A Whole Mess O' Greens (well...two of them)

2012-02-04T21:17:00.001-07:00

Hej, hur skit ar du? That's Swedish for "Hey, how the crap are ya?" in honor of the lovely Swedish meatball salad we made for dinner. And of course, no Swedish meatball salad in the Green home would be complete without the usual homemade "Swedish death mustard." Wadsworths, if you're reading this, you might just remember what I'm talking about. Why we as Americans insist on continually taking these sorts of things into our bodies to prove our cultural connections ("Look at me! I'm guzzling an entire jar of habanero salsa like it was Kool-Aid! I'm so open-minded!") is beyond me.

So not a whole heckuva lot has been going on of late. We got a parakeet. His name (possibly her name, we don't really know for sure yet) is "Snoop Birdy Bird." You may be asking yourself in exasperation "Why, Ben? WHY?" like so many others have. Because it's funny, goll durn it. And don't you forget it, or there's gonna be a butt-kickin'. For the most part Snoop keeps to himself, although occasionally he will burst into song when Alyssa is playing her flute. He especially seems to like Leonard Bernstein. We also like to take him out of his cage sometimes and "mess" with him, although each time he gets harder and harder to catch. One time he got on top of the ceiling fan, so Alyssa turned it on so he'd fly off. He didn't. He stayed right there like he was glued. I eventually had to climb up and grab him myself, at which point he went Lizzie Borden on my thumb. Served me right.

Other than that, there's not much to talk about. I've joined a writer's critique group in Sandy, although I haven't been to any meetings yet, so I'll see how that goes. We finally got around to replacing the crappy plastic accordion "door" for our downstairs bathroom with an actual door; please don't ask us why it has taken us three years. We're still working on adoption paperwork so we can eventually go to China and pick up our daughter, hopefully in late summer or fall. We were thinking we liked the name "Christabel." Well, pretty much just me. Alyssa has dumped all child naming in my lap, on account of I'm the picky one who hates every other name I hear. I can't even go anywhere there are little children anymore because I freak out and tend to use all caps in my freak-out sessions. "EMERSON? For a GIRL? Are you freakin' SERIOUS?" Alyssa is more open-minded and would agree to name her "Sparkle Cupcake" if I said I liked it. The only name she says no to is "Hortense." Ixnay on the Ortense-hay.

2011-12-29T20:38:00.001-07:00

Sain baina uu. Happy Mongolian Independence Day. It's also the fifth day of Christmas, which in the song is the part where my brethren and I always used to croon "Five roast beef sandwiches!" at the top of our lungs, just because we are such hilarious sons o' guns and also because we apparently watched way too much TV growing up. Speaking of trashing Christmas songs, I only received three responses to the lame lyrics survey and all three were for different songs. However, since two respondents expressed disgust towards "Winter Wonderland," I hereby name it the winner, and deservedly so. "Rhyming 'snowman' with 'No, man'? Pure genius!"

So a lot of stuff has gone on, as is generally the case with Christmas. (Oh, sorry. The HOLIDAYS. Bite my keyboard.) The biggest thing was, of course, Nick and Julia's wedding in St. George, which was loverly, especially during the luncheon when yours truly shared the touching tale of how Nick as a youngster was me and Sheridan's official "Shower Tester," meaning we would make him get in the shower while the water was still freezing and he would shriek like a twelve-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. Ah, torturing one's younger siblings. Such memories. But seriously, the wedding was nice, and congrats to the happy couple. Now come get your furniture out of our basement before I toss it out on the lawn. Just kidding! Maybe! I don't have any pictures of the blessed event yet; hopefully I can get someone to send me a few, but until then, we'll have to make do with a "proxy" photo, which I have posted below. And yes, that is Alyssa wearing a wedding dress made of toilet paper. It's the best we could do at the moment.

Christmas itself was good. Alyssa's entire immediate family was around for the first time since I've been a part of it, I think, along with all twelve niece-phews (eight of whom are under the age of ten), along with cousins aplenty, along with their under-ten-lings, so...yeah. Utter insanity, but the good kind of utter insanity, like when you're on your mission and somebody sicks their dog on you. There have been three different family Christmas parties up to this point, with a fourth slated for New Years. Party overload? I don't believe so, considering that Calvin and Julie are headed off to Sendai next Tuesday and this is the last time we'll get to see them for a while. So, for now, bring on the insanity.

Alyssa and I attended two different Christmas concerts this past month (including Berlioz' opera "Childhood of Christ," which was funny because poor Alyssa kept falling asleep during the important narrative bits where the plot is actually moving forward and then waking up during the long pointless solo numbers, such as when Herod is singing about deer) and also had a recital for our respective music students. I also have to mention the Saturday a few weeks ago when we delivered cinnamon rolls and sugar cookies to most of the widows in our ward (of which there are many--President Monson would seethe with jealousy), and we wound up spending from 45 minutes to an hour at each residence, including one at which we played Boggle with the good sister for well over an hour. We started at about nine in the morning and didn't finish until after sundown. But like I told Alyssa, it was time well spent. THAT, my dear Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about. Oh, and baby Jesus too.

We'll just pretend this photo of Alyssa draped in toilet paper is Julia until a legit wedding picture surfaces.

She's a "Print Device Wizard"! Get it? Oh man, the fun never ends in the Green residence.

Ohhhhhh, it's Hector! (He's probably getting sick of people saying that every time they see him.)

2011-12-11T20:55:00.001-07:00

Hey L'il Smokies. Alyssa says I have to write a Christmas letter to all my peeps, on account of she wrote one the other day and failed to put my name in it. So now I have to do one of my own, lest people think we're having marital discord and I've been disowned as a spouse. Seriously. So we're just going to consider this blog entry my "Christmas letter" and keep real quiet about it from you-know-who. Capiche? Capiche.

So the year in retrospective... Well, from January up until about October, nothing really changed. Same jobs, same basic routine, with a few spicy moments thrown in just to shake things up, like going to Steamboat Springs and Alcatraz, and attending that funeral presided over by the midget, and...umm...gerbil-sitting. So, for the most part, not too much really out of the ordinary, but nothing really gloomy and depressing either. Life for us was like a sitcom where something really zany happens once a week during a single half-hour period and then everything goes back to the way it was.

That all seems to have changed, with the introduction of Ting Ting. For those who don't know, we're going through the process of adopting a special needs child internationally. We've locked in a child, a Chinese girl named Ting Ting who's about 14 months old and living in an orphanage in Chengde. The paperwork is pretty grueling (meaning I would rather eat gruel than work on it), and the timeframe iffy--if all goes well, we could be going to China to pick her up as early as July, by my estimation. If all goes well. There are a bumload of things that could go wrong in the meantime, but hey! In all our years of trying to adopt, it's far and away the closest we've ever been. Just gotta keep the faith. And not commit any serious crimes or die.

Other than that, the other big news is that I finished my book I've been working on for three years. I guess "finished" is a bit of a misnomer, since the ending is just a cliffhanger leading into Book 2, but now I can brag this up at parties. "I finished a book! Yeah, that's right! What've you done? Huh? Hey, where are you going? Whah? She...she walked away from me! What...what did I do?" Actually, it's a pretty sweet book, with all the over-the-top Ben-ness you've come to expect--a hot female herpetologist and her wanna-be flapper best friend, a boyfriend supposedly killed in a mudslide, cursed part-animal cannibals, near death by box jellyfish, and the most inventive use of nitroglycerin you will ever see in all your days. (Okay, the nitroglycerin thing won't be until Book 2, but I had to stick it in there as a plug.) I'm looking for readers, if anyone is interested. (But know I'm giving it a PG-13 rating, just so no one unwittingly assigns it at their Relief Society book club. THAT wouldn't be good.)

So that's pretty much my "yearly retrospective." Now for the really important part of this blog post: the all-new Lame Christmas Song Lyrics Survey. This year's hot contenders are as follows:

"Winter Wonderland." Later on, we'll conspire, as we dream by the fire, to face unafraid the plans that we've made. What is it they're conspiring to do, exactly? Assassinate Santa?
"Happy Holidays." Whoopty-doo, and dickory dock. Don't forget to hang up your sock. Uhhh...yeah. What he said.
"Do You Hear What I Hear." A star, a star, shining in the night, with a tail as big as a kite. I know that when I think "big," kites are always the first thing that comes to mind.
"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long long ago. This, along with the line about "marshmallows for toasting," makes me wonder if this guy was on some kind of Christmas camping trip when he wrote the song.

So go ahead and cast your vote for the song with the most inane lyrics. You can pick any of the above or do a write-in. The choice is yours. (I was this close to including "The First Noel" for the part that goes "They look-ed up." But then I thought, nah. It's in the hymn book. I'd probably get hit by lightning or something.)

2011-11-05T21:31:00.001-06:00

Hey thar fellah rapscallions. (You know you are one. Come on, fess up.) So we spent Halloween in California with Emily and fam, and good times were had in abundance. (You might say we...get ready for major yuks here... had a...giggle...CALI-WEEN. Ah-hah! Hah! Such a bundle of laughs am I!) Said good times included but were not limited to...

Visiting Chinatown and eating jellyfish and shark fin dumplings, among other things. Consensus: Eating jellyfish was kind of like eating a mucus candy bar with a chewy nougat center, and as for the shark...well, Emily thought maybe the reason it tasted so bad was because it had eaten a human prior to being caught. But I suppose eating gross food is the price we pay for getting to brag about it later, like I am now.
Attending Emily's ward's Halloween party dressed as a king and queen; also in our entourage were Sonny and Cher (Kelly and Emily), Cruella DeVille (Laura), a San Francisco 49er (Trey), a giraffe (Ramona), Michael Jackson (Ty), a Mexican guy (Rhett), our nerdy princess daughter (Anika), and pirates (Alyssa's parents). If I left anybody out there, SORRY. The high point of said party was watching Alyssa as a queen dance to "Beat It" (see the accompanying photo).
Attending Anika's gymnastics championship, at which she placed 1st in Beam and Bars, 4th in Vault and Floor, and 1st overall. Yeah Anika. Go you. And don't forget the advice I gave you: If you're ever on a boat and you're wearing your plethora of medals and the boat starts to sink, just let them go. Or they'll sink you to your watery doom, like that heavyweight boxer I read about once in that sketchy book. Heed these sage words from wise old Uncle Ben.
Visiting Alcatraz on Halloween. Highly recommended. Especially the part of the tour where they talk about the three guys who made cement replicas of their heads and put them in their beds to fool the guards then tunneled out with spoons, climbed pipes up to the roof, and made their escape across the bay on a makeshift raft made from a raincoat. (Or they might have died. No one knows. But MAN, cool.) Alyssa bought for her l'il self a stylin' prisoner cap, and I bought an official Alcatraz harmonica. Because a trip to Alcatraz is not a trip to Alcatraz without a stylin' prisoner cap and an official harmonica.

2011-10-23T15:26:00.001-06:00

Greetings, my esteemed loyal Two to Three People Out There Who Are Still Reading This Thing. Peace be unto you. Had a big regional conference at the Conference Center this morning, which was nice once we actually got through the traffic. I think we could have abandoned our cars at the freeway exit and leisurely walked the rest of the way to the C.C. and made it with plenty of time to spare. As it was, we were about a half an hour late. "Durned Mormon varmints, always makin' us late fer things, mumble grumble hound dog grumble moonshine..." But the talks were good, especially David A. Bednar's talk about following the Savior's example. I could probably learn a thing or two from that, especially when it comes to making fun of hillbillies in my blog.

Aside from that, not too much going on lately. A few weeks ago we headed to the swanky resort town of Delta, Utah for Ty's graduation from the academy he attended there. I know he probably doesn't read this blog, but I'll say it anyway: Congrats, Ty! You're a great kid and we know you'll go far. Alyssa, Brayden, and I also attended Hale Center Theater's production of My Fair Lady last week, and it was as delightsome as eating Golden Grahams in the tub. Okay, maybe not quite that delightsome. But right up there.

The only other news that comes to mind is that we're applying to adopt a special needs child from China. Yeah. Go us, woot. And hopefully it doesn't turn out like a dream I had the other night, in which the "child" we ended up adopting was a psychotic scraggly-haired teenager with a chainsaw. An emanation of my deepest fears, or an actual prophetic vision of things to come? ("Sign here, Greens. And if he tries to hack off your limbs in the dead of night, just send him to time-out.") Speaking of dreams, I also had a much less meaningful (probably) one in which I'm attending an opera based on Harry Potter, and during the scene in which one of the basses (probably Snape) is performing a solo, whoever is standing next to me (it may have been my roommate Wes) belts out "Barbecue sauce!" in a deep boomy voice. So I, thinking this to be the height of hilarity, try to do the same but fail miserably. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Here we are with Ty after his graduation. Anika, who was off horsing around somewhere at the time, is not pictured but was probably with us in spirit.

And here is Alyssa getting jiggy to the pirate song in her Wii "Just Dance!" game. Yarr! Hot Asian chick to starboard!

2011-10-03T09:54:00.008-06:00

Haw haw, it's Monday morning and I'm not at work. I'm also not fishing, which is the reason I took Monday off in the first place, but Alyssa changed to a different position at her work and has to train today, so here I am still in my PJs, sitting around like a country bumpkin and trying to think of useful things to do, and by that I mean "pretty much anything besides play Wii Mario Kart," which is basically all Alyssa and I have done with our spare time for the last week. (I just had a birthday, you see.) Fun fun fun, just like the Beach Boys song of old.

Besides the aforementioned birthday shindy-digger (at which we enjoyed roast beef/bison and German choco cake made from scratch by the lovely Alyssa, as well as all-around hooliganism by Nick), not a lot springs to mind from the last month. General conference the last two days, with great talks and big temple news (how about that new Provo temple, huh? it was like the tabernacle was meant to burn down...though I'm still a little miffed that that million dollar organ had to be a casualty). Annual Greek Festival a few weeks ago, which Alyssa and I attended, and it was pretty rizospastikos (which, according to a random online English-Greek dictionary I found, means "radical"). We snarfed down souvlaki and other Greek foods, watched the Greek dancers, and even bought for our wacky l'il selves one of those flasks with the two spouts and the grapes in the middle that you can store oil and vinegar in. Never a dull moment when the Greens are in town, I tell you what. Also went to the museum at Thanksgiving Point with Eric and various little shenaniganizers, and that was fun, especially trying to get them to act scared in front of the Megalodon so we could take their picture, with expectedly weird results (see below).

The only other thing to mention is that Alyssa and I have decided we're now going to try international adoption, maybe from China or Taiwan. We decided this after having already decided we were going to try foster-to-adopt. "Dang Greens!" I can hear you crying in exasperation, out there in ReaderLand. "Just pick something and stick with it!" Hey, you. Mind your own biz-naz.

2011-08-27T21:38:00.013-06:00

Happy Moldovian Independence Day. Yeah, I don't know where "Moldova" is either. But if the picture I'm looking at on my iPad "This Day in History" app is any indication, they have lots of hay there. And guys with sticks riding around on horses. Sounds like a dream vacation destination if ever there was one. Forget Paris!

Speaking of vacations, on Wednesday Alyssa and I went to Park City and stayed at...well, I'm not really sure how to describe it. The best I can come up with is "College Dorm Room From the 1980s Now Being Used as a Timeshare Unit But Not Quite Refurbished." But t'was fun, t'was fun. We didn't have time for our usual slew of wacky adventures, though we did walk around the old town and visit the Park City museum and jail. They have some way rad stuff in there, including a 30-foot high scale model of a silver mine, a stagecoach built by Parley P. Pratt, and a book that contains a video screen so that when you flip the pages, various dead former inmates of the jail appear on the screen and tell you their life stories. It was like one of those newspapers from Harry Potter, except not lame. (Boy, am I going to get it for that one.)

Two weekends ago we went with various children, parents, and siblings to Cherry Hill, a waterpark in the Ogden area, because we had a slew of free coupons left over from that gift basket that Alyssa won at that Japanese Church of Christ thing two years ago. My thinking before going was, hey, I'd never even heard of the place before, so we'd probably be the only ones there--in fact, we had better hurry and get our fannies in gear before the place went out of business! In actuality, I'm pretty sure everyone in the Ogden-Layton metro area and their children was there. You could hardly even move. But good times were mostly had. Oh sure, there was the official Ride Where You Go Down A Slide in A Tire And Spend Half The Ride Spinning Around In Circles Because You're Too Fat, but other than that, good times. Actually, we spent most of the day going around and around in the Lazy River because the children didn't want to do anything else. How you folks with wee children ever get to do ANYTHING fun is beyond me at this stage of my life.

Here we are in front of the "Up" house, which was recently built in Herriman and shown in the Parade of Homes. It's a pretty authentic reproduction, inside and out. It even has its own official Carl Fredricksen and Russell, as you can see. (I'm pretty sure they were sick of sitting there morning, noon, and night for pictures, but they had pretty good attitudes about it.)

2011-07-10T20:33:00.003-06:00

Greetings, esteemed blogonados from all across the world. Yeah, I was just looking at my blog stats page (never knew there was such a thing!) and apparently I've had page views from some pretty far-flung locales, including six from the UKRAINE. Who ARE these people? "Fiddle dee dee. Nothing to do. Let's read a blog written by some weirdo we've never heard of who lives in Utah. Maybe he has pictures of his hot wife on there."

Anyway, two items of big news to report. First off, Alyssa's parents got their mission call to Sendai, Japan. Yep, right where that killer earthquake/tsunami hit a few months ago. Calvin jokingly said they "might be returning with six toes" (on account of radiation leaks from the damaged power plants). They leave January 2, 2012. Happy New Year! By the way, did I ever mention how Alyssa's grandma and sister-in-law were actually on their way to Japan and were ONE HOUR from landing when the earthquake hit? They got rerouted to another airport and spent something like ten hours sitting around in the plane/airport. In the end, they went on their vacation as planned but wound up cutting it short by, like, a week.

The other big news is that my company actually has a new name (which it was supposed to get in, I think, January). But I'm not supposed to blab what it is. Though I will tell you that it features in a very way gnarly Styx song that me and my friend Wes used to sing at the top of our lungs while sitting outside our apartment when we were roommates at Utah State. No wonder we were such Don Ja-wannies with the ladies. Anyway, when they accounced the name internally, we (this is true) held a funeral for the old name (Corda), wherein we all placed an item with the Corda logo into a coffin, then had a funeral procession (with an actual hearse) from the reception center to our building's parking lot, where funeral speeches were given and the items in the coffin were ceremoniously burned, the ashes of which were later placed in an urn. All of this was presided over by a midget. I am serious. Apparently he's done plenty of gigs as a midget-for-hire but this is the first time he's ever "had to drive a hearse." Yeah. The MIDGET was driving the hearse. Don't ask me how he was able to reach the gas and brakes. Anyway, after that, we proceeded to smash a car with sledgehammers. Mm-hmm. I tell you, with our new CEO, Josh James, around, there has truly never been a dull moment.

