Trivia Question

What Native American tribe does this story originate from?

Before the beginning, water was everywhere. But no people, animals, or earth
were visible.
There were birds, however, who held a council to decide if it
might be best to have all land or all water. "Let us have land, so we can have
more food," said some of the birds. Others said, "Let's have all water, because
we like it this way."
Subsequently, they appointed Eagle as their Chief who
was to decide one way or the other. Eagle decided upon land and asked, "Who will
go and search for land?"
Dove volunteered first and flew away. In four days
he completed his hunt and returned, reporting, "I could not find land anywhere."
Crawfish came swimming along and was asked by the council to help search for
land. He disappeared under the water for four days. When he arose to the surface
again, he held some dirt in his claws. He had found some land deep in the water.
Crawfish made a ball of the dirt and handed it to Chief Eagle, who then flew
away with it. Four days later he returned and said to the council, "Now there is
land, an island has been formed-- follow me!"
The whole bird colony flew
after Eagle to see the new land, though it was a very small island. Gradually,
the land began to grow larger and larger as the water became lower and lower.
More islands appeared and these grew together, creating larger islands into one
earth.

Crazy Suicide Story

1994's Most Bizarre Suicide.
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Science, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:"On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency).
As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this." "Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands. "The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Opus. "When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her -therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentallyloaded. "The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus. There was an exquisite twist. "Further investigation revealed that the son [Ronald Opus] had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window. "The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide."

Trivia Question 18

Name the female athelete who, while competing in a national amateur track meet for women, entered the meet solo (in a team event) and still took the gold, scoring thirty points total.

Trivia Question 17

Today's trivia question is a story. Your only hint is that this story comes from Russian History. Your job is to find the name of the Princess who did all of these mean and nasty things, and what tribe it was that killed her husband and caused her wrath.

The greatly revered and later canonized _______________, the grandmother of _______, took over the ________ throne upon her husband's demise. Her first action recorded in the chronicles was to avenge her husband's death. And she did it not once, but twice, and in a very creative fashion at that.

Now it must be said, in all fairness, that Princess_____ husband had it coming. After all, what could you expect, as a prince, if you tried to collect taxes twice in one year? Nevertheless, the ________________ should not have tied the Great Prince's legs to two saplings, and... You get the idea.

After the deed was done, the ________ chieftain sent a marriage proposal to Princess ______. In his mind, since he had killed her husband, he had a duty to take over the role, and since he had defeated the said prince, he thought _______ should be flattered by his proposal. But she wasn't (would you?). Yet she dissembled, and persuaded him to send his envoys. _____ pretended to show them great honor by having her men carry the ________ boats from the river ________ towards the Prince's residence... and straight into a huge pit where they were buried alive, lock, stock, and barrel, or should I say ship?

But that was not enough. ______ pretended to enter into peace negotiations with the ________ and urged them to send a dove from each house in their city. When ______ received the doves, she sent them back with a burning branch tied to each one. The doves returned home and set a great many fires which burned the _________ city to the ground. Only then was ______ satisfied.

_______ went on to rule for a long time, first by herself, then as regent during the long absences of her son, with great ability and wisdom. But let this be a lesson and a warning: Russian women are not frail and helpless damsels in distress!

Trivia Question 16

What is the proper name for the heel of your sock?

True Blue Baby

Trivia Question below this post.

I am eating a very huge and delicious pomegranate with blue fingernails. My feet are blue, underneath my arms is blue, and my face still has a slightly blue tint. Yes, tonight I participated in the marvel known as True Blue Football. I think its one of my favorite activities on campus, and tonight I heard a great comment "Its probably the closest that BYU gets to putting on activities like other colleges have all of the time."

I really agree with that comment for 2 reasons. First, because BYU is trying so hard to keep people from getting drunk and partying too hard, that some of their activities arent as fun. The second is because this is an activity without all of the attempts to impress the opposite sex that other activities have. The girls that I saw who were dressed up just looked stupid when they ended up getting blue dye all over themselves.

For some strange reason, I really loved running the grill. I cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for about an hour, and I think I could have done it all night. (Other than the smoke that is). I also made a new friend.

