Time Travel part 2

I know you're not supposed to look back, but I can't help it. I was cleaning out my inbox. I hate clutter and as I had no where to be today, I decided to go through the task of deleting emails that were no longer relevant. I have a self proclaimed aversion to numbers (I'm pretty sure it's some kind of learning disability), so I really can't remember if I had 3456 or 4892 or some other crazy big number of emails when I got started, but there were a lot. I would like to happily report that there are only 429 left (I know this number is accurate because I didn't have to remember it. It was clearly posted at the bottom of the page of my inbox.)

I created said email account when I was serving my mission in Italy because I had encountered some problems with my BYU email account. Mostly I was just super annoyed that it often wasn't working during the only time out of the whole week when I could check it. Thus was born the hotmail account. Now because of this, I have some emails saved since 2002! Crazy, I know! Especially because I think some of the kids in my ward in Orem may have not even been born yet! I digress . . .

The first step in cleaning out your inbox (especially when you've waited this long) is to just go through and pick out the ones you know you don't even need to read, just delete. Like all the Facebook notifications you used to get before you realized that you could change your settings so that you didn't need to hear every time someone made a comment after you made a comment on someone's photo or status. Also all the recipes you used to get from Martha Stewart (I know she wrote them personally to me) that probably don't even link to the recipe anymore because it hasn't been on the site for a few years.

My next step was to also delete all items related to my former calling as Stake YSA Rep. Can I just say how absolutely LIBERATING that felt?!?! And there was no worry. Now that I live in a completely different place, those emails are totally irrelevant! LIBERATED!!!

The last step on this metaphorical cleaning of the inbox is to go through (and I mean read or at least skim) the rest of the emails and decide if there are anymore that you can delete. This step is, of course, not normally required and is going above and beyond, but if you really want your inbox to be purged, it is necessary. You can read these remaining emails in either order, going from the newest to the oldest or the reverse - it's up to you. I prefer going from oldest to newest because then I feel they make more sense and so I did today.

This is the part where it all started to come together. After my last post, I have been sorta amazed at how time travel has sprouted into a little theme (I'm sure it's temporary) in my life. At least the topic continues to draw attention to itself. The Back to the Future trilogy being shown every night this week? Funny. Weird, even.

I managed to watch all three, though not in the right order (which is a shame). Tonight I was watching the second one (I had already watched the first and third) as I was reading through the emails that made the first couple of cuts. I realized as I watched Marty and Doc go back to 1955 again, that I, myself, was, in a way, traveling through time. Other people just write in their journals, but I'm the kind of lazy that would rather go through all my 3000+ old emails to preserve a record of my life than write directly to my posterity.

Coincidentally, I was also kind of traveling through time by using the DVR to pause when I needed to go to the bathroom etc. and then fast forward through the commercials and eventually, go . . . . back to the future! Unless I was just going back to my present? I dunno . . . I'll tell you what though, if they had shown some kind of DVR technology in the Back to the Future when they go to 2015, I would not have believed it. Think about it! Pausing TV! Rewinding TV! Fast forwarding through annoying commercials! It's ridiculous! Ridiculously AWESOME! I'm a huge fan. Except when someone in my family doesn't know I'm watching something "in the past" (you know, like when you don't plan to record something, you just start watching and the next thing you know you're watching 20 minutes behind the schedule) and changes the channel. Then all is lost! Especially if the show is already over in real time.

So where am I going with all this? Why, I'll share that with you right now!

A couple of things I learned from my trip back in time . . .

1. Internet used to take up your phone line. Not new information, but I had completely forgotten about that.

2. I am funniest when writing to my longtime friend, Jess. I'm not sure what it is about her that brings out the comedienne in me, but in the future *drum/cymbals sound you hear when a cheesy joke is told*, I will try to imagine these blog posts are intended for her so that you can all benefit from her comedic influence on me.

3. My former mission companion, Aleta, will probably never change (which is ok with me). After an update of her life in one of the emails including some details of her difficult first pregnancy, she closed with "you should go to this website farts.com it has fart noises on it." Classic.

4. Most budding relationships come to nothing and quickly, too. I can't even count how many boys I read about from girl friends of mine (most of which are now happily married - the girls, I mean). I had my fair share of crushes that came to nothing. Some of which I had forgotten. Quite a few of these boys couldn't even be counted as a notch in a timeline of our lives. This is great perspective for me.

5. Also, I'm boy crazy. Or at least I was boy crazy. Not a revelation, I know. I just thought it was funny how often my friends asked about boys in emails to me. Pretty much every message asked if there were any "boys" or "hotties" in my life at the respective time or about boys I had mentioned in previous emails. It's just funny how everyone expected it of me.

6. People have a way of coming back into your life. There are two people that I'm thinking of specifically that I haven't seen in a really long time.

One of these people I didn't really expect I'd see again or at least I had decided that I didn't need to ever see him again. Reading through the emails that had survived all these years, I realized that we used to have a really good time together. It was a fun friendship. But I had feelings that weren't reciprocated and basically I wasn't a priority in his life, so in my usual bitter way, I "moved on".

As women, we like to move on because then we feel empowered. I admit that I did. I also did my usual thing of trying to only remember his offenses (this, of course, prevents my regression).

His offenses were pretty legit. He "double booked" our hangout appointments (I don't presume to call them dates) more than once. I was done. Which was fine, until I ran into him a couple of weeks ago. I admit that it was a total curve ball. I had prepared myself to run into a lot of old friends that day at church, but he was not one of them. I pretended it was no big deal as I first encountered him, but I definitely needed to process. In the end, I didn't go about the whole thing in a very friendly way (I left without really saying goodbye) and there isn't anything I can do about it now. In my "moving on" I deleted his number and even his email address. I guess I just wish I could have been a little better behaved. He didn't deserve what he got - a somewhat cold greeting. The truth is that there never could have been a relationship there and I knew it. It was my pride taking the lead and I shouldn't have let it.