Oh yeah, and I got an $8000 raise. It's still not as much as I was making at Pearson, but it's a start.

We also went to St. George for the Fourth of July weekend again. Swam with Holden and Emily, sushied it up at the new all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant in town, Mario Karted on the Wii until our thumbs were blaspheming us in rage, and so on. Nothing too monumental, but what else can you do when it's 110 degrees outside?

2011-06-11T19:05:00.012-06:00

I know! It's actually been less than a month since my last post. Isn't that terrif? Actually, not much has changed since post the last, except that Alyssa and I did recently go on an ever-so-loverly vacation to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in which we visited some groovy hippie-operated hot springs where (this is true) clothing is optional after dark (although you will probably be disappointed to learn that we went during the daytime--sorry, "Ben and Alyssa's Adventures in Unsightly Naked Hippie Land" will have to wait for another blog post); hiked to a waterfall; visited the local botanical gardens and pioneer museum (which has a collection of 100-year-old candy and a wreath made entirely of human hair--apparently making weird crap out of hair was quite the fad during Victorian times); and shopped like teenage girls with Daddy's stolen credit card, buying ourselves a plush sheriff's hat for our hat collection, some hip red sunglasses for Alyssa, and a jar of fancy mustard, since we've been lacking in the Fancy Mustard Department for quite some time now and the Farmer's Market we visited last year in Boise failed to satisfy our raging jones. Curse you, Boise Farmer's Market! So...um...yeah. Good times.

Not much else pops into my mind, although this morning we did attend the Asian festival at the Expo Center, which was pretty fun. We dressed ourselves up in authentic Tibetan garb (see the below photos); ate spicy Indian food; and bought ourselves one of those twisty bamboo-ey things. Because let's face it, anyone who's anyone has a twisty bamboo-ey thing. The one we bought is extra gnarly because it has three little Chinese guys on it, two of them fishing and the third...well, we're not sure. Alyssa thinks maybe he's doing Tai-Chi. But rest assured that it's gnarly.

Isn't this the most preshest thing ever? Yeah, you know it is. Nothing more presh than baby ducks on your neighbor's lawn. (They were on our lawn first, but they defected when I ran inside to get the camera.)

2011-05-22T16:42:00.006-06:00

Hey y'all. Not much to report on today, despite it being a month and a half since I last posted. Alyssa and I have planted most of our garden--mostly the same stuff as last year, plus a new crop, tomatillos. We're going to try cucumbers again and hope for the best. And by "best," I mean, not having the plants vanish into thin air within six hours after planting, like they did last year. TWICE. Alyssa thinks birds are to blame. We're thinking of getting one of those scary owl sculptures that's supposed to scare them away. Yeah, you'd have to be pretty dumb to be scared by a plastic garden ornament that doesn't make any sound or, you know, move. Then again, birds aren't really all that bright. But they sing pretty. When you think about it, they're like the Jessica Simpsons of the animal kingdom.

Alyssa and I finished our CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training a few weeks ago. The way most of the classes went, we would get "instruction" on emergency response techniques from three members of the fire department, and when I say instruction, I mean about an hour and a half of jokes about murdering their mother-in-laws, plus dinner (which a few preselected members of the class would provide). I think there might have been some important emergency-related information in there too. The classes in which we did actual hands-on stuff were generally a lot more helpful, like the one where I got to wrap bandages around Alyssa's head and make the hottest dang mummy you ever did see. We also put out fires, sprayed a fire hose (although Alyssa was disappointed because she was hoping it would lift her off the ground and swing her around in the air, Mr. Burns-style), searched darkened rooms for injured victims, and used "cribbing" techniques to lift rubble off a mannequin. Good times, my friend, good times.

Saturday we took Alyssa's grandma out to dinner at a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza joint, and when we got back to her house the garage door opener wouldn't work, and of course she didn't have a key to the front door (why should she, when she can just use the garage door opener?). So the neighbors came over and messed with the opener for a while, and when that didn't work they ended up calling a locksmith, and he ended up getting the front door open, but it set poor G-Ma back a whoppin' 200 smackers. Yeah. "Ouch" doesn't begin to cut it there, folks.

I got an iPad a few weeks ago. My work pretty much paid for everyone to get one. Now, in the blink of an eye, I've become the "cool" uncle at family functions just because I own a handheld device with "Fruit Ninja" on it. Take that, Tyson! Plus, I think my dad's really jealous. First the Lincoln Continental and now this. He should just move in with us.

Alyssa all "80s"-ed up. Isn't she dreamy? It's like Cyndi Lauper turned Japanese and...um...hot. I told her I wished she could look like that every day. Oh, and then there's McKell.

2011-04-09T08:45:00.015-06:00

Hi folks. Here it is, April 9, well into spring, and it's snowing like a Svalbardian Snow Banshee. Must be all this global warming. That movie The Day After Tomorrow was right. I'd better watch my step, or me and a ragtag pack of survivors (including a homeless guy with a dog) could end up getting chased around a Russian cargo ship by ravenous timber wolves while searching for penicillin and would have to seek shelter in the Murray Public Library and burn the books for warmth. Make no sense? Well, neither did the movie.

Anyway, it's been almost two months since my last post, and a lot of crazy malarkey has happened in the meantime. Therefore I am going to list said malarkey in a nerdy technical writer-style "bulleted list" format that enhances readability by providing additional white space and utilizing "chunking" to break the paragraphs into smaller sections. Man, I have been doing this for way too long. Time for a career change. Anyway, here goes:

Alyssa bought her little self a brand spanking new $1600 flute. I tried to dissuade her. Honestly, I tried. But trying to dissuade Alyssa from anything involving the flute is like trying to hold back the Amazon with toothpicks. Her new flute does sound way better than the old one, though. Speaking of flutage, I think she has eight or nine students now. Go Lizard go.

We went with Holden and Emily to a museum of the "creepy modern art" variety, at which the undisputed high point was when we sat for about 15 minutes watching a supposedly 3-D movie involving guys made from lines jumping around (yeah, that was pretty much the premise of the movie), and we kept saying "I think the 3-D glasses are broken; they don't seem to make any difference," and it was only after we'd gotten up and left the theater room that someone (Emily, I think) realized that the 3-D glasses had an ON-OFF BUTTON to enable the 3-Dness. We may not be technologically savvy, but you've gotta love us. Just like the Beverly Hillbillies.

We went to an Orchestra at Temple Square concert featuring the world premiere of some monumental orchestral work by some Dutch guy. And when I say "monumental," I mean about 45 minutes long. No movements or anything. Just one ridiculously long, oft-times kind of hideous orchestral work. Actually, the real high point of the number was when some woman died in the middle of it. At least, we think she died. We saw that a woman was laying on the bench on the balcony across the auditorium from us and there were ushers and a few other people gathered around her, but no rescue people showed up until intermission. And when they finally did show up, it was just two firemen. They did something with oxygen, then they carried her away. We're pretty sure she just couldn't take any more "monumental-ness."

Last week we attended the annual JACL (Japanese-American Citizen League) fundraiser, at which we tried our hand at Bingo and the raffle, as usual. Most years either me or Alyssa wins something gnarly, but this year was pretty much a bust. All we took home for our pains was a sponge, a candle, and some celery. Yeah. Celery. Yippie-kie-yay.

My work has begun a very strange tradition of stocking the break room with salt-, sugar-, and fat-laden goodies and ordering lunch for everyone two days out of the week and dinner pretty much every day. Not to mention Bagel Mondays, Friday Lunch and Learns, and our monthly "Team Lunch." Supposedly this is to boost morale and, in the case of ordering lunch and dinner, keep us working longer (which is kind of ironic, seeing as how there's been LESS work lately, not more). I'm getting a little creeped out by the whole thing though. It's like they're trying to fatten us up, a la "Hansel and Gretel." What's even weirder is that the lady who has always spearheaded our fitness programs was JUST FIRED. Yeah. Creepy.

Besides all that, we're currently in the process of applying for adoption through a new agency, Heart to Heart. One of the most expensive agencies around ($30,000 is normal), but supposedly you can adopt through them in three to five months. The way I see it, we can do that, or we can keep going the route we're going and wind up like the elderly couple from Up. (I've already got the crotchetiness, so I'm well on my way. Plus, one of our lifelong dreams is to visit ANGEL FALLS. Aaahhhh!)

Alyssa being her presh self

Trey showing his stuff at the JACL dealie

Me getting ready for a long night of being disgusted

I made this diorama one Sunday afternoon in Boise when I was really bored. Bet you can't tell which classic work of American literature it represents! (Hint: The author committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho.)

2011-02-19T08:50:00.008-07:00

Hiya folks. Things haven't been too crazy-go-nuts around here of late (which you may have surmised, considering that I haven't posted for a month and a half). Alyssa's working three days a week (sometimes four) at that deaf people place she works at, two days a week doing temple stuff, and on weekday evenings she teaches a flippin' PLETHORA of flute students (I think she's up to seven or eight now), along with a fife student (and no, she doesn't play the fife, she's kind of just learning as she goes). Yeah, she's definitely related to her mom somehow (and most likely not descended from mischievous forest pixies, like I tell her sometimes when she's scampering about and giggling like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream and causing all manner of malarkey like putting rubber reptiles in my shoes).

As for me, I've just been working, teaching piano to Brayden and McKell, and writing two different books in my spare time (if I get sick of writing one, I just switch to the other--works pretty good, actually). Work has been a little slow lately; there are some major projects coming up, looming in the distance like big loomy things, but not much to document at this point. But, on the bright side, all of development and QA moved to the office space on the other side of our building, which has been pretty nice. No more having to share a cube with a "cellmate," like I'd been doing for three months or so. No offense, Bruce. But...you know. A fellah needs his space, so that he can read Calvin and Hobbes strips online when he's bored. Oops, did I type that out loud? I mean...did I say Calvin and Hobbes? I meant Intercom articles about the latest "tools of the trade" for the serious communications professional. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Before I sign off, I wanted to capture for posterity the following hilarious spam email I received two days ago. Alyssa was hesitant that I post this, believing that in doing so I would be mocking the language skills of "my Russian friend." But I believe I'm justified in doing so, since he's clearly trying to persuade me to leave my wife for some bimbo. And that's a no-no in the Book of Ben. Besides, it's my job to criticize people's writing skills.

Hello Good afternoon my friend,
I have a friends in Russia, they are very good kind Russian family. They are have an amazing approximate daughter, Marina. She is a matchless nice, but lonely girl ?. Recently, they came to visit us and I promised to acquaint her with a foreigner foreign man. If you are interested to communication with her, please write to her first. Her e-mail is marinmam@rambler.ru
And please, do not bother don't disturb her with trifles. I hope you understand that I cannot send give, her pictures photos, because it is a private, but I'm sure that she would send photos if she will show interest to you. And perhaps one day in the fututre, we will meet us on your wedding nuptials. Who knows...?
Sincerely best wishes, J.

That's right. I'm a "foreigner foreign man." Like Fabio. So don't mess with me.

2011-01-05T18:58:00.009-07:00

Ooh, check me out! I'm blogging on a WEDNESDAY. In all the history of bloggery, such as thing has never been done. Take THAT, Melissa! Anyway, a happy new year to all...in JAIL. Just kidding. Oh man, that line never gets old. Neither does my all-time favorite one-liner from that movie: "I'll hang HER up!" Thank you, Jimmy Stewart, for influencing pretty much every comeback I've used (and my mom, for that matter) for roughly the last twenty or so years. Like the time in college when my roommate Josh said "Hmm, what should I have for breakfast?" and I retorted with "You can have my FIST!" Ooh man, that was classic. No wonder Josh and I have kept in such close contact over the years. Oh wait, we haven't.

So another Christmas has come and gone. As usual, Alyssa and I spent what seemed like about seventy-five percent of our free time whipping up veritable swamps of goodies for family and neighbors--almond butter cookies, cranberry orange bread, and Ethiopian spice bread, to name just a few. I tried my hand at toffee again and screwed up on it TWICE. The more this happens, the more I tend to think the recipe is a phony that my mom gave me as a practical joke. Oh man, Mom, you're a LAUGH RIOT. Making me waste a whole box of butter and two bags of almonds, huzzah, what fun! Just kidding, Mumzy, you know I love you. Anyway, the week before Christmas Alyssa's parents had two of their trademark shenanniganous Christmas parties, which were jolly good fun, except for during the first one when I was loading dishes into the dishwasher and my back pretty much gave out. Wowzers, what agony. I could barely stand up for about two days. I went to a chiropractor the day after the unpleasantness and he did his chiropractor thing on me and I seem to be in better shape now, but MAN. It's just one form of mind-wracking pain after another around here lately. I must be getting old.

Alyssa and I spent half of Christmas Day (since she had to report for work in the morning, though she didn't actually do any work since they sent her home as soon as she walked in the door) and the week after Christmas in St. George with mi familia. It was loverly; everyone was around, including baby Hector and all known sisters-in-law. As is usually the case with St. George trips, we didn't do a whole lot besides eat food and play the Wii, but what's family for? We also visited chumsleys (including the Ashworths, whom I hadn't seen for several years), went shopping, made Cajun food, and Alyssa got her presh little self a PEDICURE. With orange toenails. (Come on, what color would you expect for Alyssa?)

Hector the Pooh...

...and Hotwife too!

Not sure when or where this picture of Eden was taken, but if there's one thing I simply cannot say no to, it's adorableness. With a moose.

Santa Claus vs. the Bloodsucking Zombie Icicles of Eternal Torment. (The icicles won without much of a fight.)

2010-11-30T19:53:00.003-07:00

Top o' the muffin to ya. I would love nothing more than to tell you that Thanksgiving was pure yams-coming-out-of-the-ears rapture. The dinner itself was really quite scrum; we went to Alyssa's parents' house and snorked down the good stuff with them, Laura, Eric, and Trey. It was the night before that was fairly hellish, when I passed my first ever KIDNEY STONE. "Ouch" doesn't begin to cut it. Fortunately I didn't actually feel it pass because a nurse at the InstaCare shot me up with Lortab (bless you, you wonderful narcotics!), but up until that point, I was in a whole lotta pain. Pain I would prefer never to undergo again, so I imagine I'll be drinking about a gallon of water every day for the rest of my life.

Not much else has been going on as of late. Still working, waiting to hear anything about adoption (nothing yet!). The week before Thanksgiving we saw the Five Browns in concert (pretty amazing, although both of the dude Browns MESSED UP on their solo numbers, dang their Juilliard-attending hides) AND went to The Scarlet Pimpernel at the Hale Center Theater in Orem (sink me, but the definition of "manly" has certainly changed sinced the time of the French Revolution), and loverly times were had at both, I can assure you. In my spare time, I've started reading the works of Anne Perry, the infamous reformed murderess/Mormon. Veeery interesting life story if you haven't heard it. Apparently as a teenager in New Zealand named Juliet Hulme, she served five years in prison for helping her best friend beat her best friend's mother to death with a brick wrapped in a stocking. (This was portrayed in the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures.) After being released, she changed her name to Anne Perry, came to America, became a flight attendant, and joined the LDS Church. Now she lives in Scotland and writes MURDER MYSTERIES. Well, you've got to write about what you know, I guess. :)

2010-11-07T08:53:00.008-07:00

Hey there, Blogonados. So Halloween has come and gone, and I am here to say right now, the costumes Alyssa made for us this year were da bombiest you ever did see in all your days. Yep, I went as the Hamburglar (remember him? robble robble!) and Alyssa went as a box of fries and (of course) a hamburger. (See accompanying photos.) After Halloween it came to our attention that maybe we should have switched our costumes, with Alyssa, being the more diminutive of the couple, going as the shorter Hamburglar and me going as the fries. But we still looked great, even though only one kid out of a good sixty or so actually recognized me. What DO parents teach their children these days? Good gracious.

We went to our ward's Trunk or Treat on Thursday and then, on Halloween night (which, this being Utah, was held on SATURDAY this year), went to Alyssa's parents to help pass out candy. That's about the extent of our Hallow-nanigans for the year. My work apparently held a Halloween party, but I worked from home that day, since the development team had ANOTHER party at night, at Rodizio in American Fork, and I didn't want to drive 30 miles to work in crappy traffic (or "crapfic," as I fondly call it), 30 miles back home to pick up Alyssa, 25 miles or so to American Fork, and 25 miles back. Not that I am bitter. Actually, from what I've heard, the work Halloween party was lame-o-rama, with hardly anyone dressing up or decorating their cubicles. You see? No Ben and the fun evaporates like Kool-Aid on hot tarmac.

Yesterday morning we had an Elder's Quorum service project involving helping a humble ward family move into their ginormous 5000+ square-foot Barbie Dream House. Oh MAN. Projector room, two-room walk-in safe you could easily hide out in for about a week in the event of terrorist attack, kitchen cabinets that LIGHT UP when you open them, library, and IHOP right over the backyard wall. Not only that, the previous owners left their leather furniture and entertainment center behind. Talk about sour grapes! They get gorgeous furniture and we get a broken telescope and some bongos. But seriously, they're a great family and I'm happy for them. (Seethe...seethe...) Anyway, we moved stuff for upwards of three hours and, compounded with the bike ride Alyssa made us go on yesterday afternoon, I am one sore little ragamuffin.

Alyssa bought her little self a brand spankin' new car the week before last--a white 2001 Lincoln Continental. Nice ride. Not the best gas mileage, but it has plenty of other amenities, like heated seats, those doors you unlock with a passcode, a countdown meter that tells you how many miles you have left until you run out of gas and get stranded in the middle of Death Valley (or...shudder...Oregon), bench seats for snugglin' on the go, and an honest to goodness CASSETTE TAPE PLAYER so we can play all our old faves we haven't been able to listen to in years, like "Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hits." Now if only we could bring back his wood-fired chicken. Come back, Kenny! Come back!

The dark and terrifying Darth Lantern. He provided us with some scrumptious cookies after his untimely death.

Robble robble!

