(pssst! wanna buy a watch?)

After years of email use I'm well used to receiving those very special emails called "spam" that are so thoughtfully sent to me by kind and well meaning people who just want to help me increase the size of my non-existent male genitalia, or who want to help me please my non-existent woman, or who will even sell me a Russian woman if I don't yet have one to please. I've come to smile whenever I see those emails inviting me to lower the mortgage on my non-existent house. I've shed a tear and then hardened my heart to the pleas of pretend Nigerian royalty who can spell neither "royalty" nor "Nigerian" correctly, and who just need the small favor of either a large sum of money, or my social security and bank account numbers to regain their throne.


But this is a new one: wanna buy a watch? All the sudden I've been inundated with offers for cheap (but real, we swear it!) Rolexes (or is that Rolexi?), Omegas, other brands I've never even heard of. These emails have filled my head with many many questions that I've narrowed down to two.

1) Isn't this the sort of business that is traditionally carried out in an alley-way somewhere in NYC or DC or similarly acronized* cities? I mean to say, traditionally speaking when you think of someone selling you a suspiciously cheap and greenish-"gold" watch, you tend to imagine them wearing a trench coat and speaking in whispers. It's hard to email in a whisper.

2) Since the sleazy shady watch-selling business does seem to have switched to an e-business, how did I get on the watch-sellers' lists? I don't need a watch, I don't wear a watch, and I don't remember giving my email address to any kind of watch-esque website. So how?


I suppose I'll never know the answers to these questions, so I'll just have to add watch-sellers to the list of kindly, good-hearted people who have purchased my email address for the entirely selfless purpose of improving my life with their totally reliable, totally affordable, and above all totally unnecessary items.



*Okay, so I think I made up the word "acronized" but I could *not* find the real word for something that has been turned into an acronym. Quick, someone else look it up!

Weather update

The fog and snow have found me again, despite my brilliant plan to relocate from Provo, UT to Pocatello, ID (city motto: You don't plow the streets, so why should we?). For the past three days our home has regularly been the center of what appears to be a jug of skim milk. My father claims we're living in a snow globe, but I know the truth: some fickle god of weather has it out for me. Come fog or snow, one way or other I'm going in a ditch.

So if I don't write for a while, look for me in a coyote den in the Idaho mountains where I'll have been taken and adopted as one of the tribe.

To "Lost" or not to "Lost"

If you haven't been living on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere for the last four years, you've heard of the show Lost. If you have been living on an island, well that would be totally ironic and Lost should be a pleasantly familiar concept for you. But I digress. This show has held a thrall over me since its inception, but that thrall that was once exciting and desirable has slowly grown more and more unpleasant. Although I've watched the newest season premiere, I'm undecided whether or not I should just give up entirely until the show is finally done and I can just rent the DVDs, or even just have someone else tell me what happens to save myself some time.

I openly admit to having been addicted to Lost at one point. Who wouldn't be? The concept of minimalist survival is one that we civilized humans are fascinated by. Just look at the literary proof: The Swiss Family Robinson, Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe, My Side of the Mountain, and even - to a small extent - the Benji franchise (oh Benji, you brave little dog, how I loved watching your movies!).

In the beginning, Lost was as fascinating as these stories. The survivors had to figure out how to stay alive and civilized when civilization was gone, and they had the delicious Dr. Jack to lead them (ah, Matthew Fox of four years ago, how cute you were).

Then Lost got weird. Like, really weird. And without any satisfactory resolution to the many mysteries that the show forced down the viewers throats. Smoke monsters and mysterious scary noises were bad enough, but telepathy? Visions and ghosts? Unexplained sci-fi type phenomena? Moving islands?? Finally, the last straw: in the future the beautiful Jack Shepherd became bearded, crazy, and like a homeless drunken guy - the sad kind, not the funny kind. WTF!

So now as I watch the season premiere and it's filled with time travel - and the kind of time travel where people can change the past and alter the future, which I HATE - I'm just not sure if it's worth my time or mental/emotional effort. Unlike Alice (of Wonderland fame) I'm not inclined to follow along the trail of "curiouser and curiouser." I'm more inclined to grab that smug Cheshire Cat by the tail and scream at him to answer my questions before I slap that stupid mysterious smile right off his face and make it disappear for reals!

But I digress again. How about it, any thoughts or feelings from anyone reading this?

Correction

I made reference before about my hair being un-teasable and really not meant to be big. However, it has been brought to my remembrance that this is, in fact, incorrect.

