25 Things All About ME!

This is a repeat of something I got tagged to do on Facebook yesterday...I just can't get enough of spreading my influence through cyberspace.





1. I have eaten at McDonalds in 9 countries. I hope to make it an even 10 this coming summer.

2. Last summer over the course of 10 days I traveled through Germany by plane, by train, by bus, by tram, by car, by motorcycle, by bicycle, and by moped...I think I'm only missing a boat ride.

3. When I was in elementary school and jr. high I was absolutely obsessed with the spelling bee. When I was in sixth grade I missed the word "piccolo" in the school spelling bee (how embarrassing, right?--I spelled it "piccollo") and was awarded 4th place. The top three got to go to the county bee and I was extremely outraged because the girl to whom they awarded third place misspelled her word in the same round that I did, but had drawn a later number so she got out "after me". According to the official rules,however, when this happens the two spellers are actually declared to have a "tie" and a spell-off is supposed to occur, in this case to determine who would win third place. There was no spell-off. Immediately after the bee I went directly to the principal, found the rule in the rulebook that specifically stated there should have been a spell-off and DEMANDED that they follow the rules. He pretended that I was misinterpreting the rulebook and didn't do anything about it. I went home and cried for hours. No joke. I'm still a little bitter, if you can't tell... The next year I did better--3rd place in the county bee. I misspelled "abdicate." (I spelled it "abdocate.") That was a long entry for number 3, so moving on...

4. In rereading this note I found that I skipped #4...I haven't grown an inch since I was 15 years old.

5. I love the Russian language and still study it on my own every day. This week's vocab list includes "aardvark", "acorn", and "acupuncture."

6. I have never lived in the same place for more than 5 years.

7. I am the only one of my grandfather's natural grandchildren that is not a twin.

8. The most gratifying and beneficial part of my undergrad experience was my employment at my school's music library.

9.I took my first steps in a library. Now I work in one.

10. Iowa is probably my favorite place I have lived in the US. No joke. Even though everything that could possibly have gone wrong since I moved here has gone wrong, I absolutely love living here. It will be hard to leave.

11. I have been to 13 foreign countries, but never to Canada.


12. I shared a bedroom in a hostel with two girls from Denmark and a girl from Montreal for two nights last summer. They were all taller than me.

13. When I was in elementary school I was obsessed with the Chronicles of Narnia. I would watch the BBC live-action film version of the books with the neighbor kids constantly. We knew them so well that we would act them out verbatim beginning-to-end in our yards.

14. My feelings concerning the last year of my undergrad and the following months can best be summed up by the first three tracks on the Dixie Chicks album "Taking the Long Way." I think Natalie Maines and I would be friends.

15. Over the course of this decade I have only been in the USA for the 4th of July four times.

16. I was always the youngest kid in my class until I got to the 10th grade.

17. I spent over eight hours on a train last summer sitting next to a drunk Russian who accused me of being an American spy. (This accusation came after he thought for the first four hours of the train ride that I was from Latvia.) His logic for determining that I was a spy was based on the fact that I spoke Russian and don't drink alcohol.

18. When I was in kindergarten I was reading at the 3rd-grade level but my teacher wanted to hold me back because I had "trouble using scissors." Thank you South Dakota education system. (In the end, I still went on to the first grade.)

19. When I was in eastern Germany and in Russia last summer I pondered a lot about the fact that 20 years ago our countries were bitter enemies yet here I was hanging out and living among my German and Russian friends. I thought a lot during this time about our grandfathers, who all probably fought against each other during World War II. I am sure that they (our grandfathers) would have been very proud to see their grandchildren two generations later together as friends. That experience made me feel very close to my grandfather who fought in the war but died before I was born.

20. I don't have a problem eating a slab of solid pig fat (it's a delicacy in Russia) but I think that drinking milk straight out of a glass is DISGUSTING.

21. The longest I have gone without a haircut is eleven months.

22. I have an amazingly insightful, funny, and poignant blog. Read it! (heintz57.blogspot.com) :)

23. i drive a 1990 Buick Park Avenue. I call it the Albino Rhino.

24. I have stuck my feet in the Mediterranean from both the European and African sides.

25. Despite the reassuring efforts of many, I still feel that I have not accomplished anything of real value with my life. This pains me sometimes.