2010-10-11T21:07:00.002-06:00

Buenas noches. We just got back from Famous Dave's, having stuffed our l'il selves to the gills with all manner of calorific, sauce-drenched malarkey. The reason for this visit was that Alyssa's mom and I both recently had birthdays, and if you sign up to be on Famous Dave's mailing list, they send you a coupon for a surprise freebie on your birthday. So we decided to hit them with the old double whammy, and our freebies turned out to be a free appetizer (grande nachos) and a free dessert (bread pudding). That in itself would have been plenty for the four of us (me, Alyssa, and her parents), but we all ordered regular meals as well, which, if you've been to Famous Dave's, are big enough to feed a small whiny child for at least two weeks. So yeah, we're both hurting. Although we thought it would be funny to just go in there, get the appetizer and dessert (and maybe some water on the side) and leave without paying a cent. Oh MAN, that would be Ben Gold. Tip? Forget about it!

The last few weeks haven't been terribly exciting for the most part, aside from going to St. George for my birthday. We saw Tarzan at Tuacahn (plenty of bungee-related mayhem, I tell you what), went on a nature walk, went out to eat at Pirate Island with my fam (wherein Alyssa and I stormed the arcade and won two SKULL AND CROSSBONES PENCILS for our pains), and visited Paul, Danielle, Grace, and their plethora of chickens. And, as usual, there was plenty of Wii playing and getting mauled by various dogs. Yeah. As if Emmett weren't enough, now Holden and Emily have two dogs of their own that they regularly bring to my parents' house (including a new one that looks like a bat). And when those three get together, whoo Nelly. It's like a tornado of fur and dog spittle. But they're a lovable bunch.

Not much else going on, except that Alyssa and I signed up for Netflix last month, and we've been ordering all the episodes of the BBC "Robin Hood" that aired a few years ago. Oh, man. They ROCK. You haven't seen anything until you've seen Maid Marian cartwheel all over the place like Wonder Woman and kick the Sheriff's men's keeshters.

2010-09-19T09:37:00.007-06:00

Avast, ye scurvy mutinous swabs! Talk Like a Pirate Day it be, but if ye think fer one second that I'm goin' ta write me entire log entry in pirate language, ye got barnacles in yer bilge. Har harrr! All right, that's quite enough of that. Seriously. Once I get going with Piratese, it's hard for me to stop, and the last thing I need is to offer a closing prayer at church and inadvertently say something like "We thank ye, our bonny Cap'n in the Sky, fer yer gifts o' booty and plunder." That wouldn't go over so well with the "Well I never!"-saying dowagers in the ward.

Okay, stuff that's gone on recently... Well, not a ton. We've been babysitting Brayden and McKell's gerbils, Gilbert and Scamper, for the past week. Actually, I'm not so sure either of them is a gerbil. Scamper looks to be part rat (he's even got those creepy rat eyes that glow red) and I'm pretty sure Gilbert is the cast-off runt from a litter of chinchillas. They don't even look like the same species. But they're fun, especially when Alyssa takes them out of their cage and messes with them (see accompanying photo).

Other than that, everything of note that's gone on lately consists primarily of fishing and garage-sale-having. Alyssa, Calvin, and I took Hideki fishing at Diamond Fork for his birthday a few weeks ago, and fish were caught in abundance, except by me, of course (I got one bite in the course of about six hours). But lest you think I'm some kind of non-contributing lazy good-fer-nuthin, like the fat slob in Church-produced pioneer movies who stands around and hits on the hot sisters while the other brethren push the handcart, I did my part by finding and identifying us a Ribes aureum (golden currant) bush, the fruit of which Alyssa used in some ever-so-loverly muffins the next morning. Go me. Woot. Way to pay attention in that Wildland Shrubs course last year.

As for garage sales, we've helped out at two in the past two weeks, one at Laura's house and the other at Alyssa's parents, and we must have got rid of about half of the random crapola the previous owner of our house left in the shed (although we kept some of the more awesome stuff we found in there, such as a cot and an axe), as well as our fireplace mantel, which has been sitting in our garage for about a year, gathering dirt. At the second garage sale, I whipped up some flan that we tried to sell, but without cute children around to flash Bambi eyes at customers and make them feel like pond scum if they didn't buy anything, we sold roughly two pieces the entire day. Oh well. More for me. And I mean that in the most non-sour-grapesy way possible.

2010-08-22T21:19:00.009-06:00

Hidily-ho, bloggareenos. Just got back from Calvin's birthday party, which mostly involved me playing 60s songs like "Little Old Lady From Pasadena" and "I Got You Babe" on the piano with Alyssa accompanying on her flute and Calvin supplying the vocals. Oh man, always good times when you get the three of us together.

Besides that, we've mostly just been working lately, although there has been the occasional outing--Alyssa's work picnic (featuring a guest appearance by the unfortunately named "Puddles the Make-a-Wish Duck"), Alyssa's parents' ward's yearly pizza- and brownie-intensive pool party (at which I must have gone down the slide with sundry nieces and nephews a grand total of fifteen times), and a showing of The Music Man at a theater in Bountiful. And just yesterday we went to the Tracy Aviary with Laura, Eric, Sayuri, and various chillens and saw enough birds to provide Thanksgiving dinner for the entire population of Sri Lanka. Mmm, birds. (Except, of course, for the bird that eats poisonous berries and stores the poison in its skin so that if you eat it you die. Ain't nature great?)

So Alyssa's last day at Children's Academy will be this upcoming Thursday. She's decided she isn't such a great fit there (honestly, I can't imagine anyone better at putting up with children's gimshee than Alyssa, but the work seems to stress her out a lot) and is now thinking of getting more flute students and maybe looking for other part-time work. I think she'll do great in whatever she decides to do. Go baby go!

By the way, I was flipping through the dictionary the other day and came upon a word that I'm going to have to start using in my everyday conversation; otherwise my life will have been an utter waste. (Just kidding.) The word is "succedaneum." Pronunciation, sucks-a-day-nee-um. It means "substitute." I'm trying to get Alyssa to use it at the daycare before her time there is through: "Hello class, my name is Mrs. Green and I'm going to be your succedaneum for the day." Oh, MAN, that would be great. You know what would make it even funnier? If she wore a REALLY CRAZY HAT. Hoo hoo, I think I would just DIE.

This started out as pizza, but due to circumstances that were in NO WAY Alyssa's fault, what we ended up with was a "Pizza Splat." It was actually pretty good.

Isn't this lemon tomato from our garden lovely? Not a blemish on it. I just had to take a picture before it was sacrificed to the God of Calvin.

Trey braving the "water squirter thingy" at Liberty Park.

2010-07-31T09:02:00.012-06:00

Greetings. It's been quite the biz-zay month, with very little time for bloggage. So, of course, it now being a Saturday morning with Alyssa gone to some children's health class and me having little to do (actually, I probably have plenty to do--fix the holes I accidentally put in the walls when I was moving a TV, weed the front yard, mount the carbon monoxide detector we bought about eight months ago, etc.--I'm just being lazy right now), it's time to go nuts, baby. Prepare to be sprayed in the face as I remove my foot from the Fire Hose of Bloggery!

Towards the end of last month, we headed to Idaho Falls for my grandpa's funeral, which was very nice (a stark contrast to the last two Green funerals we attended, which we now refer to as the "Dear God!" and "Shut up, we're prayin'!" funerals, referencing dumb but memorable quotes made by two wacky uncles). It featured a wonderful life sketch and tribute by Nick and my dad, respectively, as well as lovely musical numbers by Holden (piano) and Alyssa (flute, with me accompanying). My dad complains about having to speak at these kinds of events, but he always does great, and he knows it. (Plus, he has a long-standing tradition of sneaking in at least one cuss word, which is always entertaining.) He talked about my grandpa's military service in World War II and Korea, his example of patriotism, his willingness to put his life on the line for his country. He also talked about his willingness to reach out to those in need, whoever and whenever it might be. I occasionally poked some good-natured fun at him from time to time for his "crazy old world" speech, but, in my mind, that speech is what he was really all about: "It's a crazy old world out there, and we've just gotta help each other out." Definitely words to live by. In addition to the funeral, it was great to see all of the Greens together for the first time in who knows how long, with a new addition--Sheridan and Beth's baby, Hector, who is, yes, dang adorable. It will be even more adorable if he gains a Texas accent while yet in his youth. "Hey Ma, can ya'll fetch me another cookie?" Awww.

Fourth of July weekend Alyssa and I headed to St. George for no reason except to chill it up. (Literally...the condo there actually has air conditioning, so we thought, why languish in the heat in Salt Lake, when we could be nice and cool in St. George?) We hung out with my fam, went to the Fourth of July parade in Cedar City (always a treat watching Alyssa try to beat the little kids to the candy), went swimming with Holden and Emily, and saw their new place. Also Wiied it up, as usual. And I creamed Alyssa at the cow racing like THREE TIMES! Then, of course, she figured out what she was doing wrong and it was back to kicking my butt as usual. But it was bliss while it lasted.

Finally, the week before last we went to Oregon for Alyssa's week-long family reunion. We took a slightly longer route, through Boise, so that we could visit most of our old chums, and it was loverly. We stayed at the Valentines' place, in their African animal-themed basement (that Verla sure likes leopard spots!). Verla wasn't around, having headed off to Georgia to visit family, but Lee was as fun as ever, and we even saw our old buddy Bishop Dowdle at one point. We spent much of Saturday hanging with the Wadsworths--going to the zoo with Lanae and their two kids, Lane and Jenna, and making pizza at their place later--as well as hitting the farmer's market (no Mom's Mustard, unfortunately, which was pretty much the reason we went) and the new Filipino restaurant. Sunday, on the way to Oregon, we stopped in Nampa to visit Daniel and Trista and their new twins, and that was pretty awesome. So glad everything turned out okay for them.

I'll say only this about the drive through Oregon to Klamath Falls: Not a single freeway, and I recall a stretch of road at least 100 miles in length where I never ONCE saw anybody in front of us or behind us. If we had run out of gas anywhere there, the vultures would probably have picked our bones clean by now. We were also amused by a sign reading "WAGONTIRE, OREGON. POPULATION: 3." Funny state, Oregon. If you've never been there, you think of it as being a slightly hip, California wanna-be state with a lot of bikini car washes, organic food stores, and beavers. True, but only along the coast. The entire central-eastern region is pretty much a vast wasteland, like the kind you'd see in a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

At the reunion, good times were enjoyed by all. We went to Crater Lake (where we bought a sweet ranger hat and were nearly sucked bone dry by mosquitoes) and a fish hatchery, rafted the Rogue River, did some caving, played some Bingo, saw a whole birdload of gnarly birds at the Klamath Wildlife Refuge (including ibises and heron), and even had our car break down on us on several occasions owing to the fact that the brilliant mechanics at Tunex put in an incorrect brake light the day we left Salt Lake. (I know. Isn't that a crazy reason for one's car to break down? We'll be telling our grandkids about that one, make no mistake.)

Oh yeah. And before I forget to mention it, Alyssa bought a "Pirates of the Carribean" bed at a garage sale for $70. Is it any wonder I love that girl? We also found our little selves a rad sword to hang on the wall next to it. Yarrrr!

2010-06-19T20:37:00.009-06:00

G'day. First for the sad news--my grandpa passed away early Friday morning. Sad news but, at the same time, welcome. I think the last 11 years were the loneliest of his life; now he can finally be reunited with my grandma. The funeral is Tuesday in Idaho Falls, so we'll be headed up there Monday night. In commemmoration of old Gramps (I can't even remember how many 'm's are in that word--I think my spelling ability is going down the john lately), here's my Top 10 List of Grandpa Memories:

10. Grandpa-ese -- words like "dingus, "hummer," "duds," and "jeezy crackers" that shall ever remain a part of my lexicon. (One time I actually started compiling a dictionary of Grandpa-ese.)

9. The time he misread a display on my mom's cell phone that said "CALLED" and told her "Jann, your phone says you're supposed to call Ed."

8. The time he put flashing lights around the license plate of his van and switched the horn with one from a semi truck. (He often said that when the time came for the Saints to return to Missouri, he planned to hitch a team of oxen to the van.)

7. Juicing anything with leaves and LOVING it. All except for alfalfa--that was the one vegetable that apparently didn't turn out so good.

6. Telling everyone that his knee surgery was due to getting hit there by a scud missile during Desert Storm.

5. The time he was being grumpy so me, Sheridan, and Nick sang "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" to him and he cheered right up.

4. The time he accidentally called my grandma "Henry."

3. His much-revered "crazy old world" speech. Anyone who ever had him as a grandpa knows exactly what I'm talking about.

2. The time when we were at Kate Curley Park and a scary hoodlum swore at me, Sheridan, and Nick for throwing pine cones at the squirrels so Gramps took it upon himself to chew out the hoodlum while me and my brothers hid in the van, expecting the hoodlum to kill Gramps or vice-versa.

1. His impressions of the gay guys he served with in the Navy. ("Why, hel-LO, Mr. Green!")

I would say that's a fitting Ben-style memorial. Maybe I'll come up with more Gramps memories later on.

As for other stuff that's happened lately, today Alyssa and I went to Toy Story 3 in the morning (highly recommended) and Red Butte Gardens in the afternoon, which was fun, the highlight being when we saw a rattlesnake and a squirrel going at it like a bickering married couple. I have never seen a squirrel tempt fate like this; I think maybe it was insane, suicidal, or part mongoose. Also saw precious ducklings, giant photo-op Gila monster statue thingy, and plant life up the wazooty. Good times, good times. I also should mention how last Saturday Alyssa and I took Trey and Kenji swimming at the Park Center and the latter couldn't find his towel so (get ready for some highly rational logic here) he decided to stroll around the Park Center buck naked. (Did I mention that he's 9?) Children! How I'll survive from one day to the next, I really just don't know.

2010-06-06T14:28:00.010-06:00

A-hoy-hoy. It's funny how when interesting/wacky blogworthiness happens in Greenlandia, it generally happens in spurts. You'll notice that I have not posted for a month and a half. This is because nothing terribly blogworthy happened between then and now, up until the last two weeks or so, when we planted our garden AND went to Timpanogos Cave for our fourth anniversary/Memorial Day AND went to Park City for our fifth anniversary. (Yeah, our fourth anniversary activity was a little on the belated side.) We've gone pretty nutzoid on the garden this year, having planted tomatoes, peppers (both bell and burn-your-lips-off varieties), onions, eggplant, pumpkin, cantaloupe, lettuce, spinach, radishes, strawberries, raspberries, and several herbs. We tried cucumber twice, and both times, the plant just disappeared into thin air like Bilbo Baggins. We think maybe some kind of bird ate it, but we're not sure. I told Alyssa I wanted to try a third time, just because I don't want the animals to win. I mean, come on, if I let some dinky little varmint with a brain the size of a gumball get the better of me, who's the higher species? I ask you. Anyway, we finally decided to give up on cucumber for the year. But everything else is coming along pretty well.

We went to Timpanogos Cave on Memorial Day. Pretty gnarly; this was the first time I'd been there. It's funny how so many of the rock formations look like food. "Cave bacon," "Cave popcorn," "Caramel Falls," etc. At times I was tempted to lick the rocks, but somehow or other, I clung to my willpower and prevailed. Anyway, it was awesome and our butts hurt something fierce from the hike the next day.

Finally, for our fifth anniversary extravaganza, we went to Park City Friday; ate dinner at an Asian-ish restaurant in which Alyssa ordered (I swear) sushi AND tacos in the same meal; spent the night in a hotel that didn't have an in-room fridge where we could stow our sparkling grape juice (which I purchased at a garage sale in Lindon for 28 cents) and blatantly LIED on its webpage about having a continental breakfast but did have an extremely nice pool and sauna; and the next day walked around the old part of town, shopped until I was whiny and then some at the outlet stores, and went on the Alpine Slide and Alpine Coaster at the Park City Something Something Mountain Resort, which was jolly good fun, especially the Coaster. We were also supposed to go on a horsey ride, but the lady who I'd set up the ride with forgot we were supposed to be going on said ride, so we'll be returning next Saturday to give it another shot; as penance for forgetting, she also promised us tickets to attend a country western-style (shudder) party at night, replete with country western-style (shudder) good times and country-western style (triple shudder) dancing. At least the food should be good. That's the Ben Motto for these kinds of sitch-ee-ations.

2010-04-17T18:36:00.002-06:00

Hidily-ho, bloggarinos. Things are definitely on the upswing in Greenlandia--I now have an honest to goodness JOB, which is nice because it allows me to make, oh, what do you call that stuff... oh yeah, money. Now we can buy things we haven't been able to afford for the past several months, such as food. Plus we can hit garage sales again! Woot. We went to a few this morning (after a fruitless jaunt to the fishing pond) and found our little selves a mysterious general-style army hat that the owner had no idea where it came from, as well as a gnarly oil lamp (with oil included) that probably won't do us much good in an emergency as it will more than likely be smashed to smithareenies but looks awesome on our mantel. Plus, if Alyssa ever has to teach a Relief Society lesson on the ten virgins, that puppy will be object lesson GOLD.

As for my job, it's been good. It's really fetching far away, in Lindon, but we got ourselves a second car--a 2006 Corolla--so I won't be in danger of having pieces of the car fall off as I'm driving down the interstate, like I would be if I were driving the Death Coach--I mean, the Nissan. (Not sure if I mentioned in a previous entry that our front bumper fell off as we were pulling out of Alyssa's parents' driveway. Here it is more than a month later and we've still never replaced it.) Plus I can listen to up to 6 CDs as I drive. Rock on. Anyway, I'm working as an associate technical writer for Corda Technologies. Most of my work up to this point has focused on an iPhone/iPod application that lets you view charts and graphs made using CenterView, one of the company's biggest products. So basically, I get to sit around and mess with an iPod all day. Beats customer service, that's for sure! I haven't gotten to know many of my coworkers yet, but they seem a fun bunch. Also, the company is quite exercise-obsessed; they've divided us up into teams and we all get "mile points" for participating in exercise activities; whoever gets 650 miles as a team by May 31st gets free Nikes. So I've started a daily routine of doing the "Free Run" on the Wii Fit, which is great because I can watch my Simpsons tapes as I'm running. Hee hee hee!

Another nice thing about having a job is the fact that I'll actually have health insurance in two weeks (good thing, or President Obama might send me and Alyssa up the river--curse our insurance-not-having hides!), so we'll finally be able to post our adoption profiles again. Go us!