Weather: Pros and Cons

At last the treacherous and beautiful snow stopped falling. Only to be replaced by the kind of fog that you would only expect to find if you were about to stumble across a magically hidden Scottish village that only appears every 200 years, or when Gene Kelly needs something to sing and dance about. Just when I thought it was safe to drive on the highway....

That's right, now the fog is trying to kill me. It's hard enough to make myself go to work without the forces of nature combining against me! I know, it sounds paranoid to think the weather is trying to get me. And yet, what else is a person to think when out of nowhere a fog like pea soup descends to cover only I-15 (as soon as I exit there's no sign of mist), and then it's only that stretch between my place of employ and my place of residence? To make it worse, the other drivers keep zooming around me at ridiculous speeds as though they can magically see through this fog and are not hindered one jot.

So either I have unique cataracts that only affect me when driving on the highway at night, or the weather is conspiring against me. I guess we'll find out next week if tornadoes start appearing over the Springville/Provo exits of I-15.

A flair for the dramatic

My family is blessed with drama. Or cursed; those two words often seem synonymous (i.e. the Lord "blessed" me with the calling of Relief Society president, oh joy!). At any rate, we got plenty of drama floating around the Kearl household. I'm sure any cousins reading this can relate, because I know drama abounds in their homes as well. This Christmas, drama gave birth to something that I'm not sure words can do justice to; my sister Anna's music video.

(I stole this picture from Rachel's blog since my camera has been broken for several months now)




It turns out David (seen above in the homeless ballerina costume) isn't the only film genius in our family. Anna had a vision: to create a Kearl version of Mika's music video "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)". After all, some of us Kearl girls are big and beautiful, our brother Matthew is a shoe-in for the part of Mika, and with Rachel's camera skills - well it just had to be! We even had the added bonus of Cousin Claire (seen in front) joining us in time to make four beautiful girls and really give visual meaning to Mika's line, "You take your girl and multiply her by four, now a whole lot of woman needs a whole lot more!"

So, here's how things went. Anna approaches Matthew, Katie, and myself explaining what she wants us to do; namely for the girls to make their hair and makeup as BIG as possible and for Matthew to get his craziest, most Mika-est outfit together. Added to the big hair and makeup were all of Anna's 80s accessories. We're talking the big dangly earrings, wildly colored beaded necklaces, and even some legwarmers. Then the pièce de résistance: all of us in flamboyant heels (silver sequins for Katie, hot pink patent leather for me, etc). It was a visual delight.

Then Anna threw in her brilliant choreography. After carefully studying the lyrics (my one contribution other than my fine self was to print the lyrics - go me!) she crafted a masterpiece. This video includes Diet Coke, treadmill dancing, David in a ski cap and purple sweater pulled off the shoulder, "Mika" and the Big Girls swaying back and forth on our snowy back porch (a hilarious anecdote: our porch dancing kept making the CD skip - I guess we really are big girls!), etc.

Finally, Rachel provided the camera skills. Okay, well David and Rachel technically, since David had to show Rachel what all those intimidating buttons on her camera are for. But Rachel was impressive! She was all over; on top of the kitchen counters, swooping around corners, dancing along with the music. She even took some costuming initiative and fixed my hair from the sad mess that it was to some cute little buns. My hair was never meant to be teased (it just comes out like this), although Mom felt it should stay ratted and kept coming in and telling us we needed to channel more Amy Winehouse.

So as you can see, we have plenty of dramatic talent in the Kasa Kearl. I just hope we have enough follow through to make the music video more than some hilarious segments on Rachel's camera!

Yes, that was a challenge, Anna. I want to see my youtube debut!

Snow: Pros and Cons

The weather recently went mad and decided to try and kill us all with lovely sparkly snow. As I both cursed and stared entranced at the sparkliness of the falling snow, I realized that there was a conundrum inherent in the weather. I love and hate it, which is unacceptable. So I will now write a list to decide which emotion should be attached to snow once and for all.

PROS

• As previously mentioned, it is sparkly. Okay, so I'm like that crazy bird in The Secret of Nimh and whenever I see sparkly things my eyes start getting all swirly and trippy. I can't help it!
• It covers everything with lovely whiteness* and makes it all clean and pretty.
• It's fun to make into snow creatures like snow people or giant octopuses... octopeds... squids.
  
