever ridden in a car with my sister, you will know that you will invariably be made to play "the atlas game", whereupon she will grab the discount wal-mart atlas and begin testing your state trivia. becky will be riding with us tomorrow to minnesota, and even though brady and i fancy ourselves as knowing our geography, we decided some practice wouldn't hurt.
not only do we not know our world capitols, but my knowledge of state capitols is shameful. i'm embarrassed.

carrots are another staple on car trips (at least, in my family), and, for much of my childhood, were cut into neat sticks by my mother. then the baby carrots were invented. different, but still comfortable and bite-size. and that's what i was expecting when brady said he brought carrots. i reached behind my seat and hefted a large plastic bag stuffed with what i termed, "bugs bunny carrots"; large, whole carrots, with the ends chopped; washed, not peeled. true to what my sister says, they were very "crunchy." and fragmenty; i choked on one as i was getting my pre-payed change at the truck stop.

brady and i chose all truck stops. perhaps it was because we were on I-80, the transportation industry artery of the country (try saying that ten times fast); passing all the semis along the way, brady noted how they aren't as refined as other professions, but all of us depend on truckers. the friendliest truck stop was in nebraska, with a few patrons saying "hi" to me, along with a sign on the door advertising "rifle cases for $75." this is the real deal, folks.
in contrast to the log-like carrots of earlier, i hunted down a pair of pink snowballs. i found not the hostess kind, but mrs. freshley's. tim and i conducted a taste test earlier this year and found that "her" cupcakes beat out hostesses, although i'm still split on the snowballs.

not only does nebraska boast a billboard advertising "fun and recreation on jeffrey lake in brady, ne", but they seem to have a love with museums. the history of kool-aid, paperweights, plains pioneers, germans from russia, and military vehicles; all in nebraska. not good enough? how about a museum that is built over both sides of the freeway? it was dark, so i couldn't see what it housed, but i did noticed a painting of a wizard on the side.

and, due to an ice storm, i will be here until friday. thankfully, we've got singin' in the rain....

lastly, i recently washed my "minnesota" hoodie, since it smelled like campfire. it shrunk, and now is just slightly too small. that's only relevant in that i'm wearing it and it's been bugging me all day.



*it was actually 894, but then it wouldn't match the song. strictly a creative decision.

the weekend update

i really haven't felt like posting this week.  or, rather, i've wanted to post, but haven't had anything to say.  now that the week is over, i see that a fair amount of things have happened, worthy of mention.  nothing stellar, but the stuff of life nonetheless.

monday.  ok, i lied: monday was stellar.

stellar A: when i scheduled the annual "muppet+nog party", i explicitly told my sister that i would deny any work offered to me that day; i would not miss this party.  and, lo and behold, i got a call from cosmic pictures on saturday in need of a good camera assistant.  man, sometimes the stars align against you.  or, perhaps not.  it turned out that the shoot was not only an awesome position (me sitting behind the camera, instead of next to it), but it would be 8 hours at most.  ...meaning i could work a good day and still make it in plenty of time for that party.  man, i love it when the planets align and the tumblers of the universe fall into place.

the shoot rocked so severely that i was in a great mood as i stopped by macey's to buy a lot of eggs, cream, nutmeg, and whole milk.  i even remembered to use my trendy canvas shopping bags (thanks, criterion!)

which leads to...

stellar B: the muppet+nog party went more or less as planned.  last year i made just enough for everyone to get one glass full.  this year i bought enough to make two for everyone, but the first batch was a quadruple recipe, which had even my largest bowls brimming to the top with noggy goodness.  suffice it to say, that was enough work that we didn't make the second batch.  everyone got one glass of seriously dang good nog, and i've still got a ton of dairy products in my fridge.

michael caine sings, "if you want to know the measure of a man, you simply count his friends!"  such being the case, i am worth 15 awesome friends and two babies.  i'm pretty happy about that.  we sang along as best we could, we laughed a lot, and ate homemade oreos (thanks, jaime!) and ginger snaps (thanks, natalie!)