2010-03-24T11:22:00.008-06:00

Bon giorno principeza. I know it's been a while since I last updated El Bloggo, but up until last week's Disneyland/Sea World trip, the last few months were mostly big snooze-a-ramas, as far as awesome blogworthy Richard Branson-esque globehopping adventures are concerned. Alyssa's still loving her toddler-wrangling duties, and I've been jobhunting pretty much nonstop. I think I've finally landed one, though not the one I expected. I thought I was a shoe-in for a job with Imagine Learning, a Provo-based company that makes ESL software, seeing how I nailed the interviews and the writing test and have a Master's degree and actual experience writing specifications for ESL software and hit it off immediately with the CEO and looked sharp with my new haircut and carefully manicured nails to boot. But oh, no, after all that, I was not the "right fit." I suppose that at Imagine Learning, Inc., being BYU buddies with the lead tech writer is what truly makes you the right fit. Skills and industry experience? SOOO overrated in this day and age. Anyway, the company I'll be working for is called Corda Technologies and produces data visualization software. They've pretty much selected me for their writer position, but I'm still supposed to go in for a few more interviews sometime, I guess for informational purposes.

As for last week's trip, a grand time was had by all involved (me, Alyssa, and her parents). Thursday we went to Disneyland and actually spent more time on rides than in line, which almost never happens. The morning was especially productive, ride-wise--we went on Splash Mountain twice in a row (they didn't even make us leave the car thing the first time!) and then hit nearly all of the awesome non-Fantasy Land rides (as well as some lamish attractions like the Tiki Room) within the next two hours. Thursday we visited Sea World, which I had never been to, and it was pretty gnarly, although, surprisingly, I wasn't as impressed with the Shamu show as I thought I would be. The whales were spectacular, of course, but the show itself was kind of, how do you say it, on the lame side. Mostly it involved the many Shamus performing random tricks while the audience was beaten over the head with a cliched "When You Believe" message. "Oooh! This Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey song is sooo inspirational! Let's steal the title and integrate it into our whale show!" And, to top it all off, we were in the Splash Zone and didn't even get wet. Wimpy glorified dolphin, can't even splash up to the tenth row, why I oughta... I actually preferred the other shows to Shamu, especially the one with the trained seals and otter, which was hilarious and pretty cool too. What I wouldn't do for a trained otter to do my bidding and fetch me soft drinks, bwa ha ha. Besides the shows, we saw a plethora of bum-kicking aquatic animals, and me and Alyssa went on the "Journey to Atlantis" ride THREE TIMES. Atlantis was definitely redeemed that day, my friends. (I'm not exactly sure how going on a roller coaster saves Atlantis, but the goddess said it was so, so I'm not going to argue.) And, of course, no Benlyssa vacation would be complete without buying a souvenir hat, and on this particular trip, the hat was one resembling Shamu's rear end--I mean, his tail. (See accompanying photo.)

2010-01-17T14:23:00.002-07:00

Howdy doozles. It's been an eventful three weeks, that's for dang sure. The end of December I traveled with Nick and my mumzers to Idaho Falls to see my uncle Dave and my gramps, neither of whom were doing very well, especially Dave, who was living out his last few days in the hospital. The night of December 30, Julie had him taken home under a hospice program, and the next morning he passed away. It was sad, but at the same time I think we were all relieved; he'd been battling his cancer for more than a year, I believe. I was really glad to have seen him before he died. As for my grandpa, he had fallen and broken his ankle and somehow wound up in an absolute dive of a rehab center, complete with dogs running around the place and popping in and out of residents' rooms (Nick took the liberty of naming one of the dogs "LaFawnda" simply because he's Nick), horrible food that we dubbed "Vomit in a Cup," and incompetent staff who purposely overmedicated him. (My cousin confronted one of the nurses over not waking up my grandpa for breakfast, and she apparently said something to the effect of "Well, I don't want him choking and dying on my watch!") So, after we bought him some much needed and much appreciated Wingers, my dad had him moved to a much better center and everything's been good.

Last week I went to Idaho Falls again, this time for Dave's funeral. It was quite good--Phil and Jeff both spoke at length on Dave's lifetime of crazy shenanigans, like the time he tried to chase a fire truck on Janessa's bicycle and ended up in the gutter with a face full of gravel, or the time he was teaching at University of Winnipeg and decided on a whim to take out one of the brick walls in his office with a sledgehammer. What an amazing and inspiring guy. After the funeral, it struck me just how much he had accomplished in his shortened life--he had probably had enough memorable experiences to last three lifetimes. Also, my dad coerced Doug, Dave's pianist brother, into playing Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz" (which involves demons dancing in a barn, or something) after the luncheon, since it was Dave's favorite song. It was also great to hang with my cousins, especially Jeff's kids, who are all brainiacs like their parents but oodles of fun (especially my cousin Aaron, who decided during the luncheon he loves it when really tall people lift him up as high as they're able and then drop him on the floor--I swear that kid's a masochist).

Alyssa, meanwhile, has been swamped with the kid-wrangling responsibilites of her new preschool teaching job, but I know she loves it. This is the perfect job for her. As for me, I'm back in job search mode, having decided I would much rather have money than have to deal with obnoxious teenagers putting fetal pig organs down each others' shirts. I dunno, maybe I'll finish out my biology teaching degree someday, but for now, that's on the back burner. And that's all I have to say about that.

2009-12-27T13:44:00.004-07:00

Bonjour! Happy Louis Pasteur's birthday! Oh yeah, and merry two-days-after-Christmas as well. It was a fun Christmas, but, honestly, I'm glad to have it over. I have never spent so many consecutive hours making goodies or aiding in the goodie-making process in all my days. Toffee, almond butter cookies (3 fetchin' batches!), challah bread, chocolate-covered pretzels, latkes, apple cider, flan, and so on and so forth. Definitely enough sugary junk to put 10 Bens into a coma. But what's the Christmas season for? Besides the goodie-making, we saw the lights at Temple Square, attended various children's school Christmas--oops, I mean HOLIDAY--programs (Charlie Brown would have been appalled by Brayden's school's materialistic, toy-and-candy-focused program, as was I), and enjoyed the usual auction at Alyssa's parents' house, at which I was the proud winner of a pen and pencil set, some granola, and a bag of "New Moon" chocolates emblazoned with the oh-so-hot faces of Bella and her vampire friends (for which I received much flack, as you might have guessed). We also attended the birthday party of one of Alyssa's mom-side relatives last night and there were two more white elephant style gift games, from which I won two identical Lego basketball guy sets and some sparkly nail polish, the former of which I traded to Karen for some hot chocolate mix, and the latter of which I dumped off on some random little girl. With all that going on, it's a wonder I ever managed to find time to study for my finals, but I think I pulled through on most of them (but I still haven't been able to summon the courage to actually check my grades online--maybe I should do that, huh?).

Alyssa, in addition to the aforementioned activities, spent a great deal of time preparing herself physically and mentally for her work's "12 Days of Christmas" contest, in which there was a different Christmas competition each day--bringing the best goodies or the most toys for charity, guessing the number of candies in a jar, decorating one's cubicle, etc. I am not exaggerating when I say she probably won at least half of these competitions, leading to her eventually winning us a ClearPlay DVD player. I've said it before and I'll say it again--when Alyssa sets her mind to winning something, hope pretty much goes out the window for all else involved. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but she just got a new job at Children's Academy, which she starts on January 4th. You rock, sweetie.

Had myself another bizarre dream this morning, though I don't remember nearly as many details of this one as the last one I recorded. It was just as weird though. I was on some college campus and everyone was rushing around madly because Jonathan from Amazing Race 6 had a gun and was shooting random people, meaning we were under quarantine (makes perfect sense, doesn't it?), so I was hiding out in a locker room nursery (that's right--a nursery within a locker room) but for some reason I didn't have any pants on, just my long johns. Not sure what any of that means, though it wouldn't surprise me at all if Jonathan were to actually go on a killing rampage. What a nutcase that guy was.

Now for some bad news. My uncle Dave apparently has only a few weeks left to live. Like I've said before, I think he's always been my favorite uncle. When I was little and I would act up at their house, he would put me in "the goophole," which was the space under his desk, and I couldn't come out until I was good. The goophole terrified me then, but it makes for some funny reminiscing now! He could entertain us for hours with stories from his days teaching physiology in Winnipeg (many of which involved performing electrical experiments on cats' brains!) And he was quite the dancer, which I never even knew until Janessa's wedding reception a few years ago. A classy, classy man, and one whom I'll never forget.

2009-12-06T12:32:00.003-07:00

Buenos tardes. Just got back from church, where Alyssa and I spent two fun-filled hours wrangling poopy-pants malarkey makers in the nursery. (The "Poopy-Pants Malarkey Makers" would be an EXCELLENT rock band name.) Seriously, the kiddies were adorable and a good time was had by all. One girl made me pick her up like five times. I think she thought I was her dad or something.

Last night was our ward Christmas party, which had a Hawaiian theme, hence our choices of garb in the accompanying photos. Alyssa's first choice was a grass skirt and a novelty coconut shell bikini top, but we came to the conclusion that some of the nitpicky "Well I NEVER!"-saying grannies in the ward (of whom there are numerous) might not entirely go for that particular dress option, so she wore a wrap-around skirt and a lei instead. The party featured Polynesian dancers as well as a limbo contest, which, as you know, is a CARRIBEAN game, not Hawaiian; nevertheless, Alyssa participated and did quite well (though she does have a bit of a natural advantage, if you know what I mean and I think you do).

We spent Thanksgiving in St. George at my parents' house. It was delightsome to see them as well as Nick, who rode down with us, and of course the always sociable Emmett. Sheridan and Holden weren't there, having decided to spend Thanksgiving with their respective in-laws instead, so those clowns missed out on some KILLER sitting around and eating food. Seriously, we didn't do a ton while we were there, but what's Thanksgiving for? Actually, we did walk the dog at one point, which is a lifetime first for me. Up to this point, I had NEVER walked a dog. And it was truly everything I've dreamed about and more. Also, while rummaging in the basement I found my journal from age 8, which describes in minute detail everything I ate each day. I'm serious. "January 12, 1988. I had Corn Flakes for breakfast. At school it was So-and-So's birthday so we had cupcakes with vanilla frosting. For lunch we had chicken nuggets" and so on. This is a document that our grandchildren will treasure and read to their own grandchildren for generations to come, I have no doubt.

2009-11-08T16:36:00.003-07:00

Hiya folks. It's been pretty uppity-downity around here as of late. Halloween wasn't terribly interesting. I pretty much dressed up in the same costume as last year, as a flute-playing minstrel, except this time I had plastic rats tied to my ankle. This was supposed to be a zany scheme to make it appear that they were following me as I played my flute, a la The Pied Piper; unfortunately they didn't stay upright all that well, which sort of ruined the illusion by making me look like the victim of a sick practical joke by a vengeful medical researcher. Alyssa looked ever so loverely as a princess, though. We were supposed to be Robin Hood and Maid Marian, but Alyssa only had time to finish her Maid Marian costume, so we changed our personae a bit. I also wore my zookeeper costume to my Saturday morning geology class; as is usually the case with my sitcom-like life, I was the only person in a class of about 30 who wore their costume, making me feel quite the goober. As far as trick-or-treaters, we bought some scrum-licious caramel apple suckers and Mounds bars, but we probably had fewer than 10 groups show up at the door. More candy for me, I guess. Myeah!

Thursday I went to work on-site at Pearson. T'was good to see all the gang again, not to mention do some actual work for the first time in more than a month. It would be nice if they would actually pay me now. Friday night we went Lazer-tagging. I scored -5 and was ranked 31 out of 31, meaning I was beat out by a bunch of seven-year-olds (quite similar to the last time I played Lazer-Tag, back in maybe 2002). Whoopee. As if that were bad enough, before we played Lazer-Tag we went to Ross and Alyssa left her purse in the dressing room. We quickly realized she didn't have it right after we left, but by the time she returned to pick it up, her cash and cell phone had been stolen. So until further notice, there's one cell phone between the two of us. And that's the end of that chapter.

2009-10-22T08:57:00.006-06:00

Greetings from the House of Green. It's Thursday, meaning that now that my Wildland Shrubs class--my one Thursday class--is over, I don't have diddily-squat going on today. It's reaaaal nice. Next month I may actually be spending Thursdays at Pearson, doing...what do you call it again...oh yeah, work. As for Wildland Shrubs, I'm going to miss that class. Good times were had in abundance, and I'm pretty sure I pulled an A, what with getting a 98% on the final. I wish I could say the same for my other botany class, Plant Biology, in which I think I'll be lucky to get a C. When it comes to identifying plants, I'm a rock star, but ask me how they transport sugars or, heaven help me, photosynthesize, and I'll try to distract you from the subject by doing a funky dance. Seriously. On the subject of biology, I'm in the process of applying for a $10,000 scholarship that's only available to biology and math education majors. The catch? I get to spend a year working in a--cough--NEEDY SCHOOL. Can you see me, Ben Green, trying to stop a hallway fight between gang members armed with plastic forks swiped from the lunch counter? I unfortunately cannot. So I'd better work on improving my gang negotiation skills right quick here.

Speaking of education, last week I wrote a letter to the Deseret News lambasting Thomas Sowell's October 8th column, in which he spent upwards of 800 words whining about how English teachers should not be allowed to require their students to write letters to celebrities. Here is my response letter, published by Deseret News on October 12th:

Oooh! Take that, Sowell! He'll think twice before he dares express his opinion in the newspaper again. On a humorous side note, when I got onto the Deseret News website to copy and paste the letter, a few people had written comments, and one of them, from a fellow appropriately calling himself "Ratman," said something to the effect of "Why do you have to drip your liberal venom all over everything?" Oh yeah, I'm a flaming liberal all right. Sssssss!

As for other malarkey that's happened lately, Tuesday night Alyssa and I attended "Curtains" at the Hale Center Theater, which was cheesy but fun. We didn't have the best seats in the house; this was exemplified during the last scene of the play, wherein the hero detective and his newfound love are standing together near the top of the seating rows, and a backdrop descends behind them, and we had no way of seeing what was on said backdrop. Parting words? A beautiful sunset? We may never know. Hopefully not anything important. But, for the most part, it was an enjoyable experience. Last night, Becca and Shawn went to the same play, leaving Brayden and McKell with us, and we had fun raking leaves and jumping in them, making chocolate-peanut butter eyeballs for Halloween, watching "Little Rascals," and Wii-ing it up like there was no tomorrow. Alyssa was so tired that she zonked out on the bed an hour before Becca even came back for the kids. Aww, poor little lamb.

2009-10-11T13:22:00.012-06:00

Ahoy thar, me mutinous swabs. It's been quite the up-and-down week, with birthday parties on Monday and Friday as well as a ridiculously easy geology test yesterday that I finished in 20 minutes and somehow got a C- on. Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out. Must have something to do with my teacher sniffing too many radioactive rock samples. (When in doubt, blame the teacher. That's the Green Family Motto.) Maybe I'll confront him about it tomorrow on the bus, and maybe even threaten to steal his lunch money while I'm at it (he's at least five years younger than me). As for the B-day parties, we celebrated Trey-Lor's on Monday and Julie's on Friday. At Julie's party, we snorked down four different kinds of soup and played "Let's Make a Deal" and Bingo. I won some hot chocolate and a Salt City candle; Alyssa, for her pain, won a pair of "Mop Slippers," which she promptly placed in our ever-growing "Re-Gift Pile" when we got home. Way to fight the system, baby. Oh, and last night Shawn and I babysitted Brayden, McKell, and Trey, which was oodles of fun, especially when McKell and Trey were fighting over a stuffed Nemo fish and wound up tearing it open and getting the little plastic pellets all over the place, including in their hair. Ah, to be young again and have that kind of Break Things and Not Get in Trouble power.

So that's pretty much it. I said in my last post that I would post a few pictures from my field trip to Capitol Reef, so here are some, as well as one from Trey's birthday party.

My ginormous class (picture includes the instructor AND the T.A.)

Me on top of Cassidy Arch (which was really cool because there was a ledge a few feet down on the other side and you could fall down onto it and people would think you had plummeted to your doom!)

The field station

Me on a dare

The b-day boy

2009-10-04T15:59:00.002-06:00

Okay, okay, I'm sorry for not having posted for a month and a half. I've been so busy with school these last several weeks that I've barely had an hour to devote to the fine art of bloggery. Yeah, I'm back in school. I thought after my last graduation (out of several, yes) that I was done forever. I would even spontaneously belt out snippets from Alice Cooper's "School's Out." (Yes, I'm serious.) That was before it truly dawned on me how much I don't want to be writing technical documentation for the rest of my working days. There are basically two kinds of people in this world: those with long attention spans and those who--Hey, look, a guy on a bike! Isn't that something! Actually, I'm still doing contract work for Pearson. When I will actually get paid for said work, nobody seems to have the faintest idea. The company overpaid me after I was laid off, so for the time being I'm working for FREE to make up the overpaidness. The problem is, nobody seems to know exactly how much I was overpaid. So I could be doing volunteer work for Pearson for the rest of my earthly days. Yippy skippy.

My classes are mostly on the uninteresting side except for Wildland Shrubs, which has been fairly entertaining. We learn about native Utah shrub and tree species by going on field trips and collecting plant specimens. Last night I came back from a three-day trip to Capitol Reef, which was pretty dang awesome. Aside from identifying plants, we went on a bumload of hikes, including one to the top of Cassidy Arch and another to a series of waterfalls (I think that last one was in the Escalante area, but I'm not positive). We also saw Fremont Indian pictographs up the wazoo. My classmates and I also got thoroughly wasted at Boggle by Ho, the manager at the field station in Capitol Reef where we stayed. My crust, I have never seen anybody write so fast in my entire life. I guess when you spend most of your time alone in an isolated field station, there must not be much to do except for play Boggle against yourself. That's my theory, anyway. At least I got second place, scoring on a few good words like ANTHER and POON (which is an evergreen tree native to India, I think). I'll try to post a few pictures from that trip later.

Alyssa is doing fine, aside from having had a pretty bad cough for the last few weeks. She's working at MediConnect doing something or other with medical records. (Isn't it weird how I never know the details of Alyssa's jobs? She's probably really some kind of super-spy.) She also just interviewed at HeadStart, so we hope something good happens there.

2009-08-21T20:18:00.002-06:00

Greetings all. I know it's only been a few days since my last post, but something really blogworthy came up--namely, I had a REALLY WEIRD dream and figured I'd better put it to all of you in ReaderLand to figure out if it has any deep meaning. Ready, setty, go...