The second person is a good friend that I actually haven't seen yet, but if things go as planned, I will be seeing very soon. This old friend never injured me. In fact, I injured him. Tonight, as I reread his messages, I found that he never once acted cold or offended. Always kind, always friendly. Always showing immense respect. On top of that, he's been developing over all these years. Becoming. I can't wait to see how far he's come and get a glimpse of how far he'll go. He truly has been an important example in my life though he's often said the same to me. I'm truly lucky to be crossing paths with him again.

Aaaaaaand . . . there I go talking about boys again.

What I want (and don't want) for Christmas

Greetings blog world! I apologize that I have been absent, but I was busy with drawings and I don't feel one bit sorry about it. Work = money (usually) and I never say no to money (except of course if we're talking about an Indecent Proposal situation - I have more scruples than that.) Aaaaanywho, now I'm on Christmas vacation and I feel perfectly justified blogging as there are no fast approaching deadlines. So here's a little something that I've been dying to share with all of you.

At least a month ago, I came across a piece of paper on my niece's desk as I was walking by. It looked like this:

As you can see, my niece's interests include the top of the line Mac-ware (mostly she likes playing Angry Birds), music, blogging (apparently she wants to tell the world about her exciting 8-year-old life), reading, fashion, and . . . time travel . . . :) I love my niece because she has such a different brain than I did when I was her age (actually, her brain might function at a higher level than mine does presently). Also, I love that she seemed to be just getting started on that list.

What's funny is that we seem to have similar interests, though many of these needs/wants of mine are already fulfilled. I do LOVE Apple products, but I don't have an iPhone and I've pretty much decided that I can live without one (except I love the idea that I could sync my calendar from my computer into my phone so that I wouldn't have to enter everything twice. That would be so awesome!). I already have a radio and an iPod (it may be a first generation nano, but it still works and I love it). I also, as you can clearly see, already have my own blog and even a computer with which to write it. I have plenty of shelf space on which to store books, and I even have a lot of accessories (thanks to a few fetishes and the fact that I lost two grandmothers this summer from whom I inherited jewelry, purses, belts and more).

What I don't have is a time machine. This is ok with me because I have no desire to time travel. Don't get me wrong, I love travel. In fact, I am writing this entry from my parent's home in Connecticut which means that I just traveled. On top of that, I arrived on Thursday morning and left for Boston on Friday. During my visit to the East Coast, I will also be going to New York and DC. So despite having to face the TSA's limited options of dirty pictures or inappropriate groping (I got the dirty pictures) the other day, I'll be doing it three more times in the very near future. All for the sake of seeing interesting places and new things and hopefully meeting a few new people along the way all the while enriching my understanding of the world. Also, it's just fun to get out of the house.

Time travel, on the other hand, is a completely different animal. I mean, think of what you might be getting yourself into. Have you seen Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure? Sure, they got an A on their History report, but they probably messed up history forever. Do you really think Napoleon, Mozart, Joan of Arc, Abe Lincoln, etc., would ever be the same after experiencing the wonder of a mall? And what about Back to the Future? His mom tried to put the moves on him and he almost got himself erased. Furthermore, it seems to me from what I've seen in the movies, that in most instances, time machines aren't very good at "dropping you off" in very convenient or safe places. You always seem to be getting plopped into the middle of a bloody battle or something dangerous like that. Of course you could try to go sans machine, but I heard that in "The Time Traveller's Wife" his clothes would fall off or dematerialize leaving him as bare as the day he was born, which in my opinion is worse than either of the TSA options.

The truth is that I have always found flaws in those time travel movies. Like if Doc was shot in 1885, then wouldn't that mean that he wouldn't have done any of the other stuff in 1955 or 1985? I mean even though he came from 1985, he still DIED in 1885, therefore changing anything that happened after that. Or if the Terminator and the guy (Kyle) that travels back to save Sarah Connor both end up getting terminated in the past, wouldn't that mean that their selves that were in the future would not be in the future anymore? AKA, Kyle wouldn't be able to get the picture from Sarah's son, John, and consequently travel back to save her, because he was already dead. And the Terminator couldn't come back in the sequel to protect Sarah Connor from the even more terrifying mercury-like, morph-into-whatever-he-kills terminator. And even though they try to explain how it all happened in that one Harry Potter movie where Hermione has the fancy necklace thing that helps her skip through time, I still didn't follow the whole thing.

What I'm trying to say here is that it's risky business, because the movies are obviously not telling the story correctly so that means we really don't know WHAT could happen. And even if we did think we had figured it out, we would probably screw up somewhere. I mean if I were Hermione (which I was a few times for Halloween), I would probably show up at the wrong place or forget that the other me was coming and blow the whole operation. What you already did is hard to keep track of, you know? I mean just the other day I spent a full 5 minutes trying to figure out whether or not I had eaten lunch and that was on the same day!

Nope. No time travel for me. Instead I would like . . . hmmmmm (this is real-time thinking, because even though Christmas is this week, I haven't actually thought of something I want) . . . I would like . . . to actually experience mistletoe? (I've never dated anyone in December.) Naah. I have a feeling that a wish like that would result in a creepy old dude taking advantage of the festive flora. Peace on Earth? That's not likely to happen by Saturday. A trip to Europe? I WISH! But I'm pretty sure that's not in Santa's budget.

I guess for now I'll settle for Christmas at home.

Oh wait, I already got that. :)

P.S. - After reading this post, you may be interested in the sweded version of Back to the Future. And if you don't know what a "sweded" version is, then please proceed to your nearest Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/Redbox or go on Netflix and get Be Kind Rewind. You can thank me later.