Things that happen to me when it is 30 below zero...

-my nostrils stick together when I inhale rapidly through my nose (quite enjoyable).
-My left eye starts this weird little twitch and I get momentarily scared that my contact is going to pop out.
-I let my mind get boggled by thinking too much about how it could possibly be 110 degrees warmer in LA than it is in Iowa right now
-I get asked questions about driving a car in anarctic-like temperatures that I have no idea how to answer
-my lower thighs (area right above the knee) start freezing to a point that it feels like they're burning
-When I leave my apartment in the morning with my hair still wet, I like reaching back and feeling the frozen curls that stick out under my beanie
-I wake up in the early morning and the first thought that pops into my head is "I don't want to go outside."
-The end of my nose starts tingling and I immediately become paranoid that it's frostbite
-I get the weird desire to stick my tongue to a metal pole...
-I have nothing to do at night other than sit at home and watch "House" because I can't muster the determination to open my front door and feel the instant chill.
-I give in and turn up the thermostat from 68 to 70.
-And finally, I get really rather sad when I think that this will probably be the only insanely cold Iowa winter that I'll get to endure

German Coast Guard????

I've shown this to actual Germans and even they thought it was funny!!

guilty as charged........

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/19-travelling/

OK, first off: click on the title of this post, which will take you to the link that I just pasted on here. Read the linked article and then return hear to read my ever-so-insightful commentary on the matter.

K, assuming that you just did what I told you to do, you can now continue to read the rest of my wisdom which I am so willing to disperse.

Things the article of this blog accuses white people (more directly: me) of:

-"travel is not only beloved but absolutely essential in their development as white people." True.
-"Every white person takes at least one trip to Europe between the ages of 17-29." Easy. Try three with a fourth one in the works. And let's not forget that little "warm up" trip at the age of 16.
-"During this time they are likely to wear a back pack, stay at a hostel, meet someone from Ireland/Sweden/Italy with whom they have a memorable experience, get drunk, see some old churches and ride a train." Well, I had memorable experiences with two girls from Denmark, which is practically Sweden I suppose. As far as getting drunk, well...not quite, but I do have a funny story from Paris Trip '01 that deserves to be told at another time. (Don't worry for all you faithfuls whose jaws just dropped--I was completely oblivious.) 'Yes' to backpack. 'Heck yes' to hostels. And 'yes' on the trains.
-"they return to North America with ideas of writing novels and screenplays about their experience." Does keeping a blog about your trip(s) and then constantly blogging about it/them for months to come count?
-"Upon returning home, they will also find an affinity for a particular beer or liquor from a country they visited." OK, they were a little off on this one, but I do have Paris Trip '07 to thank for helping me find Cola Lite (aka Diet Coke).
-"The second type of white person travel is Third World. This is when they venture to Thailand, Africa or South America. Some do it so that they can one up the white people who only go to Europe." Um, duh...plus it looks really cool to have stamps in Arabic on your passport. It totally wins the chicks over...oh wait.
-"white people like to believe they are the first white people to make this trip. As such, they should be recognized as special and important individuals." I've always known that--thank you Captain Obvious.

The Epic of the Measuring Stick

What an eye-catching title for a blog post, don't you think? The following post will someday be compared to the great epics of our time---Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, The Mighty Ducks--take your pick. It will also undoubtedly join the ranks of the great Hollywood screenplays (Casablanca, On the Waterfront, She's the Man--once again, take your pick), but lucky enough for all you readers, you are the first people to ever become familiar with the Epic of the Measuring Stick--you are the proud, the few.

It all started with a measuring stick and three spoiled kids from an unnamed university.



(Not actual measuring stick. The real one was a shiny silver aluminum.)

Previously mentioned spoiled children had been given an all-inclusive trip to the Mediterranean coast of Italy to give presentations at a library convention of all things. One of these spoiled children (we'll call her "Darcy") borrowed a metal measuring stick from the library of previously unnamed university (for your convenience, we'll just refer to it from now on as "BYU") to aid her in a poster she had designed as part of her presentation.