tuesday.  i've decided i'd like a blu-ray player.  a bit of research revealed that a playstation 3 was actually the best blu-ray player out there and tim helped me find a great deal on ebay (did you know that if you use microsoft's new search engine to buy things on ebay under certain conditions, they'll give you money back?  100% for real!), and my ps3 came today.  hooking it up is an evolving nightmare, but i've already watched wall.e twice.  i have an unabashed crush on that movie for so many reasons....

we also watched the childhood favorite, a claymation Christmas, and tim showed us dr. horrible's sing along blog, about which he wrote a good, insightful essay.

wednesday.  after the chris's photo-endorsement of the hogle zoo's Christmas lights, mark and i decided to ask some nice girls on a zoo date.  i like monkeys.  and the porcupine.  and the poison dart frogs.  and we saw some cougars, too, who didn't mind my camera flash.  and we stuffed mark inside an egg.  all followed by some seriously good pizza at stoneground pizza, our very favorite (and possibly hexed) pizza joint.

thursday.  another day of work at cosmic, more awesome times had by all.  and, miracle of miracles, i made it to mandy anderson's wedding reception.  i wanted to, because a) mandy's great and b) i wanted to keep my resolution to attend receptions, and an insider tip let me know that people were still in line when i was getting back in town.

friday.  i had a fine list of things i needed to do today.  then mark called and suggest we go to ikea to buy some furniture.  mostly, i went because of the meatballs.  that evening was our ward Christmas party, for which I was not too eager.  nor did i have a skit, and, when they said "each committee should prepare a skit", i suspected that "sunday school" may be included in that.  the party was actually great, with robust attendance, plenty of food, and a couple of really good skits, the best being the brower family doing a puppet performance about the joys of fun-sounding words like "blubber", "macadamia", "gazebo", and, my favorite, "tuberculosis" (the chris, i thought of you from the start).

saturday.  i ran errands in the wet snow while listening to the soundtrack for a charlie brown Christmas.  itunes had it as part of their $4.99 sale this week, and i'm absolutely enraptured with it.  i went to the byu bookstore and mailed a package that i should have mailed off yesterday, and another that i should have mailed off in, oh, september.  and i picked up ratatouille on blu-ray at best buy on sale and marveled at its beauty as i tossed together a noodle stir fry that i'd rate about a 6 out of 10.  

that night i went i filled in with bekahjo as she set up some friends on a date to the lights at temple square.  had i known we were going to ihop, i wouldn't have eaten beforehand.  i ordered a hot chocolate, which was nice and rich (think heated hershey's syrup).  two cups was enough for me.  the rest of the evening, the lights, the company, the conversation, was, true to form, pretty much great.  except for the roads; they were really icy.

sunday.  because i had a meeting with the stake presidency smack in the middle of my sunday school lesson, i only taught for 15 minutes, then passed the torch to another teacher.  i wanted to talk, ever so briefly, on one of the more misunderstood (or simply unknown) topics in the Church, the house of israel.  but that's really hard to do in 10 minutes.  and harder still when it seems everyone is talking.  in short, it wasn't so good.

hometeaching, however, was good.  great, actually.  but, sad.  see, when i moved into the ward three and a bit years ago, i was given the best hometeaching companion ever.  and i never would have expected that jonpaul would be so great.  we seemed so different: when i drove, we were listening to general conference.  when he drove, we listened to rap.  but we complemented and clicked.  for the year and a half that i was in charge of hometeaching, i made sure to never change us.  when the new elder's quorum presidencies came, i threatened old testament-style consequences if we were ever split up.  i can't remember all the people we hometaught, but, just as group 2 taught me how great f.h.e. could be, together we learned how truly wonderful hometeaching is.  jonpaul moved his records to a new ward a few weeks ago without telling me.  today, as we were making our final visits, he said that the reason he had stayed in the ward as long as he had was because of hometeaching, and he didn't tell me until the change was final because i was the only person who could have convinced him not to go.  i'll miss him dearly.  i've had some great companions (my manfriend jack, the chris, that guy named mike...), but i don't think i will ever have another companion like jonpaul.