It's New Years Eve. I'm staying in some kind of ginormous fancy vacation bungalow, along with about 30 other people, from my side of the family as well as from Alyssa's. I haven't bathed for quite some time and feel that, it being a festive occasion, I should do so. Unfortunately, the bungalow only has two bathrooms to suit its 30+ occupants. One is being used, so I head for the other and fill the bathtub. Just as I'm about to undress, people start filtering into the bathroom. No, not to go to the bathroom or bathe or anything, they're just "hanging out." In the bathroom. Yeah. Weird. One of the intruders is my mother, who plops herself down on a stool and starts to read. "Mom!" I grumble. "If you please, I'm trying to take a bath here!" She says something fairly my-Mommish, like "Well, you should have taken one this morning!" I storm out of the bathroom and run into Alyssa's mom, who asks me what's the matter. "Why don't you ask my STUPID MOM?!" I yell. A cute girl dressed as an advertising mascot scampers up to me and starts pulling on my pant leg. Having reached my boiling point, I grab two nearby shelves and slam them together, sandwiching the little girl between them. (Hey, it's JUST A DREAM!) I happen to glance in a nearby mirror and am shocked to see that, in my fury, my bangs have dropped down over my eyes, just like Peter Parker in Spiderman 3 whenever he's being a jerk! "I'm turning into a MONSTER," I lament. In a desperate attempt to escape this madness, I run outside, where a bunch of Mexicans are playing soccer. I watch them having fun for a minute and then say to myself "Man! I wish I were Mexican." I finally head to the roof of the bungalow, where I meet, of all people, Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Actually, there are two Mr. Darcies, one of them dashing and roguish and the other kind of creepy, like Judas from The Lamb of God. And that's when I wake up.

Make of that what you will!

2009-08-16T16:01:00.004-06:00

A-hoy-hoy! Not a ton going on at the moment. Alyssa and I are still as jobless as ever, but we just learned that she has an in at Ebay, so that's good news. I've had two interviews, one, with Waterford, being on the lousy side (although one of the company managers was kind enough to drive Alyssa to the U just in time for her final test), and the other, with Henry Schein, being quite good, but they're apparently "not in a rush" to make a hiring decision, so "meh" to that. I've pretty much set my mind on going back to school at UVU and getting my degree in biology teaching. The way I see it, I can either take advantage of this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of getting laid off and do something I'm actually passionate about (last night I succumbed to my megadork nature and reviewed the basics of organic chemistry), or I can spend the next 40+ years working in a field that, quite honestly, I have always loathed.

The major news tidbit since my last post is, of course, Holden and Emily's wedding, which was loverly. Me being Ben Green, I particularly enjoyed the crepe-intensive brunch catered by the Shaws. Go Shaws go. (Although I felt really bad for telling Emily's parents that a particular brownish substance in a pitcher was gravy, which they proceeded to drizzle all over their potatoes; it turned out to be waffle topping. Talk about getting off to a bad start there!) Alyssa and I played "One Hand, One Heart" at the brunch and several other songs at the reception, and loverliness abounded. Oh yeah, and of course we held fast to our age-old tradition of braving a less-than-wholesome novelty goods store in order to buy a "dirty" gift for the couple, which in this case consisted of "Chocolate Body Paint" and "Edible Love Dust." You've sure gotta love us, that's all I can say about that. On the gift tag, I wrote "Congrats to you both. And Emily, whenever Holden acts up, be sure to give him a good lickin'." Oh MAN, I slay me.

Alyssa and I didn't do much else in St. George, not having a whole lot of time, although we played some awesome Swimming Pool Basketball and also won Donkey Kong Country after playing it for hours on end. I also started reading Wicked, thinking "Aww, how sweet, a light-hearted romp for the entire family, wherein we learn how those darned Munchkins got to be so cute!" It was not to be. In fact, when it wasn't borderline pornographic (note to Gregory Maguire: the Wicked Witch already gave me nightmares as a child; please don't make me read love scenes starring her), it was downright boring, with unlikeable characters blah-blah-blahing left and right about the nature of evil and nothing important ever seeming to happen. So I give this book (the half I read, anyway) a D (rather than an F only because I thought Glinda was kind of funny every now and again). And that's Ben's Book Review for today. Dum-da-dum-da-dum-DUM.

2009-08-02T19:21:00.002-06:00

Buenos tardes. It's been about a month since my last post, but there's not a ton to report on. Friday was my last day of work. My coworkers took me out for Thai food, and there was much delishness to be had (of course, I saved some for Alyssa lest I get in trouble). As far as my job search goes, I've responded to at least 20 different internet ads and have only heard back from about three of those, but I've got an interview on Tuesday, with Waterford Early Learning. If that doesn't work out, I may just end up going back to school and getting a degree in biology teaching. No foolin'. Not as much moolah, but at least there's good job security. Plus, I'm a lot more passionate about teaching. (Sometimes when I'm bored at work--be warned about major-league dorkiness coming up here--I come up with SAMPLE CLASSROOM CURRICULUM PLANS.) We think Alyssa has a job, but we're not 100% sure yet.

Holden is getting married next week. Little stinkweasel. He needs to wait at least 9 or so more years. Or at least make more than the 7 or so dollars an hour he's making at Dixie Nutrition. His fiancee Emily had her endowments done yesterday afternoon, and Alyssa and I attended the session, along with Nick and my parents. Then there was quite the food dealie afterward, at Emily's aunt's house. Because my parents were around, they stayed at our house on Friday night, and a lovely time was had by all, especially by my dad, who wiled away many an hour messing with our automatic sprinkler system. Alyssa also held her housewarming party Friday afternoon. The place actually looks quite nice inside now. It's hard to believe that my first words after leaving the house after seeing it for the first time were something along the lines of "Nice neighborhood, but the house itself is really kind of a manure pit." With a little hard work, you really can accomplish anything.

2009-07-05T14:16:00.004-06:00

Howdy doodle. It's been a turbulent couple of weeks, reader friends. On the upside, recently we went with Alyssa's family to Lake Tahoe, which was generally fun (the only exception being when all 30+ of us were together in one hotel room, if you can imagine). We visited Virginia City; played a rousing game of Frisbee in bum-achingly cold water; went on a mile-long hike to the Vikingsholm "castle" (which sounds pretty spiffy but turned out to be the summer home of some rich lady in the 1930s--hard as it may be to believe, the Vikings never actually made it as far west as Tahoe); and even visited a gallery of Dr. Seuss art. And to top it all off, Alyssa purchased a T-shirt that proudly claims "I'M NOT SHORT, I'M FUN-SIZED." That should make people think twice before messing with that little runt! Oh yeah, and not to forget the high point of the entire trip, which occurred in Winnemucca (see the last picture at the end of this blog entry). And while I'm still on the upside, I should mention that on Friday we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house, which was pretty gnarly once we actually got inside (we probably spent more than an hour waiting in line to get in). One thing that really struck me was the fact that most of the rooms had WINDOWS. I don't think I've been in a temple with windows before. It was nice having all the natural light.

Okay, downside now. I got laid off. They pulled the plug on the ELLIS software, which was pretty much what I was hired to work on, so ta-ta job. According to the intranet site, however, Edustructures, the other Pearson department on our floor, is looking for a technical writer, so I'm going to talk to them tomorrow. Oh, and I missed out on the 4th of July because I got the flu. Not swine, as far as I know. I haven't started oinking yet. (Har!)

2009-06-14T21:49:00.002-06:00

Big news on the house front... Alyssa and I actually LIVE in it now, for the first time in the nearly three months since we bought it. For serious! It's still fairly hazardous to walk around in in some areas, since only about half of our vast troves of malarkey are unpacked and there are still power tools scattered all over the place, but it's really not bad now. The hot water's on now so we can shower, nearly all of the kitchen stuff is put away so we can actually eat food (nice plus, that one is), and so on. Lots of work still to be done. Every day we're discovering more and more "issues" with the house--yesterday, for instance, we realized there's a leak in one of the washing machine valves, and even Calvin with his mighty strength was not able to unscrew the durned thang, so hello to washing our laundry at the in-laws for the next six to eight weeks (funny thing is, I'm actually doing that as I'm writing this--what ARE the chances?).

2009-05-31T16:41:00.011-06:00

Hola todos. We just got home from our first ever choir practice in our new ward. Good times, especially considering that refreshments were provided. Meetings today were pretty good, including a sacrament meeting talk in which the speaker discussed The Amazing Race and its intricate comparisons to the plan of salvation. No kidding. I'm going to have to get to know THAT family better, no question about it.

Last weekend Alyssa and I went with Nick and Holden to Idaho Falls and visited a whole plethora of undervisited relations, including Chari and my grandpa in the nursing home, Julie and Dave, and a whole slew of Alyssa's extended family. We also drove around and visited the gravesites of numerous relatives for Memorial Day, including a waaaay too long trip to Annis Little Butte Cemetery (which we always refer to as...oh, never mind, I probably shouldn't say in a family blog). And, of course, no trip to the rural regions around Idaho Falls would be complete without a visit to "The Big Tanks," a fairly boringish gas station in the middle of nowhere that sports three huge gas tanks painted like soft drink cans. It's like something that would be the primary tourist attraction in a city with a name like "Mud Springs, Arkansas"; nevertheless, since we always stopped at the Tanks on our way to visit Grandma and Grandpa Green back in the day, we still always go there for the sake of tradition.

The house is reaaaaally almost done now. Yesterday we moved in all of our furniture, clearing out the garage to the point where we can actually fit our car inside. Go team go. We also spent Thursday evening planting our garden. Come to Papa, bumper crop of tomatoes. Squash and beans, you can go to Alyssa. Ick. Anyway, we should be moving our little fannies in within the next few days. Rock on.

Here is our lovely lovely kitchen/dining area with all of the amenities, including the ever popular "counter covered with stuff we couldn't think of where else to put" amenity.

This is one of the smaller bedrooms, which we plan to use as a nursery once we're in the family way. We'll be going for a "Noah's Ark" theme, as denoted by the stuffed giraffe and rocking elephant. Awwww.

And, last but not least, our master bathroom, which yours truly grouted all by his lonesome. All right, all right, Calvin helped.

2009-05-10T13:18:00.004-06:00

Top of the morning...err...afternoon. Actually, since it's only 1:30, it would probably be the bottom of the afternoon... Unless the top is actually EARLIER and the bottom later... Never mind. Not a terribly exciting week, aside from driving to Bountiful on Thursday to attend the wedding luncheon of my old roommate Wes and his new wife Michelle. Go Wes--looks like all your zany girl-meeting schemes (including taking coffee cake to randomly chosen female apartments and holding dance parties in the living room which were, unfortunately, attended mainly by guys) finally paid off. Alyssa and I initially felt fairly awkward at the luncheon since we didn't know a danged person there aside from the newlyweds, but we got to know the people at our table pretty well, including Wes' grandparents and some other extended family. Plus the food was pretty good. And that's always the most important thing in these sitchee-ations.

We didn't spend a great deal of time during the week working on the house, although we tried to get a lot of work in yesterday afternoon. We finished putting the backerboard down in the kitchen and Shawn and Eric started laying down the tile in said room. We conned my brother Nick into coming up from Provo to help (with the promise of food, which he gladly accepted, being the half-starved college student that he is), and that was fun, especially all of the bickerings between him and Tyson. Oh man, those will NEVER get old! Alyssa's family also held a garage sale over the past two days, in which Alyssa and I tried to pawn off all of the junk that the previous owner of the house left there. We actually did better than expected, bringing in probably around $100. Oh man, if only that previous owner could see us now! He would probably be kicking himself in the PATOOTIE.

Here's our living room sans hideous window seats and with laminate flooring put in. Pretty rad, eh? (The piano will be going against that right wall, by the way. Haven't figured out the rest.)

My hair magically did this on its own last night and I just had to get a picture. Why? Because I'm Ben, that's why.

2009-05-03T12:56:00.010-06:00

Howdy doo. Alyssa and I just got back from our first ever meeting in our new ward. Good times, good times. Demographically, it's about the equivalent of both of our parents' wards--lots of older folks, empty nesters, and parents of teenagers; very few younger couples and children. I counted one baby, which I think will be quite a drastic change from the 30 or so we had in our previous ward. It was a bit startling to actually be able to hear people speaking for once. Last night we attended the birthday barbecue of Alyssa's friend's wife and her twin sister and some girl's husband (I'm a bit shaky on the details). T'was jolly good fun; we played guys-versus-girls Catchphrase and we dudes wasted their hinies in about six of seven rounds (yes, we really did play that many times). Then we all played a game where the object is to press a button before your opponents or you get shocked. I would have been fine except I MISSED THE DANG BUTTON. Ay ay ay, it's 16 hours later and I STILL can't feel my hand.

Just an update on the house (or the "hoose," as Alyssa and I call it in a Scottish accent because we're weird)... We've made a ton of progress this past week--pretty much everything is painted and we now have laminate flooring in the living room. Also, we had the banister switched for a new gnarly-rad one, and we spent a lot of yesterday staining the wooden parts.
Here I am at the top of a ridiculously high ladder, risking my life for the good of painting some ceiling edges that no one will ever see unless they've been drinking a lot. Alyssa suggested that I use the caption "The Height of Hotness" for this photo. Silly girl.

Don't even ask me what's going on here. Makes for a classic picture though.

Yeah, I know we already included a picture of our mailbox, but McKell was so presh that we just couldn't pass this one up. So sue us.

2009-04-26T09:21:00.007-06:00

Hello y'all. It's the morning of the last Sunday Alyssa and I will be spending in the River 6th Ward. For our final primary lesson on the Word of Wisdom, we've created a man named "Big Mouth Bob" out of a paper sack. As part of the lesson, we're going to give the children numerous plastic food items (as well as some pictures of big no-no items like beer and wine) and they're going to have the chance to put their Word of Wisdom knowledge to the test by "feeding" Bob the healthy items. We've even included a few special "non-food" items, like a plastic centipede in a hot dog bun. (That was Alyssa's idea, believe it or not.) T'will be delightsome, I have no doubt. All in all, we're really going to miss the River 6th Ward; it's been a great experience, especially being able to teach the kids. I believe that was a truly inspired calling at this point in our lives.

The house is really coming along. Yesterday we painted almost all of the upstairs as well as most of the family room downstairs. We were quite paint-encrusted at the end of the day. Alyssa had so much paint in her hair that she looked like she was going for some kind of goth "streak-hair" thing, or possibly a sparkly-haired forest pixie. As for me, I ruined yet another formerly quite nice pair of jeans. Don't ask me why I wear these things as I'm painting. Guess I just have to "look good" all the time. Yeah, right. Oh, and we finally had the back door replaced with one that actually, you know, LOCKS. It kind of makes us feel a bit more secure, as you can probably imagine.

We got in trouble for this. Apparently he wasn't supposed to be painting in his nice clothes (although he was a good helper). I suggested we destroy the photo, but Alyssa insisted that we not only keep it, but POST it on our blog. Sigh...

2009-03-29T09:48:00.004-06:00

Hey there all! It's Ben. I thought I'd better post again because Alyssa has been stealing my thunder with all of her "cutesy" Alyssa-esque posts. Dang her. Anyway, Thursday we closed on the house (I think my wrist is STILL sore from signing) and yesterday we did a bunch of work therein, including yanking out carpet, sorting through all the junk left by the previous owner (which included the rare treasure, like a telescope in the attic and a pair of bongo drums in the basement), and transforming the window seats in the living room into a pile of firewood. My dad even came up from St. George to give us a hand with the carpet, and it was great having him there. So yeah, there's a ton of work to do, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Apparently I've been "tagged" again, this time by the Beefinator, so here goes nothing...

8 Favorite TV Shows: (seeing as how we don't actually have TV, I only watch one of these, #1, regularly)

1. The Amazing Race
2. The Simpsons (mostly reruns of older episodes; the show started going downhill about ten years ago)
3. Seinfeld
4. The Cosby Show (I watch this while I'm doing the treadmill in Alyssa's parents' basement)
5. Nature shows like National Geographic, Animal Planet, etc.
6. Whose Line Is It Anyway?
7. Okay, this is where I have to start racking my brain trying to come up with something that I've actually watched in the last ten years or so... ummm... MacGyver? (Hey, come on, he was AWESOME)
8. Frasier

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Went garage sale-ing with Alyssa, her mom, and their friend Carolyn and bought our little selves a paper shredder, a stuffed giraffe, "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" for VHS, a bookshelf, and a sign with a "G" on it for our front porch
2. Delivered a bag of assorted foodstuffs to the Scouting for Food thinger for Calvin
3. Went to Wal-Mart with Alyssa and rooted through their 5-dollar DVD barrel in search of the rare gem but found nothing of the sort; also bought a TV converter box for Calvin
4. Lunched upon corn dogs and leftover Famous Daves spare ribs--a magical combination
5. Risked my life by infiltrating our new mouse dropping-infested attic in order to rescue the telescope (which Alyssa promptly dropped down the ladder, but it turned out okay)
6. Looted various other rooms in the house, finding booty galore--arrrr!
7. Bought Subway sandwiches and potato chips for the crew
8. Planned out a marvelous CTR class lesson for today (Sunday) that will involve, among other things, baptizing a Batman action figure

8 Favorite Restaurants:

1. Kamen Thai Cuisine in Logan (actually, I'm pretty fond of Thai restaurants in general)
2. Red Lobster
3. Cafe Rio
4. Aladdin, in Boise (specializes in Egyptian food)
5. Some Basque restaurant we went to once in Boise--can't remember the name, but it was way good and they gave us free dessert because Alyssa found a tag in her food
6. Olive Garden
7. Texas Roadhouse
8. A&W (not technically a restaurant, but I love their floats!)

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Fixing up our house to the point where we can, you know, actually live in it
2. Adopting!
3. Going to the Philippines with Alyssa next year
4. Going to Venezuela with Alyssa in three years or so (we're hoping to visit Angel Falls)
5. Actually finishing a novel (which I have yet to do in the 20+ years I've been writing) and maybe even, you know, publishing it
6. Eating (today being Fast Sunday and all) (not that I'm whining)
7. Tonight's episode of the Amazing Race--I'm rooting for the cheerleaders...to GET ELIMINATED already
8. Nick getting married--of course, he'll have to actually have a girlfriend first... Get on it, man!

8 Things on My Wish List:

1. Some really gnarly googly-eyed chameleons for our new home
2. Fruit trees for our backyard--cherries and peaches at minimum, maybe apricots too
3. For Alyssa to get her fanny home from visiting teaching so we can get to church on time
4. For the cheerleaders to get eliminated on The Amazing Race
5. That it would stop snowing! What season does it think this is, anyway?
6. That my uncle Dave will recover from his cancer
7. That my mom will get a break from all of the bazillion things she has going on so that she can actually come and visit us some time
8. That the mountain gorillas don't go extinct. Poor guys...

March Madness!

