My Loyal Car is Revolting Against Me!

Good News: I'm flying home today back to Singapore, and will be there for a year to do research. In fact, I'm currently at the LA airport on an 8 hour layover (URGH!), eating lunch and blogging. It's a horrible layover but hey, hooooome!

Bad News: My 15 year old car has served me well for the past 5 years, and in return I try to take good care of it by maintaining it regularly, giving it good gas, etc. But my car is revolting against me because of the abuse I afflicted upon it driving from Ohio to Utah.

The revolt started when I reached Provo, whereupon my stereo broke down. I can only say that I'm grateful God preserved the stereo until I reached my destination, so I didn't have to make the long drive using my phone's music. Thank goodness my speakers work, so I just need to replace the stereo.

A few weeks later, I went in for an oil change and tire rotation, and I have no idea what the mechanic did, but my brakes started squeaking and making a weird grinding noise. What did that mechanic do to my car?

Then on Saturday, my air conditioning stopped working. It was about 100 degrees outside, and I had to wind down my windows to get moving air in (I wouldn't call it wind because it was just hot air circulating). It was miserable driving this past weekend.

My poor car... When I return, I'm going to send it for a full check up and repair session. Let's just hope it can hold up this year until I return.

This Year's Summer Movies

I don't think I've done this before... at least, not that I can recall. But when you've watched a good movie, you have to tell everyone so that they will go see it. And let me tell you, this summer has a line up of movies that are AWESOME! I don't know why but I love this year's summer movies, and that's speaking a lot because I rather curl up and read a fiction book on a Friday night than watch a movie.

So when I tell you that YOU HAVE TO WATCH PIXAR'S NEW FILM INSIDE OUT, it's a big deal! Please please please please please go watch it! It is sooooo good. I laughed, but more than that, I cried really hard in that one scene with the pink elephant and the rocket... if you've watched it, you'll know what I mean. And I've never cried that hard in the movie theater. Good thing I was sitting alone with no one on both sides of me because it would have embarrassed them.

Then you have the characters, the plot, the animation, the visuals, and the IMAGINATION (both in Riley's head and the movie's writers)... STUNNING. Yes, there were minor gender stereotypes, but I liked what THIS ARTICLE wrote about the gender dynamics of the film. Was Inside Out my favorite Pixar? No, but it's still an A++ movie!!! And you can be sure that when it comes out in Singapore in August (no idea why it is coming out so late... dumb!), I'm going to drag my family to watch it with me again!

Also, Avengers: Age of Ultron was a good, fun superhero film, though filled with humongous plot holes. Seriously, Ultron was in the internet and can wreck all sorts of apocalyptic havoc, but he picked such a grandiose, long and hard way to do it. I'm like, this villain is awesome but dumb at the same time. I'm not the only one who thinks so-- see?

Thanks to How It Should Have Ended, video link HERE.

Still, the visuals and actions was good, and the perfect summer "hang out"/ date night movie. Just don't think too hard-- leave your Interstellar brain cells at the door.


Then there's Jurassic World. There is a movie theater near my place that sells IMAX 3D movie tickets for $5 on Tuesday. Oh yes baby.
It
Was
Awesome.
I finally understand why people are in love with Chris Pratt- he rocked this movie! And I LOVED how the dinosaurs were the stars in this movie, especially at the climax. Like The Avengers, it has plot hole issues but whatever. I'm contemplating watching it again just because I enjoyed this movie so much. After all, there are no $5 movie theaters back home, so if I want to watch it twice, better do it here, right?

Some other movies slotted to come out that look good: Ant Man (I can't believe I'm saying this, but I saw a longer preview before Jurassic World and it looked better than it sounded), the minions movie, and Pixels. I realize that my taste in summer movies run in the category of light and fun, but hey, isn't that what summer is about ;) And such a good way to unwind after slogging away in the archives all day.

What movies have you watched, and which ones are you excited for?

The Journey I'll NEVER Take Alone Again

Two years ago, I drove 27 hours from Columbus, OH to Provo Utah all by myself, and vowed "never again." Once again, a lesson on "never say never" because I had to eat my words two weeks ago, when I made the same drive again. This is the 4th time on this route, but the second time alone. I think this time I'm serious when I say "never again" though. I'm getting up there in years, and can't take it!

I drove a respectable 11 hours the first day, and it would not stop raining the first half the journey from Ohio through Indiana and Illinois.

Goodbye Ohio...

...hello Indiana!

 And Illinois... or at least I think it is. They all kind of blurred after a while.

Missouri... I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't get caught in St. Louis, MO peak hour traffic. My GPS rerouted me to a smaller highway further away from the city-- sometimes my GPS does know what it's doing.