as i finish typing this, i'm enjoying the charlie brown soundtrack and savoring a bowl of berries and yogurt.  i'm stoked that jess comes into town tomorrow, and brady and i drive to minnesota on wednesday.  and becky's updated me that caleb seems to really like people who sing in the car....  : )

this isn't a great post, but it gets you caught up.

and that's why you read this, right?

"have you ever noticed that everything seems wonderful at Christmas?"

"trust visions that don't feature buckets of blood"

on wednesday i went to byu to sneak into a piano room for a bit.  sadly, they were all full of legitimate students, leaving me wandering through the main lobby of the hfac as i wondered where on campus might have a private piano for a nice boy like myself.  the bfa show on display wasn't doing much for me, and as i looked up at the displays on the higher floors, i remembered hearing on classical89 about the museum of art's show on "searching for meaning in art in the late-60s."

the title of the exhibit led me to think that it was rebelling against the uber-esoteric styles of the stereotypical "modern art": a plain white canvas, a four-foot steel cube, or a page from the phonebook, all being called "Art."

the exhibit was, in fact, those sort of items, the first being a seven-foot industrial-made "X".

i had learned about these movements of "minimalism" and "conceptual art" in my art history class.  these were the days when dr. magleby would display a painting by mark rothko and the dudes in baseball caps behind me would mutter, "you've got to be kidding me--that's art??"  to be fair, the giant, partially-eaten cube of chocolate entitled "gnaw" took a little explanation, but once i saw where the artist was coming from, i quite liked it.

be it a movie by andrei tarkovsky or a series of sculptures by sol lewitt, art of this sort is better appreciated when you learn about the environments and movements they had come from, and to understand what they were trying to evoke in the viewer.

there was a 13-minute video that helped give an introduction to what was going on in the art world at this time.  the rolling stones' "gimme shelter" led way to a narration by campbell grey, the museum's director and former member of our stake presidency back in the day.  president grey often gave the best talks at stake conference, and i loved meeting with him for temple recommend interviews, as it was encouraging to talk with someone strong in the Gospel with an appreciation for art.  instead of decrying the cussing in "o brother, where art thou?", he praised the film for its allegory.

in the video, he explained that as art forms were expanding, painting had lost much of it's uniqueness to photography, leading the artists to ask, what can painting do that nothing else can?  the essence of painting was "flatness", and pure, perfect flatness is what these works strove for.

conceptual art, like the best movies, realized that art cannot exist without a viewer, and so the viewer is an important part of the work.  therefore, the piece does not do all of the creation, but part of that is left to you: what do you think when you see that?  what do you feel?  one work was two parts, a small, white, square canvas, and a second frame, with a written guarantee that in that canvas was a 10" circle; it's up to you to see the circle.

as for the giant X or the series of open metal cubes on the floor, the environment becomes part of the work, and there is no mark of the artist.  no brush strokes or weld marks.  but look at how it takes up the space in the museum, how the light in the room reflects on it.  it looks different depending in the angle you are standing (or sitting) when you see it.  it takes more thought and effort, but once you understand how to approach these works, it's some pretty cool stuff.

as i was walking through the gallery, i caught a glimpse of the "religious art" wing down the hall.  after all of this, those paintings of people seemed so... straightforward.

i think i'm going to visit minneapolis' museum of art over the Christmas break.

one final thing; a lot of museums have little headsets you can carry that will give you a guided tour of what you're seeing.  the moa has a cool idea: pull out your cell phone and dial a number, then enter the number next to the work you're looking at, and right there you get a brief lecture on it.  neat.