2009-03-19T15:41:00.003-06:00

Hey there all! So, yeah, I think this is a record, two posts in a row. Well, our house offer got accepted. We will be closing by next Friday. Yes, it is very fast. I will be glad to get it all over with though. The house in a great location near the park and a fishing pond. It is a fixer upper but It's going to be great. Plenty of room for family growth. No news on the adoption yet though. There will definitely be pictures and updates of the house to come.

Craziness at the Greens on St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-17T20:54:00.003-06:00

It's me Alyssa again. So, I thought it would be a good idea for me to post today because it is a special holiday for us Greens. We love shenanigans and wearing green. So, the latest on us is that we just put an offer on a house. We haven't heard yet whether or not we will get it but we are hoping. We also went to 2 birthday parties. On Saturday, we went to the Dimple Dell Recreation Center and went swimming for the party of my cousin's one-year-old child. Yesterday we went to Chuck E. Cheese's and played games for my nephew's 7th birthday. We even had a sketch picture of us taken. Right now Ben and I are about to watch Darby O' Gill and the Little People. A great St. Patrick's Day movie with Sean Connery when he was younger. He sings in the movie too.

2009-02-22T20:09:00.006-07:00

Howdy doody. Due in part to being ridiculously busy with adoption stuff--not to mention the fact that it's a lot easier for me to play Heroes of Might & Magic II than it is to write a blog entry rife with zaniness and wit--it's been a while since I've posted. And a post is well overdue, mon frere. Alyssa and I are getting ridiculously close to finishing all of the 80 bazillion tasks we need to complete in order to be approved for adoption. Friday afternoon we had our home study, which went well, aside from our not having a fire extinguisher and needing to move some cleaning supplies to a higher shelf. Go us, woo. Yeah. Then Friday night and all day Saturday we attended adoption classes, which were mostly good, especially three separate panels consisting of adoptive couples, birth moms, and adult adoptees. I think the birth mom panel was the most powerful. There are a lot of misconceptions that birth moms who give up their babies are selfish, but there's nothing remotely selfish about wanting to give a baby a better life. I have a lot of admiration and respect for those girls now.

Last week Alyssa and I went to Jackson Hole with her parents. Good times, good times. We went on a sleigh ride and saw roughly 1000 elk (no exaggeration, it being an elk refuge), went tubing, and shopped our hinies off. Oh yeah, we also went on a scenic mountain drive and saw a moose and a whole sheepload of bighorn sheep. I should also mention that they boosted us up to first class on our flight out of Salt Lake. Not too much different than coach, really, aside from the seats being wider and the flight attendants graciously hanging up our coats, but hey! First class! Woot!

Friday was the last day in the South Jordan office at work. Tomorrow after my torture session (by which I mean my physical) I shall begin the workweek at the new office in Sandy, which isn't looking nearly as fun at this point. No window through which to see wildlife and police drug busts; no more most spacious office on the floor (I'm in a cubicle now--what am I, a Dilbert character?); and, to top it all off, a FREAKING COMPLICATED PHONE which I am hoping and praying I never have to use.

Did I mention that Alyssa has returned to school? She should be finishing up her bachelor's in Family Consumer Something Something (you know, the home economics thing) in the summer. You know that hot home ec teacher you had in high school? (Come on, everyone had one.) Well, in a few years I'll be MARRIED to her. Rock on.

2009-01-03T09:21:00.003-07:00

Well, another year has gone down the Potty of History, my friends, and I sincerely hope I don't jinx myself and my family's financial well-being for years to come when I say that, in our case, it really wasn't that bad! I mean, I received my Masters and Alyssa is on the verge of completing her bachelor's; we both have jobs (mine is with a company whose leader is more powerful than Oprah! OPRAH!); we're steadily saving up for what will no doubt be an extremely cheap house; and we're on our way toward adopting. Oh yeah, and gas is the cheapest it's been since before September 11th. Can't complain there! Not everything is perfect, of course. We recently learned that my uncle Dave has a serious form of cancer. Sucks. I think Dave has always been my favorite uncle and I hope and pray that everything turns out for the best.

Alyssa and I went to St. George for Christmas this year. Good times were had in abundance. Granted, we didn't do a whole lot there--do we ever?--but when I'm on vacation I don't really want to do stuff. That's just the Ben Creed. Alyssa, who has to be doing something every second or she'll implode, may think differently, but she can go eat cheese. I mean... umm... I love you, sweetie! Ahem. Besides opening presents, we Guitar Hero'd it up (well, everyone else did, I played it once and decided I'd had enough); hung out with my friends (including the long-departed Russell and Kenley); and had my mother take pictures of us for our online adoption profile. That's about it. Oh yeah, we got a gnarly GPS for our car. Now we'll never get lost again! Bwa ha ha! (Just watch me somehow wind up in Nevada later this week...)

For New Year's Eve, we went to Alyssa's parents' house for games and snackage, but probably only stayed until 10:30ish because Alyssa got sick somehow (she claims it was because she "didn't blow-dry her hair in time"). So we missed out on some midnight drunken revelry in Times Square, no doubt, but I think we'll pull through. Somehow.

2008-12-13T08:42:00.005-07:00

It's been a few weeks since I've posted, but I'm dead serious when I say I haven't had so much as a minute to spare because it has been BIZ-ZAY around here. Remember back in the day when the Christmas season was a time of peace and simplicity, a time to sit back and reflect on one's blessings throughout the year? Well, those days have gone down the potty, my friend. The holiday season is now a time of pure insanity. Ah, to have the straightforward "Dick and Jane"-ish 1950s back. (The other day I told my project manager that I feel I could have done very well back then.) Dang hippies, screwing everything up.

Alyssa and I had Thanksgiving in the home of Shawn's sister. Good food, good times (though I did miss my mother's excellent stuffing--Stovetop tends to bring out such feelings in a fellow). Alyssa and I contributed some ever so loverly homemade ice cream. Then we played a game where we each had to write the names of five different people on slips of paper, then we divided up into teams and had to first get out teammates to guess the names by describing them in three words, then, in the next round, one word, and finally, in the last round, by acting them out. All of mine were of course really obscure ones like "Hans Christian Andersen" so it was hilarious watching people try to act them out.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we decorated our apartment for Christmas. At first we weren't going to have a tree, so we just decorated our hat stand and tiered fruit basket with Christmas lights. (See the above photo.) Later we found a medium-size tree that fit our place a little better. Go us.

Last weekend was the height of the insanity and involved going to Johnny Carino's and the Festival of Trees on Friday, two different ward Christmas parties (one of which Alyssa and I had to play music for) and freaking ICE SKATING on Saturday (my keeshter is still sore, a week later), and attending the First Presidency Christmas Devotional on Sunday, followed by the season finale of The Amazing Race, which Becca had thoughtfully recorded. If that weren't enough, our Sunbeam class featured three all-new malarkey-causers, one of whom I think may have been insane. (He kept trying to feel my tie. It was really weird.) Oh, and on Thursday I underwent Part 1 of my two-part root canal operation. It was pretty tortuous. Apparently I "don't numb very well." "Ouch" doesn't even cut it.

So hopefully everything cools down here. Not today, though, because Alyssa and I have two Christmas parties going on at the SAME TIME tonight, meaning we're probably going to have some wacky Mrs. Doubtfire-style shenanigans ensuing. Also not this week, seeing how I'm slated to attend three different work-related parties. Chihuahua! Goodbye, Christmas spirit. At least until I get my traditional scruples! Mmm. (For those who don't know, "scruples" are petit-fours in Greenese. My great-grandma used to always tell me I was a small boy with no scruples and then she would give me petit-fours. That was in the early 80s, but the name has stuck to this day.)

Seven things about the silly Japanese girl next door.

2008-11-23T17:52:00.005-07:00

Hey there you all. This is the 2nd time for me on here. I figure I better get on here since Ben was posting MY interesting facts. Hahaha. First of all, about that first interesting fact. Well, I don't know if it's as much interesting as it is weird and, for some, gross probably. Here are a few more facts though. Since Ben said the first I will start with number 2.

2. I took growth hormone when I was younger (what height would I have been if I didn't? Sheesh. I don't even like to think about it.)

3. For some strange reason I get a thrill out of singing "I'm Turning Japanese" at the top of my lungs.

4. I used to be able to lay on my stomach and bend my feet backward so that they touched the ground by my head.

5. My dad called me "Lizard" because I crawled like a lizard.

6.I have never seen the movie "Titanic."

2008-11-22T22:08:00.003-07:00

It's been a few weeks since my most recent blog, this month having been fairly skimpy in the blogworthiness department. About the only interesting thing as of late was Alyssa's uncle's wedding (by the way, congrats, Brian and Marsha!), which I wasn't able to attend as it was because of work, but the reception was nice. Of course, the high point of said reception was when several of us got together and played RUMMY IN THE RELIEF SOCIETY ROOM. Heer! Soooo evil! Other than that, not much going on... but, good news on the adoption front! We're meeting with some sort of agency person on Tuesday and giving them a bunch of money! That means the process is finally going to get underway.

So I realized just today that I had been "tagged" by Lanae. (Speaking of whom, congrats to you and Justin! This world could always use more Wadsworths!) Meaning that I'm supposed to list seven interesting things about myself and then "tag" seven more people with blogs. Seeing as how Alyssa and I are linked to only five blogs, and of those five, only two are actually linked back to ours (dang you, Freemans!), I've decided to forgo the "tagging." So, seven interesting things, eh, Lanae? All right, you asked for it...

I have an abnormal fear of having hot tomato-based sauces go down my shirt. Seriously.
Biggest pet peeve? When people leave their shopping carts in the parking spot next to them instead of taking them to the cart dealy (which is usually about ten feet away). HOW LAZY ARE YOU PEOPLE?!! I've almost reached the point where I'm going to start taking offenders' carts and putting them behind their cars. Sheesh, would you look at this? I'm turning into Mike Freeman!
Second biggest pet peeve? People eating sandwiches without plates. Lately the sight of crumbs makes me cringe.
I find the Beatles to be extremely overrated. I mean, look at some of their lyrics: "She loves you. Yeah, yeah, yeah... (Repeat ad nauseum.) And you know that can't be bad/you should be glad!" Brilliant. Okay, let the hate email flow. I can take it.
Okay, fine, something positive. Umm... let's see... Oh! I know the Freemasons' secret code! True story.
When Sheridan and I were little, we used to stand at opposite ends of the hallway in our house and then run towards each other and bash our heads together. I hope this serves to explain a lot about me. For some reason this game was called "Fried Chicken and Fried Fish."
I have never had a Pepsi. Coke? Twice.

All right, that should do it for Mister List. Now my goal is to get Alyssa to do it too. I'll start her off with Interesting Thing #1: She has REALLY COOL toes.

2008-11-01T13:55:00.004-06:00

Happy Day of the Dead to you all! I haven't posted for a while, I know, but I have a good excuse--up until about a week ago, not a dang blogworthy thing happened in all of October. Last week, however, renowned potlicker Holden Green returned home from his mission in Tennessee, and Alyssa and I headed to St. George to hear him speak in sacrament meeting, and a loverly time was had by all involved. He had a lot of really great mission stories. And it was good to have everyone together again for the first time in eons (except for Beth, who didn't come with Sheridan from Texas because of work). Plus, Alyssa Wiied it up and pretty much wasted everyone's trash in the tank game and the cow racing, but I think that pretty much goes without saying. Once Alyssa sets her mind to kicking butt in any one particular Wii game, all hope pretty much goes down the toilet for all else involved.

Inspired by Holden's mission stories, I did a Google search this past week for several people I taught in Venezuela to see how they were holding up, spiritually speaking, and guess what? I not only found five of them on Facebook, but they're ALL STILL ACTIVE. Not only that, but one girl I found through tracting who got baptized is now MARRIED to another guy I taught who eventually got baptized, and they're doing great. The awesomeness still flows in Barrio La Florida, my friends.

I am not bragging when I say I had the butt-kickingest costume ever for Halloween. Okay, maybe I am, but it's in behalf of Alyssa, the one who actually created the costume all by her l'il old self. In case it's difficult to tell from the photo, I was a flute-playing minstrel, and Alyssa was a chef. We had a Halloween party yesterday at work with a costume contest, and for the record, no, I did not win in any of the three categories. But hey! How did I ever think I could win out against a giant bottle of Cholulah Hot Sauce, a The Joker, and a cowgirl? Well, next year I'll know. If you really want to win a costume contest at Pearson, all you have to do is speak with a ridiculous Southern accent and you're a shoe-in, no matter how lame your costume is. Hard work on a costume? So overrated. (For the record, the hot sauce and Joker costumes were actually quite good, it was just the cowgirl that irritated me.) Okay, I'm done being bitter now. Mmm... maybe not quite yet. Give me a few more days and I just might get over it.

2008-09-28T15:22:00.003-06:00

Hey all o' yall. It's Sunday afternoon in GreenWorld. We just got back from our first ward choir practice, which was held at the director's home and was fine except that there were somewhere between ten and fifteen kids running around like monkeys with their butts on fire and I kept having to move my legs to let them get by so I kept losing my place in the music. Children...how I'll ever survive the day I'm not quite sure yet... Other than that, choir went well, as did church. Today's theme was missionary work, meaning that all of the R.M.s had to get up and sing "I Am a Child of God" in their mission language with the primary kids. I forgot my Spanish hymnbook; luckily one of the Spanish RMs had the foresight to pass around copies of the hymn in Spanish. Unluckily, in this particular version, somebody had actually gone through and translated the entire song WORD BY WORD, probably using BabelFish Translator, so most us probably sounded like numbskulls. As for Alyssa, she spent all night last night trying to get a hold of former mission companions so she could figure out the words in Cebuano, but it was not to be, so she just sang in English.

Had a birthday this past weekend. That's right, the big 2-9er. Alyssa and I went to Red Robin Thursday, "Kung Fu Panda" on Friday, and fishing near Huntsville on Saturday. We had planned to go camping Friday night but changed our minds because it would already be dark by the time we got to the campsite. So we just decided to go fishing the next morning. Didn't catch a dad-blamed thing, but holy goodness gracious was it beautiful up there, with all the leaves starting to turn color. We've already decided we're going back next year for some actual camping. Oh yeah, Friday afternoon I went out to lunch with my co-workers as well. Not the best Mexican restaurant we went to, but it was fun, especially since it was really far away and multiple people got lost.

Work's been fairly skeewompus this past week. Management decided that, since the Digital Paths product is the huge multi-million dollar money-maker, nearly all of development is being moved from the ELLIS products to DP. Only five of us are now left to run ELLIS development--the project manager, two developers, one QA person, and lil old me, Ben Green, as the sole technical writer, meaning I've had to take over Academic for Mandy. That means a lot more work and stress for all of us. Nice to actually have work to do now, though. Oh, I should mention that I emailed the BYU 100-Hour Board regarding the metal tub and the teenagers with the buckets, and one of the writers, Hobbes, is going to put together a team and come check out the sitchy-ation this weekend! If there's a body buried in that field or something, they'll find it. The 100-Hour Board has yet to let me down. Or, maybe they'll just get arrested for trespassing. That would be pretty cool too.

The 23rd Epistle of Benicus Grenarius to the Blogarians

2008-09-07T16:03:00.004-06:00

Peace be unto you. It's a lovely Sunday afternoon here in West Jordan. Yes, it's true. We've moved into a basement apartment just off of 13th West. Goodbye free room and board. Goodbye private theater room in Alyssa's parents' basement. Hello, self-respect. So good to finally see you again! So yeah, we're still pretty much in the middle of getting everything situated--we've got boxes from here to Canada (well...not...really...), but at least just about everything has been moved now.

We recently returned from a Labor Day trip to St. George so we could attend my 10-year class reunion. Lovely times were had by all. It was good to finally see my parents again since the first time since May, not to mention li'l Emmett (see the accompanying photo) and crazy old Pug, who kept running away from me, her bestest buddy for about six years back in the day. Dang her. And Alyssa had quite the time playing my parents' Wii for hours on end. She's gotten to the point where she can pretty much waste my trash in all of the games, including the one where you're racing on a cow. Not to mention all of the sports games. My reunion was all right--it was great talking to people I haven't seen in many a year and the food was a definite step up from the Sloppy Joes, salad from a bag, and Kool-Aid they provided at the five-year reunion--but I felt like it could have been so much more. For example, aren't fake trophies usually given out to people who've met certain criteria? You know, like to the person who traveled the shortest distance to get to the reunion? (That would have been Jen Shaw, in our case.) And there wasn't any kind of program, which was fairly disappointing. Also, I'll bet there were only somewhere between 30 and 40 people at the dinner, out of a graduating class of 366. (And only 2 of those people were jocks! Pretty weird when you consider that our graduating class was the biggest jockocracy in the history of public school.) But I was still glad to have attended, just the same.

Besides the reunion, Alyssa and I had an enjoyable time in St. George. We invited Paul and Danielle to dinner one night and Alyssa cooked up some ever-so-loverly Japanese food. Also, we went shopping one day and bought the awesomest Halloween decoration you ever did see--a holographic rendition of the Mona Lisa that turns creepy and skeletal-like depending on the angle you're facing. Yeah, we're weird. But it's a good kind of weird.

Go Green Go!

2008-08-20T15:14:00.002-06:00

Well, I guess i finally give. Ben keeps telling me that I need to post something. I am finally posting something. I guess it was because I thought Ben's vision of our racing was not quite reality but close. There was another couple that was interested but they were going to take the night to think it over when we already knew that was the apartment we wanted. We had been looking for a few days for an apartment but nothing seemed quite right. This apartment seemed to be bigger and it cost less than the others we had seen. I wouldn't go quite as far as to say it was ginormous though. Well, anyways, we are very happy about it. I have been enjoying my day off today and most of the day yesterday. Yesterday I had a picnic in the backyard with Becca and McKell. It was a lot of fun to see what Mckell packed for snacks. It was like Mary Poppins pulling stuff out of her carpet bag I tell you. Things just kept coming out. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Today I ran around town with my mom. We had a fun time browsing at IKEA. That is really one of my favorite stores. Well, I better go.

2008-08-16T09:17:00.003-06:00

Got ourselves a l'il old basement apartment last night. For serious! It's off of 13th Street at about 7400 South. And it really looks like a steal--it's ginormous, with washer and dryer hookups, dishwasher, and internet. In fact, we were literally in a race against another couple to deliver our deposit check first. But, due to my insane Rad Racer-esque driving, we made it there in the nick of time and beat out the other couple. Poor saps. But they committed a classic blunder by going in against Greens when there was a ginormous basement apartment on the line. Anyway, we can't move in until September 1st, but since we'll be in St. George until Wednesday of that week for my class reunion (10 years--can you believe what a geezer I am?), we probably won't start moving our stuff until the 4th.