Also, Missouri doesn't have much to see (except for St. Louis) but my oh my, it is a lush green state. Probably because of all the rain. This is the first time I drove through Missouri  where I did not get caught in a storm.

See how gorgeously green it is?!

I stayed overnight with a family friend in Kansas, just across the MO border, and set off the next day bright and early. Now, this second day... I have to brag a little here because I drove a freaking 14 HOURS almost non-stop that day. I wanted to put in as many miles as I could so that I could get to Utah early, so I drove and drove and drove and drove...

 Notice how the landscape is significantly flatter, but it is still green. Kansas and eastern Colorado in the summer is pretty, just nothing much to see. At least it made for a smooth journey.

Got caught in Denver peak hour traffic for a short period of time.

Notice the vehicle lineup on the other side... yup, definitely peak hour!

Then I crossed the massive Colorado mountain pass, which took forever! I wished I could have taken more pictures but a) I needed to concentrate on getting my loyal, trusty small car up the massive inclines, and b) the lighting was terrible.

There is still snow on the mountains...

I stopped in Grand Junction, completely exhausted. Thank goodness my hotel, Holiday Inn, was awesome! Had a good night's rest, before setting off again early the next day. As you can see from the picture below, CO (and UT) bugs have a high tendency of smashing into windshields. I took a few more pictures of the journey, but my camera kept coming into focus on the dead bugs instead of the landscape.

 FINALLY!!! 

You know you are entering the desert of Utah when you see brown...

So I normally take I-70, and then US-191 which cuts through Price, Utah to Provo. However, since I was going to visit a friend in Ephraim, Utah, I had to stay on I-70 longer and holy moly, I am AWED by how beautiful Southern Utah is. The rock formations are truly one of a kind. I appreciate Utah's beauty more each time I return. For example, as I drove along, I saw a sign for "Ghost Rock Viewing Pt" and wondered what that was. I decided to stop, and saw that others had done the same. We were treated to this view:

My phone camera doesn't do the scenery justice; neither can it capture the gigantic cavern at the bottom. How these rock formations came to be will be something I will only learn in the life to come. The desert really has its own kind of beauty.

Anyway, I arrived in Ephraim, visited my friend who kindly cooked a delicious lunch, and then drove the remaining 1.5 hours to Provo. I was soooo tired when I finally checked in my hotel, and relieved that I had made it in one piece. No doubt God had sent angels to watch over me. 

"Taking Notes"

The past few weeks have been nothing but hectic because *drumroll* I packed my stuff, put them in storage, then drove all the way from Ohio to Utah by myself...again. Every time I say, "I'll never..." I always eat my words. *sigh* Anyway, upon arriving in Utah, I participated in the 50th Anniversary Mormon History Association Conference in Provo, and then moved to Salt Lake the next week, where I'll be stationed for 3 weeks doing research.

More about that drive and the conference later. Right now though, I want to vent talk about bureaucracy and legislature, and how sometimes they DO NOT MAKE SENSE AT ALL.

As you can tell from the caps, I'm frustrated by my research at the Church History Library (CHL). It's a beautiful and comfortable building to work in, and the people are friendly and helpful, but the institutional rules and bureaucracy of the building do not make sense.

Example 1: Two years ago, I requested to view a mission president's papers, and the Access Review Committee said that I could work with an archivist to view some of the the papers. Two years later, I wrote the Committee and asked for clarification of what exactly I could view, and they came back with a "Sorry, you have been denied permission to view the this record." Wait, WHAT???!!!

Example 2: The Committee has stonewalled my efforts to view most of papers of former mission presidents because they contain information of living individuals. When I asked if I can work with an archivist to view some of the less-confidential records, or if I promised to not mention names at all/ use pseudonyms, they said, NO.

Example 3: What little I've been able to access so far has been oral history interview transcripts and a mission diary, which have been phenomenal sources so far. Unfortunately,

#1, I was given the microfilm copy, which is understandable since it is very difficult to damage microfilm. But microfilm readers are finicky and a pain to work with! But I can deal with this except...

#2, There is a copyright law (no idea state, federal or institutional) that mandates that oral history interview transcripts cannot be copied until 70 years after the interviewee's death. Well, my work deals with people who are either still alive or passed away in the last 30 years or so. So here I am, having access to these terrific sources, and all I can do is "take notes."

That's right-- "take notes." Guess what I've been doing in the CHL for the past 3 days? Staring at the computer screen of the microfilm projection, and using my laptop to "take notes" of the diaries/ memoirs of the individuals. Page after page after page... As a result, my research pace has slowed to a crawl, and I need an eye check up when I'm done at the CHL. *Sigh* On the bright side, "taking notes" has forced me to read every single word of my sources, and I've read some touching and uplifting stories.

It's just an extremely frustrating process now.