Our story will begin in Naples where the measuring stick had an eventful week sitting in its hotel room eating truffles and witnessing the literal meltdown of a computer (there will be some great CGI for this in the movie) but like all good things, the vacation had to end. Darcy had the unfortunate circumstance of getting to go backpacking through Italy with her father for two weeks following Naples (poor thing) and didn't have room for the measuring stick in her backpack. (Looking back on it, there wouldn't have been room for an entire computer either---did you plan that explosion for your own convenience, Darcy????) Because of this, the responsibility was dealt to me to assure that the measuring stick made its way back home to the BYU library halfway around the world. It was a responsibility I was willing to accept, but little did I know the looming trouble this would bring upon me. (At this point in the movie-version there will be some element of foreshadowing--maybe a new leitmotif in the score or some clever camera angle. We're still working out the details.)

My path after Naples became that of a solo journey. With the measuring stick tucked safely away in my suitcase, the two of us found lodging for several nights with two female travelers from Denmark, but unfortunately, it was not to last. (That's the closest this epic will get to having any form of a love story--don't worry, the screenwriters are planning on spicing up that part of the screenplay in order to boost the movie to at least a PG-13 rating. It's a marketing thing.)

Then an unexpected disaster struck (It always does in an epic, right?) This will rank right up there with the disastrous moments of all epics--Scarlett loses the farm, Maximus is deceived and arrested by Commodus, Harry decides to abandon Lloyd in Nebraska and walk home to Providence, and now to add to those epic moments.....THE WHEEL ON MY SUITCASE BROKE.

The plot thickens.

The next path of my journey involved riding a train to a nearby port city of Salerno where I was to board a ferry by myself that would take me across the Mediterranean to the northern African country of Tunisia. Little did I know that the walk from the train platform to the ferry port would take me over two hours and during this epic walk (Which of course ranks among the greatest of all epic journeys--like Rose and Jack crossing the Atlantic, Moses leading the children of Israel out of bondage, and the Three Amigos on their quest to find El Guappo.) During this arduous and taxing foot journey, the left wheel of my previously (and deceptively) reliable suitcase gave out and broke off. This left me with no other option but to drag the suitcase the rest of the way in the hot sun to the ferry port.

Here is where we reach a major point of decision which will really illuminate the inner strength of my character.

When I reached the ferry port, I realized that I had a smaller duffle bag packed inside my suitcase. In a moment of desperation, I began to unpack the essential items out of my suitcase and place them in the duffle bag. Everything that didn't fit would just have to stay abandoned forever on the coast of Italy. However, when I got to the bottom of the suitcase, there lied the measuring stick. No matter how I tried, the measuring stick simply would not fit into the duffle bag. Having always considered myself to be among the most reliable and honorable of all human beings, I decided that I simply could not fail Darcy and not deliver the measuring stick back to its proper owner. So slowly I placed all my items back in the broken suitcase, zipped it up, and proceeded to drag it behind me with much effort for the remainder of my journey. What dedication. What mental toughness. What strength of character. (It is now that I realize that once this hits the big screen, I will most definitely be ranked among the greatest of all the noble Hollywood characters--Aragorn, Oskar Schindler, Nacho Libre, etc.)

The journey continued for the measuring stick with a long ferry ride across the Mediterranean to Tunisia, where it resided for several days before flying back to the states. Upon return to Utah, preparations for an upcoming cross-country move overshadowed my original priority of returning the measuring stick to the library and so while it was so close to its home, the journey of the measuring stick was not yet complete. Off it went through the cornfields of South Dakota and Iowa where it rested for several months, all the while awaiting my return to Utah.

(During this whole time, Darcy waited patiently to be reunited with the measuring stick. Several flashback sequences will show Darcy back in America which display her feelings of longing and yearning for the measuring stick to make it back to her safe and sound. Following the unparalleled success of my side of the story in theaters, a spin-off film of Darcy's side of the story will be produced. Both will be unprecedented landmark achievements in the history of film.)

Finally, on January 4th, 2009--more than five months since the measuring stick and Darcy parted ways--the two were reunited in a most joyous moment. Darcy looked kind of like this when she and the measuring stick were together again for the first time.



This will be an ending forever embedded in the minds of audience members everywhere. Watch out Scarlett O'Hara--there's a new Georgian belle that's going to steal the hearts of moviegoers everywhere.

And with that, the epic has drawn to a close. See you at the Oscars.

Happy New Year from ABBA