Laura, Eric, and Trey-Lor also moved out this week, to the old lady-style house Alyssa and I were thinking about moving into a while back. We spent several evenings this past week helping them load and unload all their hud. So far they seem really happy there, so that's good. Come September, Alyssa's parents will FINALLY be empty-nesters. And I don't think Calvin likes that thought at all; in fact, last night he was trying to convince us to stay until we can afford a down payment on a house. I said thanks, but I'm a firm believer in not living with one's in-laws when one is 28 years of age. By the way, since the downstairs bedroom is now vacant, Alyssa and I have temporarily turned it into our private movie theater by hooking up the DVD player and projector. We watched Hidalgo and The Net this week, and it was sa-WEET. I must say. I'll miss this new development tremendously when we move.

Yesterday when I was bored at work (yes, it happens), I found the awesomest website EVER--http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager. I could mess with this puppy for hours (and yes, I did). It graphically shows naming trends from the 1880s to the present. Here's a fun one--type in CLINTON or HILLARY and watch where the graph takes a dive.

2008-08-09T09:46:00.003-06:00

Buenos ding-dong-diddily-dias. Not an outstandingly interesting last couple of weeks. Work's been pretty slow because I've been utterly dependent on one single developer for EVERYTHING I write, and this last week he was moved to an emergency project, which means I've spent a lot more time than usual sitting around on my keeshter. (Which, due to the nature of my work, is also what I do when I'm busy. Ironic, huh?) On the bright side, though, this has given me ample opportunity to observe deer in the wilderness area across the street, which is especially cool now that the developers have moved their telescope into mine and Mandy's office. A few days ago I had the awesome opportunity to see SIX of them at once, running in a single file line. It was like something from The Lion King, except not lame. Also, yesterday there were a bunch of teenagers in uniforms, probably delinquents, out there filling buckets from a big tub and then pouring them in random locations everywhere. It was like Holes, except without the insane female warden. Mandy and I spent a good part of the day spying on them through the telescope and trying to figure out what the heck they were trying to accomplish. (We never did.)

Thursday night we went to the ward swimming party, which was fun and featured a brief musical performance by a group of Ugandan kids who I guess are on some kind of world tour. Man, they were as dar as all get-out. I'm thinking me and Alyssa should adopt one someday. Oh, and I, Ben Green, jumped off the LOW DIVING BOARD. Read it and weep! Next goal--actually diving. (I've never learned to dive.)

Alyssa and I are now thinking that, if her parents don't get the condo house thing (no, we still haven't heard anything), there's a good possibility we'll move into U of U housing in the next few months and she'll spend the next two semesters finishing up her Family and Consumer Sciences degree. That way we'll be paying much less for rent than we would in a regular apartment and we'll probably be able to afford a down payment on a house by the time she's done. Go us!

2008-07-27T18:47:00.008-06:00

Pretty much all of Alyssa's immediate and extended family took off for Bear Lake on Monday, leaving us with some much needed peace and quiet for a few days. Good times were had in abundance. Monday night Alyssa and I watched Snow White, which I had never seen up to this point because I had always figured Snow White was a squeaky-voiced bimbo like Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors. Well, I was right. Plus, there were times when I was practically yelling at the characters to get on with the plot. But the dwarves were kind of fun. (Of course.)

Wednesday night we went to the Days of '47 CultureFest downtown. It was fun--we ate Armenian food (meat and raisins on flatbread--yummers) and watched most of the program, which was M.C.d by Thurl Bailey and his friend, Big Buddha. Thurl was all right but Big Buddha was hilarious. For example, at one point in the program they were throwing out foam "Mr. Carrot" toys to the audience, and Big Buddha said "Try and hit the missionaries! Maybe they'll feel the spirit and talk about us in church on Sunday!" You would have to have been there. The program had its ups and downs, but some of it was pretty cool. They had a group of Bolivian dancers who did fancy malarkey with bolas and machetes, as well as one of those Polynesian fire guys, who have yet to disappoint me. (This one was about 12 and won some statewide competition in Hawaii.) Thurl himself also sang, and he was pretty good. As we were taking Trax back to Murray, there was some kind of mechanical problem on our car which caused most of the lights to go out and also prevented us from traveling over 25 miles an hour, for some strange reason. Eventually they made everybody on our car move to one of the other two cars so they could remove it for repairs.

Friday we drove to Bear Lake with Shawn to join everyone who was already there. Fun was mostly had. Friday we fished in Logan Canyon and I of course didn't catch squatarooney (I have yet to catch anything from a non-lake body of water), along with pretty much everybody else except for Calvin, who I swear could catch fish in a mud puddle. Saturday morning we swam in a swimming pool with Shawn, Anika, Brayden, and McKell. In the afternoon and evening we hit the beach, where I instructed Alyssa in the fine art of frolicking in a lake, which she had done maybe ONCE before in her lifetime. Poor sheltered lass. Then Laura and Becca convinced us to row all the way across the lake in kayaks, which, I really must say, sucked. Remind me never to listen to them again. Neither of us made it all the way across (although Alyssa got close), and before we were halfway done we were both seasick, and my back and arms hurt like a banshee. Oh, did I mention we went out without life jackets too? We didn't even think about that until we were already quite a ways out. But that's just crazy old Ben and Alyssa Green for you. Oh well, this story will be water cooler GOLD at work tomorrow.

2008-07-19T07:52:00.004-06:00

It's been quite the week for Alyssa, who went all out Thursday night at Costco and bought her little ol' self a cell phone. No foolin'! Now we can actually COMMUNICATE, which is quite a plus in this hectic, workaday world in which we live. She's also been getting on Ebay roughly once an hour looking for Wiis. She says it's for exercise, but I think she really just wants to play Cooking Mama. And, finally, on Tuesday she decided to get revenge on me for going to the This Is the Place thing on Saturday, by going to her OWN place with farm animals. Why I oughta... ooooh...

Not as much going on with me. Work has been off-and-on busy and nothing extremely noteworthy has happened, although last night as I was leaving, my manager told me I was doing a good job. Score! Also, one of my coworkers told me my flan was the best he'd ever had and wanted the recipe. Score again! Oh yeah, Thursday night I went to Cafe Rio with Alyssa and her parents and received a free meal for having filled up my card. Triple score! (We of course got the most expensive item on the menu.) Like I told Alyssa, I've had that card since I got back off my mission. So yeah, it was looking a little ratty. I was disappointed, however, that the Cafe Rio guys did not yell "Free meal!" like they usually do when somebody gets a free meal. I'd been waiting for that for seven years. What bums, huh?

2008-07-12T21:06:00.007-06:00

Today I went with Laura, Becca, and all of their respective children (no Alyssa because she had to work 12 hours straight today) to the This Is the Place park for their annual "free day." Jolly good times were had by all--we rode in a horse-drawn wagon, ate ice cream sandwiches and pizza, visited the petting zoo (which was mostly just farm animals but it was fun, especially when some bozo opened both of the corral gates at once, a big no-no, and half of the sheep and goats escaped) and visited the Brigham Young monument. Brayden and McKell also got to ride horses and play carnival games, and they probably had about 20 prizes each by the time they were done. Me, I was satisfied with my one prize, a rubber ducky with a sombrero, which I gave to Alyssa as a romantic gift when she got off work. I figure he will make a boon companion for our rubber ducky for the last few years, who has a pirate hat. Quaarrrrk, matey! I also made a visit to the plaque that lists all of the handcart companies. Guess whose great-great grandpappy Edmund Lovell Ellsworth led the first company? That's right. Ben Green's. Don't you forget it.

Yesterday was my office picnic, for which I made flan. I was pretty apprehensive about it, since pretty much nothing went right as I was making it, but apparently it turned out good because there were only two pieces left at the end of the picnic. While we're on the subject of dessert, Last Sunday, for the luncheon that followed Bethany and Tyson's baby blessing, I made Jello cake (I guess I'm on a dessert kick lately) and that was popular as well, at least with Tyson's side of the family. Just about all of the Sakamotos, Alyssa included (dang that devastatingly hot woman), felt that it was too soggy. Can't put my finger on it, but this might have had something to do with my putting in twice as much Jello as the recipe called for. But, either way, MAN, Jello cake is good.

2008-07-05T09:50:00.012-06:00

Hidily-ho. Alyssa is at work and I am bored-a-rooney at the moment, hence my blogging. Let's see, stuff going on as of late... Yesterday Alyssa and I "bounced back" to Lagoon and had a loverly time. We even went on the Jet Star, which wasn't as bad as I remember but still hurt my arm like a banshee. No, the Butt Guy wasn't there this time, which is good because otherwise I might have "accidentally" kicked him in the region from which he gets his name. Just kidding! I think! We went on pretty much all the other Benworthy rides as well, including Rattlesnake Rapids twice (the above photo is me at the end of the ride), and also went to Lagoon A Beach (I know, ridiculous spelling, but it's probably so they don't get sued by the REAL Laguna Beach). That was interesting because the swimsuit Alyssa had selected for me was about two sizes too big, meaning I couldn't wear it or we would be having neverending reoccurrences of the Lake Powell Youth Trip Nightmare from back in 1995. (Shudder.) Fortunately a kindly park operator (they DO exist!) lent me a safety pin and disaster was averted.

Last Saturday me, Alyssa, Laura, and Trey went to the fireworks for Taylorsville Days (Dayzz?). They were pretty good, but Trey zoned out pretty fast. Looks like he's on the road to Short Attention Spanville, just like Uncle Ben of old. That day was also Alyssa's birthday. We didn't officially celebrate until the next day because she had to work, but she did go wild and crazy that night and make pizza with the new baking stone I got for her. It was scrum-licious. Sunday we had her birthday dinner, then several of us drove down to Carolyn's deceased mother-in-law's house, which Alyssa and I might end up renting if her parents don't get the condo-house they put in an offer on. (STILL haven't heard a dang thing back from those scoundrels.) It's as "old ladyish" as you can get and even has one of those old-time "wringery" washing machines in the basement (along with a bottle of lamp oil), not to mention a laundry chute. It's also pretty tiny. But the property it sits on is pretty good size, and the garden area is stinking ginormous. You could probably just about call it a "plantation." So I'm kind of torn there.

Sometime during the week we went to Costco for some reason, and guess who was working in the electronics department? Good old Andy Bibo! My "mission father." I didn't get to talk to him for very long, but he's planning to go to optometry school. I told him he'll be an expert since he wears glasses. Man, I am such a riot. Anyway, it was good seeing him again after 9 years.

Last night, in celebration of Independence Day, we watched (get ready!) West Side Story. I'm not quite sure why we decided on that. But it does have that song about America in it. Alyssa and I messed with sparklers afterwards, but they were kind of on the duddy side.

Well, that's about everything for now. Cheerio, chaps.

2008-06-21T08:37:00.004-06:00

Guten morgen. It's Saturday morning. Not much going on at the moment--Alyssa's at work and I'm waiting for Sheridan and Beth to get here so we can drive to Idaho Falls and visit Gramps. Things are good; we're both enjoying our work and life in general. No word back on the house that Julie put in an offer on; apparently the real estate agent was "a little crooked" and told another potential buyer what our offer was, and they put in a higher offer. I swear the real estate world is turning into Ebay.

Tuesday my office had a visit from Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson and, according to Forbes for 2007, the 17th most powerful woman in the world. Yeah, she's ahead of Oprah AND Hillary Clinton AND Queen Elizabeth the Whatevereth of England. Ay caramba! No, I didn't actually get to meet her, but she DID pass by my office a few times. Good thing management made us clean our desks before she arrived, because mine was a pigsty, and if she had seen it like that, I might actually be LIVING in a pigsty right now. No, kidding aside, I'm sure Marjorie is just loads of sweetness and fun. Ahem...

Yesterday we went to Lagoon because Overstock had some kind of company party thingermabobber and Shawn had a bunch of extra tickets. The trip for Alyssa and I didn't start out that great; she and Laura and Becca stood in line at the Jet Star for about an hour, and when they got to the front of the line they realized you can't have single riders. Yeah, it's blatant discrimination against groups with odd numbers. Anyway, Alyssa wouldn't have been able to ride, so Laura and Becca convinced me to go through the gate to join Alyssa so she could ride. (I hadn't planned to go at all because I hate the Jet Star.) Long story short, just as we were about to get on the roller coaster, the operator guy--who should take some satisfaction in knowing that he'll probably be a roller coaster operator for the rest of his life--kicked us out for "line-jumping," notwithstanding the fact that Alyssa had been in line for an hour and there were no signs saying you couldn't ride alone until the very front of the line, so none of us would have had any way of knowing anyway. I wasn't too put out, since, as I mentioned, I'm not a Jet Star fan, but I felt pretty bad that Alyssa didn't get to go. Things eventually got better though; we went on some crazy big roller coasters that could kick the Jet Star's butt any day of the week. (You say roller coasters don't have butts? The Jet Star does. That ride operator guy. Zing! I hope he reads this.) Alyssa and I also bought a hamburger hat as a souvenir of our trip and also of what we ate for lunch that day. (See the above photo for a really hot visual aid.) Also, by astonishing coincidence, I saw two different people from my work, both of whom are related or married to people who work for Overstock, and also Sunny Beck, whom I went to school with, but even though I was about five feet away from him and yelling his name and waving my arms and he was staring right in my direction, he didn't see me. It was weird.

Well, that be it for now. Toodles!

2008-06-13T15:13:00.004-06:00

Well, Alyssa and I have both been working for two weeks now and everything seems to be going swell. I'm writing program specifications for ESL software, and Alyssa...well...I'm still not exactly sure what she does. Something to do with deaf people and telephone conversations. She's working a 12-hour shift today, and tomorrow she works AGAIN. Sheesh-a-rama! But she seems to be having a good time, and apparently she hasn't had to handle any phone sex calls yet (I heard it through the grapevine that that happens there sometimes). As for me, I'm quite enjoying working on the sixth floor of a building that overlooks a protected wilderness area. There's all kind of crazy crap down there--Russian olive trees and hawks and marmots (although I can't see the marmots anymore since they moved me to a different office--sniff sniff) and yesterday there was even a freaking DEER strutting around like it owned the place. Maybe I'll see some mountain lions one of these days. Rowrrr!

When we're not working, Alyssa and I have been looking for houses. Her mom has a zany scheme to buy a moderately priced place and let us rent it for $500 a month. I'd be fine with just renting our own place, but $500 rent is pretty decent, and that would give us a chance to save up for a house and young 'uns and whatnot. Alyssa's mom put in an offer on a condo in a gated community not far from here, in West Jordan. Nice place. That would be pretty gnarly if everything worked out, but it's a foreclosure and apparently the banks "play by their own rules" (the weasels) so we're not holding our breath.

Besides house-hunting, Alyssa and I play music together a lot (although now we've taken to singing a bit too, since her mom has a virtual plethora of 60s and Broadway songbooks--how can you go wrong there?) and read together. Last night we finished the Narnia series, at long last. Yeah, (spoiler coming up here!) everyone dies, but it's a good kind of death. Last week was our anniversary, so on Saturday we went to the aquarium in Sandy. I think I expected it to be a lot bigger, but they had some fun animals, like moray eels and stingrays they let you mess with (although, with regards to the stingrays, I can officially say "Been there, done that"). Good times, my friend.

2008-05-30T13:28:00.003-06:00

Well, it's official. Alyssa and I both have jobs. Never would have thought it would happen so fast (especially for me, the guy who once got turned down by Arby's for saying in his interview that "I'm not very good at following instructions"--yeah, I seriously said that). Alyssa will be working at Sorenson, translating conversations for deaf people, or something (I've never understood very well). I just got hired by Pearson, the company that produces Penguin Books as well as just about every big-name textbook under the sun (Prentice-Hall, Scott Foresman, etcetera etcetera). I'll be writing specifications for their ESL software, so that should be just gobs of jolly good fun. We both start Monday. Go us!

Alyssa's family is having a honking big garage sale tomorrow. I don't think any of us will be sorry when it's over. Alyssa and I are planning to buy one of those new-fangled movie projectors that you can hook up to a DVD player. We'll be the toast of the town (or at least the toast of the ward youth program).

2008-05-19T18:13:00.008-06:00

Ay caramba, what a week. Packed stuff, finished wazoo-loads of homework, got a Master's Degree, moved to Utah, unloaded all of our worldly possessions into Alyssa's parents' shed (those last three happened on the SAME DAY), etcetera etcetera. Oh yeah, and Alyssa's sister Bethany had her baby. We saw her for the first time today when we went to Orem to help them clean their old apartment. Pretty dang presh kid. And last night, I went with Calvin to the stake general priesthood meeting, where the featured speaker was a guy who plays basketball in France and had gobs of crazy stories, including one where he and his brother were soundly beaten in a basketball shoot-out by Elder David B. Haight (who was probably about 90 at the time).

The graduation on Saturday went well. The speakers were mostly good, particularly one lady who participated in the Teachers in Space program back in the 80s. There was also a troop of bagpipers who marched in and played really stinking loud (but good!) about three feet from where I was standing. We were all afraid the ceremony was going to take all day, since they had a few thousand graduates to recognize, but they went through it surprisingly fast.

As for the job thing... I have an interview on Thursday with a company in Sandy called Pearson. Apparently they're a multi-billion-dollar publishing company (ever heard of Penguin Books?), so I am, understandably, just a wee bit on the nervous side. Alyssa is thinking about doing some temp jobs and maybe applying at CostCo, but she's not really sure yet. I guess we'll see.

2008-05-10T10:17:00.003-06:00

Okay, these last few months I've been the Granddaddy of All Rapscallions and haven't written a dang thing in my blog, but I SWEAR I'M GOING TO PLAY IT STRAIGHT NOW. So what's going on lately? Well, I graduate with my Master's in one week, for starters. And we're moving to Salt Lake on the same day (for my credit, I was totally against that idea). Where? Alyssa's parents' basement, until we both have jobs and find an apartment or house. Yeah, neither of us has jobs. Well, actually, Alyssa does...for two more days. As for me, I was hoping to get one in Logan with Juniper Systems, a company that creates outdoor computer equipment. Alyssa and I drove all the way down there and stayed with her cousin Doug and his wife Kassie and a good time was had by all, except that I got violently ill, I think from Cafe Rio (which is a shame because I love Cafe Rio). But old J.S. decided to take a different route and get an outside contractor (gnash my teeth!). I've applied for several jobs in the Salt Lake area but haven't heard back from very many. I think it's because I'm not a local candidate and they don't want to pay for me to relocate, the cheapskates. Hopefully everything gets better once I'm actually in Salt Lake.