• It's also fun to make into forts where you store your cookies and sit giggling with your friends, until some dumb guy comes over and stomps the fort to pieces. Hmph.
• Sledding rocks. It's teh greatest.
• Snow reminds me of Canada and my mission, which I loved and sometimes miss.
• It makes nighttime way brighter and easier to see.
• You can throw your little dog in it and laugh raucously while she climbs her way out again.
• You can reenact scenes from The Empire Strikes Back (providing you can find a Taun Taun to cut open).

CONS

• *The whiteness that snow creates only lasts for a little while before becoming brownness or even grayness. Not so pretty.
• Driving sucks. Your wheels suddenly forget how they're supposed to work and your car slides all wonky into the curb, other cars, or 5-foot ditches as a result. Plus, when you run over those little clumps of snow that fall off other cars they don't just puff away like snowballs do, instead they scrape across the underside of your car making noises like some foul demon from the underworld is using your car to help itself escape Hell.
• It's so freaking cold and maybe some of us don't remember where our gloves are and don't want to buy more because we're cheap.
• All the salt from the roads makes ugly gross stains on your jeans.
• When your nose runs you can't feel it so you end up with a bisgusting frozen snot trail on your face.
• Did I mention how much driving sucks?

Well, unfortunately that didn't actually help much. Sigh. I still can't decide whether I hate or love snow. I suppose I'll have to leave it as a baffling mystery and move on with life.

Geeked out

Okay, so I've long been a closet geek. I don't mean to say that there aren't outward signs; I own a shirt from Wales that has a cool Celtic-esque dragon on it, and I did put my hair in little buns when my sister and I went to see one of the Star Wars movies. But I only wear a shirt with a dragon, I don't play Dungeons and Dragons. And I just did little buns (something many girls do every day), I didn't have "lightsaber" fights in the parking lot outside the theater. Mostly, I keep my inner-geek locked tightly away so no one can see that I secretly long to know masses of useless trivia about just how many bathrooms each incarnation of the Starship Enterprise has had, or to become an expert in dragonology. No one will ever know that I didn't cut my hair for four years with the intention of finally wrapping it in real buns and being Princess Leia for Halloween when I was a teenager.

UNTIL NOW.

Now, my inner geek is SO EXCITED about the upcoming Star Trek movie that she can no longer be contained. If I don't reign this in soon, you'll see me trekking around campus in a cape, medieval dress, and elf ears like that one girl I used to mock (but also secretly admire).

Hot springs adventures

I've known for a while that there exist certain crazy people who like to go hot-tubbing in the winter, but I never thought I would ever do something so obviously dumb. Guess what? I didn't! But I did go with my family to Lava Hot Springs (you may think Lava is pronounced like "Lah-vah," but that's because you're dumb - it's clearly pronounced like "Laaaa-va," as though an obnoxious sheep is baaaa-ing in your ear) where we all jumped into the volcanically heated water, only to immediately start melting/fainting from the heat and demanding that my dad go get us ice cream to cool us all down.

Who would have thought that water could ever be so hot that even air chilled by the cool Idaho weather can't counter it? I didn't take a picture, so I can only describe the scene: seven of us Kearls sprawled out across an entire stair/entryway (more than once I saw people approach to get in the water, only to decide that a different staircase would be a better idea), all of us trying to put our legs on each other so that more skin could be exposed to the air. We were like some sort of horrible human/octopus mutation. Then my dad finally found a suit and joined us. He's like some sort of super human who thought the water felt great, and he kept diving under to grab some hapless sibling's foot and drag them in. I remained safe by holding my sister's glasses; too expensive to risk damaging them, mwa ha ha ha!

In the end, though, even our icy drinking water and ice cream sandwiches weren't enough to keep us from melting entirely so we all gratefully climbed out of the pool to head home. Two of us, I'm not saying who (okay it was David and me), were thoughtful enough to wear clothes over our swim gear, but not thoughtful enough to bring underwear for when that swim gear was all wet and uncomfortable. So those two people went commando during the trip home WOO HOO! After a quick stop at Cold Stone's for MORE ice cream (yes, the water was just that hot) we finally got home only to see the dog sitting shivering by the garage door. Someone had put her out and forgot to let her in, so she had been roaming the snow-laden streets the whole time (like 3 hours!!) looking for someone to buy her matches - no I mean waiting for us to come home and let her in. The worst part? It was her birthday! Happy 9th birthday Mati, try not to freeze to death because we're off to enjoy our boiling water and ice cream, and you can't come. Fortunately she forgave us, as dogs usually do (with the exception of Cujo).

All in all, it was an awesome way to start the new year.