There's probably other stuff I could talk about, but I'm supposed to be writing a talk for church tomorrow on Strengthening Home and Family. Plus I have to accompany TWO DIFFERENT MUSICAL NUMBERS. Can you say "Let's take full advantage of Ben Green before he moves by making him do the entire sacrament meeting program"?

And you know something else? Alyssa is hot. She pretends like she thinks she's not, but she is and she KNOWS IT.

2008-02-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Howdy-doody. Not much going on right now--Alyssa's working and I'm scouring the internet for technical writing jobs in Utah. Alyssa has been trying to get me to look in Seattle too. Not sure what her fascination with Seattle is, although whenever I ask her, she starts going off about fish. Other than that, we've both been sick, me with a cold and Alyssa with a cold and flu over the past few days as well as gastroenteritis the week before last (for which I had to take her to the emergency room--no kidding!).

Friday the 8th (same day as the emergency room visit), we flew to Salt Lake for Alyssa's grandma's 80th birthday party, which took place over the course of two days in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building as well as her clubhouse. Good times were had by all. At the Friday night party at the JSMB, Alyssa and I played our "Irish ditty," "Believe Me, If Those Endearing Young Charms," which we thought was kind of appropriate (except for the Irish aspect, of course). I also accompanied Bethany as she sang two different songs. At the clubhouse party, we played a wazoo-load of games and had an auction, in which Alyssa and I won a bedspread AND a new board game, which we promptly added to the "tower" as soon as we got home.

No pictures for this post, unfortunately--there was a photographer at the dinner but Alyssa wouldn't let us buy the picture he took of us because our clothes don't match. Dang girl! Anyway, TTFN.

2008-01-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

Okay. I've been bad. REAL bad. Two months go by, with all sorts of crazy blogworthy malarkey going on, and what do I have to show for it here? Squatarooney, that's what. I guess I've been pretty busy, what with my new internship I've been doing for the last three weeks (even though I'm not supposed to have officially started yet because the semester started two days ago--oops, did I type that out loud?). I'm now working for Big Tree Arts, a non-profit organization that promotes poetry events in the Boise community. It's fairly liberal in nature, but I'm trying to keep an open mind...which isn't as easy as I'd thought it would be. For instance, I just discovered yesterday that about half of the poems on their website are focused around the concept of EATING BABIES. Not literally, but still, I'm sure there are better ways of reducing overpopulation.

Christmas was jolly good fun. We spent Christmas Day with Alyssa's family in Utah, then we drove to Idaho Falls with my mom so Alyssa could be in charge of catering at Janessa's wedding reception. She kicked some catering butt, I tell you. And as for me, I tore it up on the dance floor. After we spent a few days there, we rode back to Salt Lake with my mom and spent New Year's with Alyssa's family as well. Not much else to say, except that I lost my keys. I think maybe they're buried in the snow in Alyssa's parents' back yard, so maybe they'll turn up come March or April. I also tried roller skating, for the first time since Brad Bundy's birthday party in sixth grade. Holy goodness gracious! I think my butt is STILL sore. But on the bright side, I made it all the way around the rink without grabbing on to anything! Go me!

2007-11-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a few weeks because things have been rather dull around here (except for when Alyssa's around, of course; that's when things REALLY get out of control), although today we did put up our Christmas malarkey. Go us! Yeah, we're still more than a month away, but guess what? Me no care! I mean, we figured that since we're leaving for Thanksgiving week on Monday, it would be nice to get it all taken care of now. Don't spread this around, but I've been listening to Christmas music too! Hee hee! What a gimshee maker! You'll be happy to know, however, that I waited until just this past week to enjoy my first nog of the season. I was tempted on every turn to have it sooner (since before Halloween, believe it or not), but I stood by my convictions and I prevailed.

I've decided my job is pretty much a joke. You know what earth-shattering project they've got me doing now? Decorating some cubicles. No kidding. So I've taken it upon myself to apply for a job with an ESL software company in Provo. Sound right up my proverbial alley, so I hope everything works out there. TTFN.

2007-11-03T10:40:00.001-06:00

Alyssa and I dressed as cave people again for Halloween night, but our wildly clever costumes kind of went to waste because we only had four groups of trick or treaters come to our door the entire evening. Lousy dangerous neighborhood, why I oughta... But it was all good; we watched Young Frankenstein and a good time was had by all two of us. We also carved jack-o-lanterns for our Family Home Evening two days previously, which you can see in the above photo. Mine is the big spooky one. Alyssa's was a pirate ship and looked really good, but it's kind of hard to see in the photo. She needed a bigger pumpkin, I think.

Last night we went with the Wadsworths to the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown and were there for two hours because it took them one and a half hours to get our food out. I guess 34 people had made a reservation for that evening but somebody misplaced it, so the staff had to serve all 34 people at once, which of course set them back significantly. But we got free spumoni ice cream AND the manager gave us two $20 guest coupons for next time. It kind of reminded me of last spring, when we went to a Basque restaurant with Daniel and Trista Gibson and Alyssa found a sticker in her soup so the server let all of us have free dessert. Sometimes I wish the restaurant staff would screw up EVERY time we went out to eat!

2007-10-28T21:47:00.001-06:00

Hidily ho, bloggareenos! Last night we attended the Halloween party of Stephen and Sara (possibly an "h" on the end there, not sure) Gibson, which was ever so loverly and featured me and Alyssa as a zookeeper and a bear, respectively; Stephen and Sara as a vampire nerd and a witch; Daniel and Trista Gibson as hippies; and Mike and Kristy Freeman as a devil and a roller-skating chick with a facial wound. There was food aplenty, which included a quesillo (the Venezuelan version of flan) made by yours truly, featuring a handcrafted scene involving me and Alyssa (played by the same army guy and Cabbage Patch doll that were on our wedding cake) making out on a Fruit Roll-Up blanket and unknowingly being attacked by irradiated tarantulas and gummy worms. It was pretty dang rad. We also played games such as doughnut bobbing and "Clue Charades," which is where you have to act out the murderer, weapon, and room. Everybody laughed pretty hard at me trying to act out "Catholic church." Okay, so I don't know how to make the sign of the cross! Why should I? I only interacted with Catholics every day for 22 months in Venezuela!

As for today, the most memorable moment was when I went to the Valentines' house to feed their cat and I discovered, right in front of the back door, a dead squirrel. I think the cat must have killed it and dragged it there as a token of our everlasting friendship (yeah right). I didn't know what to do with it, so I got Mike Freeman and we decided to bury it in the garden. With us still in our church clothes, it was almost like a funeral service. Poor little fella.

2007-10-13T11:05:00.000-06:00

Not much going on at the moment, but some good times were had yesterday. Alyssa had the day off, so we went out to eat at her favorite Philippino restaurant, Pista Sa Nayon. The food is quite delish and the Philippino owner is a lot of fun to talk to. Sometimes he'll even introduce you to the other diners, most of whom are usually Philippinos themselves, so that always gives Alyssa a chance to practice her Tagalog. (Her proficiency is Cebuano, but so far we haven't met any Cebuano speakers there.) If you're ever in Boise, that's a restaurant I would highly recommend.

After eating, we visited the Asian market just down the street, where Alyssa had to restrain herself from buying every other item she laid eyes on. It was like being transported to another country--they had chicken intestine, balut (chicken fetus), salted duck eggs, prawns, shrimp crackers, those tiny bananas that are so dang good, dragonfruit, jackfruit, purple fruits that looked like Kooshballs (I think they were called "rambutans" or something), salted fish paste, those pointy Chinese hats, even samurai swords! You can bet we'll be going back there, because I really love those little bananas. I may have to get me a pointy Chinese hat while I'm at it!

After the Asian market, we went to the D.I. to check out their Halloween costume assortment. Pretty lame, but we did end up buying a red-and-white-striped shirt for Alyssa's costume. We're thinking of going as Waldo and Girl Waldo ("Waldina"?) this year. I was kind of hoping for The Hamburglar and Carmen Sandiego, but maybe next year. The problem with being Waldo is that we've still never been able to find a red-and-white-striped shirt for me. If it doesn't work out, though, we can always be cave people again, like two Halloweens ago (see the above photo).

2007-10-09T07:40:00.000-06:00

Hidey-ho. It's been a while since I've written anything, but that's not to say nothing interesting has happened during that time. I got a new job a few weeks ago, writing anything and everything for the Department of Engineering at BSU. Kind of funny how I just can't seem to get a technical writing job in a field that actually interests me. First there was the Facilities Department at USU, where I wrote about janitorial work. Then, at Motive Power, I wrote training manuals for building locomotive engines. And now, here I am writing about components of semiconductors. I thought I had the Healthwise internship in the bag, but apparently I was "too nervous." I don't know, I never actually talked to the lady. She called on the cell phone while I was working at the Cat Pheromone Factory, but for some reason I never heard it ring, so she just left a message saying I was out of the running. Maybe that was the real reason I didn't get the job. Maybe it's just as well. I don't know if I want to work for a company whose number one perk is letting employees bring their dogs to work.

We got back from Salt Lake two days ago, where we attended Alyssa's mission reunion, visited Laura in the hospital (she had her baby), and watched General Conference, by which I really mean we kind of watched it but were all mostly concentrating on our General Conference Bingo cards. But some of the talks really hit home, especially the one about procrastination by that Donald guy (Hallstrom?) in the Priesthood Session. I think that talk was pretty much written for yours truly.

My mom came up here for my birthday a few weeks ago. It was ever so loverly. We went out to eat at Aladdin (the Egyptian restaurant near BSU) and shopped til we dropped. Normally I wouldn't be into shopping, except that most of this shopping was for my birthday, which makes it okay. I ended up getting a watch and a new digital camera. (I think the old one may have been done in by wearing it while I was riding that four-wheeler back in July.) I spent several hours last night trying to figure out how to transfer photos from the camera to the computer. I finally realized I can do it on my laptop, but not my desktop computer. Pretty weird, eh? But at least now I can upload all of the photos I took over the summer using the old camera, including the one at the top of this post. Did I ever mention the house finches that built a nest near our front door? They were really cool. After the baby finches were a few weeks old, they would climb onto the edge of the nest and just sit there and stare out for ten to fifteen minutes. Finally, off they would go on their first flight, to join their parents in the branches overhead. They knew exactly what to do the very first time. Guess that shows the value of preparation, huh?

2007-08-04T14:36:00.000-06:00

Ho hum. Alyssa's at work at the Nampa Sam's Club, and here I am, bored out of my mind. During the week I've been working a temp job where I package soothing cat pheromones and dog sunblock (no kidding!), but right now I'm just trying to think of something productive to do. And by productive, I mean pretty much anything besides snarfing down clam dip and staring uselessly at my laptop screen trying to think of what's going to happen next in the novel I'm writing, like I've been doing for the last four hours or so.

I have a job interview on Tuesday at Healthwise, which is pretty nerve-wracking. I mean, I've had a whole flippin' lot of interviews in Boise, but this will be the first one at a place I actually want to work for, so that makes things a lot more intense.

Anyway, not much else to say, but here's a wildly clever story joke I made up a few years ago. See what you think.

"Farmer Jones' barnyard was controlled by two factions that were constantly at odds with one another--the sheep ran the East Side and the goats the West Side. A sheep who accidentally overstepped the invisible boundary separating the two sides could expect to be tenderized by the goats' horns; likewise, a goat who made the mistake of crossing into the East Side would live to regret it.

Charlie the Lamb was the 'runt' of the young sheep in Farmer Jones' barnyard. His eight brothers were easily twice as big as Charlie, had begun to grow out their horns, and spent hours each day cavorting with the young ewes. When Charlie asked them if he could play too, they told him maybe in five years or so, when he had grown an inch or two, then laughed themselves silly. Charlie stomped away angrily, promising that he would make a name for himself someday, they'd see!

When Charlie's uncle, Number One Ram, asked him what was bothering him, Charlie responded, 'It's not fair! All my brothers are bigger than I am and have horns. They're practically rams already, and the ewes love them for it! Uncle, is there anything I can do to become big and strong like them?'

'I don't know of anything that will make you bigger,' responded Number One Ram, 'but I know of a task that will gain you the respect of your fellow sheep and make you a ram in their eyes. It is not a task for the faint of heart, Charlie, and may prove very dangerous!'

'Please tell me, Uncle!' Charlie begged.

'Very well. As you know, ever since this farm came into operation, there has been much contention between the goats and ourselves. They think we are wool-covered pansies, Charlie, and will never cease mocking us until one of us is able to put them in their place. Only then will they realize that we, the sheep, are the Masters of the Barnyard. Charlie, you are small, but you have moxie. Will you do this for us?'

'Though I may not return to the pasture alive,' Charlie said, 'I will do what I can.'

And so Charlie was sent on his way. When he reached the invisible boundary between the East Side and the West Side, he found himself staring across at two huge smelly goats with visible war scars criss-crossing their flanks. 'Well, what have we here?' one asked, chewing on a shirt he had snagged from Farmer Jones' clothesline.

'Looks like the sheep sent us a goodwill punching bag,' snorted the other. 'Come on, let's teach him a lesson.'

Just as the goats started to approach Charlie, he gave a blood-curdling 'Baaaaaa!', charged across the line, and butted the second goat with all his might, knocking him on his face in the dirt. The first goat spat out the shirt and knelt next to his pal, asking, 'Billy Bob! Are you okay?' Charlie, taking advantage of the distraction, rammed into him as well, knocking him a good ten feet.

Charlie returned triumphantly to Number One Ram. 'Well,' he said, 'am I a ram yet?'

'Not in the least,' Number One Ram responded. 'Though I am deeply proud of what you have done, the goats have not yet been put in their place. If anything, they mock us even more than before. Charlie, I want you to march straight back to the West Side and knock down more goats!'

So Charlie returned to the West Side, where he found several goats already there, awaiting his arrival. 'Look, fellas!' their leader sneered. 'It's that lamb who knocked down two of our boys. Let's make mutton outta him!'

'Come and get me, you garbage-eating nanny-lickers!' Charlie bleated. One by one each goat charged at him. Charlie dodged the horns and rammed each one of them in the flanks, sending him sprawling in the dirt. When all the other goats on the West Side saw how easily Charlie subdued his opponents--not to mention the murderous glint in his eye--they ran for their lives, wanting no part in the senseless carnage.

Charlie returned again to Number One Ram. 'Well, Uncle,' he said, 'I'd say that was putting those goats in their place, don't you?'

'Indeed it was, Charlie,' Number One Ram responded, 'and it will be quite a long while before they dare mock us again. However, word of your accomplishments has reached the goats of Farmer Brown's barnyard, next door. They refuse to believe that a runt lamb such as yourself could single-handedly thrash an entire penful of goats. Charlie, before I give you ram status, there remains yet another task to be accomplished. I want you to go to Farmer Brown's goats and teach them the same lesson you have taught the goats here!'

Charlie woefully bleated, 'How many goats must a lamb knock down before you call him a ram?'"

Ha ha ha. Is that some funny gimshee or what?

2007-07-29T16:55:00.000-06:00

Yo yo yo! Not too much going on around here. Mike and Kristy Freeman, a couple from our ward that we're friends with, moved into the empty apartment next to ours yesterday. They had to fight off at least two other families from the ward who wanted it. Sheesh, we are popular! Anyway, I spent at least half of Saturday helping them transport all of their worldly possessions from the old apartment (which is about half a mile down the street) to the new apartment. Meanwhile, Alyssa spent the day doing cooking demonstrations at Sam's Club in Nampa, like she does every Saturday now. What a sweet li'l gal.

As we were driving to church today, just as we pulled onto Roosevelt we saw a really interesting critter crossing the street. It was about the size of a small dog, with a badgerish head and a big furry tail. At first we thought it was a badger, but then I remembered that badgers have really short stubby tails. We looked it up after church in one of my animal books, and the closest thing we were able to find was the American marten. However, we're both pretty sure the animal we saw was bigger than the typical marten. Any input from any animal experts out there would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I'm sick of writing stuff now. Bye!

2007-07-18T21:36:00.000-06:00

What's up, my home-dawgs? This being the first ever post on the first ever GimsheeRama blog, I thought I'd start off by answering the question that's no doubt on everyone's mind right about now... what the heck is "gimshee"? Well, you may have heard the expression "deep gimshee," as in "You kids are gonna be in some deep gimshee if you throw rocks at my greenhouse!" So gimshee pretty much means "trouble," but around here it's...well...the kooky and fun kind of trouble, like putting Cheerios in somebody's sandwich when they're not looking (an Alyssa favorite!). In the Green household, it has also come to mean a mass of any substance either without a name or whose name can't be remembered, such as the stuff inside Sloppy Joes. Proper usage in this context would be "Oh great! I just got some of this green gimshee all over the floor!" There! Now you speak fluent Gimsheese! How about that?

Well, to explain pretty durn quicklike what's going on around here... Alyssa is working two jobs, one at HP cooking food and the other at Sam's Club... cooking food. She's a fine little chefstress, that one is. As for me, I'm an independent contractor for Eduwriters.com, meaning that roughly once a month some guy in Reno sends me a writing assignment and I usually end up turning it down because it's on a topic I know diddly squat about, like marketing. What am I supposed to do, go out and take an advanced marketing course so I can make $24? I thinkest not. So, unsurprisingly, I've only finished one assignment so far, and I've still never seen any money. Probably a scam.

In the meantime, I've been looking for something temporary for the rest of the summer, but it's kind of complicated because we only have one car and the bus system in Boise is a nightmare. I was actually offered a 6-month contract to work at HP but I turned it down. What? Turn down working in the same company as my wife? Well, yeah. To be completely honest, I have absolutely no desire to write software documentation. I know that's what about 90% of technical writers do, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing something I know I'll hate. In a few weeks I'm supposed to interview at Healthwise, a company here in Boise that writes consumer health information. Now that sounds like something that would be up my alley! English and biology. Perfect combination. Next week they're supposed to send me a writing exercise via email, so hopefully I'm ready.

So what am I doing in the meantime? Mostly working on my novel. It's about two cousins who wind up on a Philippine island populated with humans who are slowly degrading into animals. Right now I'm just writing out the outline, which is now up to 46 pages. And I'm not even halfway done! Earlier this year I made a goal to have draft 1 of the book done by the end of September. At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky just to have the outline done. Oh well, I suppose I'm making some progress, even if it is just the outline.

Well, the li'l wife and I are off to bed. Toodles!