I quit my job today. Yes, I finally put in my two weeks notice, and I am not looking back. No more job for me for the rest of the semester. I have to pass anatomy, which is going to take everything I have. I am not meant to be a doctor.

The baby pageant is over, and I loved every second of it. I think that I would really enjoy being a member of BYUSA for next year.Maybe I will be lucky enough to be present when they pass the torch. As an Executive Director of course.

I have decided what I am going to go into, for sure. (I know you have heard this before, but I am not letting myself change after this.) A major in dietetics, with a minor in film (hopefully) and Women's Studies. I love Women's Studies. I could discuss it all day long. Sometime I will bring up some of the issues that interest me and see what everyone else thinks.

I hate this Letter of the Week, that was published in the Daily Universe. Get a life sweetheart, turn on the lights, pee, and leave the rest of us who need a nap in peace.

Site of the day (Yes its back!)-My children will all have one of these.

Trivia Question 15

What band recently did a disco-cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and is fronted by an ex go-go dancer?

Trivia Question 14

What movie is this quote from?

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

Trivia Question 13

How many flowers must a honey bee tap to make 1 lb of honey?

Trivia Contest Resumes

I am starting back up again with a bang. Question 12 is worth 3 points.

As for Trivia question 11, I am going to give the point to Kim because he kept trying so hard, and I dont know if I was clear enough on what I was looking for. I was looking for "Earth's oldest living inhabitant "Methuselah" at 4,767 years, has lived more than a millennium longer than any other tree." The Bristlecone Pine found in California.

Trivia Question 12-Salem Witch Trials
Approximately how many people were arrested? How many were actually tried? What year was this in? How many of those who were tried were sentenced to death? How did they die? (Specifically how did they die, for instance you could say that 12 were hung, 3 were decapitated, etc etc.)

Its That Time Again

Running on 2 hours of sleep, I am completely exhausted. Give me some time to recuperate and study and I will be here for you all yet again. Yes the trivia contest will resume. Unfortunately I need to memorize all of the muscles and bones of the body first. As well as a few other things. Wish me luck. The average score on these tests is below a 75% percent. But of course I am above average.

Community Laundry

I know that it is normal for all blogs in the bloggernacle to post their thoughts on conference the day after. I am going against the grain and posting on something totally different. Maybe I will get around to conference later.

Last year I lived in the female dorms so we had a female laundry room in the basement. If I remember correctly boys werent even supposed to be allowed into the laundry room. I dont know why any boy would be interested in going in there, unless he was a perverted underwear-stealing-kleptomaniac.

This year I live off-campus and have had to come to terms with what I call "Community Laundry". Its almost like a sporting event with activities like the "Drag and Haul" (Just how far can you drag a laundry basket with 6-weeks of clothes in it without looking as tired as you feel?) and my personal favorite "Handful and Hurry or the Armful and Shuffle" (In other words, should you grab your laundry by the handful and move back and forth from the dryer to the washer faster, or should you try to cut it down to one trip and risk dropping your undies?) I am more of an armful at a time person, although I would resort to the handful and hurry if I got the washer furthest from the dryer.

Its just weird for me to be carrying on a conversation with someone while moving my unmentionables around. Doing my laundry during the day is the only way I can thing of to solve this problem. Otherwise I must resort to stimulating discussions of whether Tide and Cheer work better, and why Fels Naptha is the best thing ever invented.

Then there is the question of whether you should move people's wet laundry out of the washer when they forget to change loads. What do you do with it if you do? Carry it over to the counter, leave it on top of the washer? Dump it in a dryer? Leave hate notes for them? Rewash it with something bright red and ruin all of their clothing? Of course this is the type of thing that you would only attempt if you are alone int he laundry room, you don't want to get some kind of reputation. I think it is everyones pet peeve when people leave their laundry in the washer for 6 hours, especially since most college kids wait to wash their clothes until they are on the last pair of underweare to their name. Washing them in the sink is not an option. Plus how would you dry them, with your blowdryer?

I know I am spoiled, many people have been doing their laundry at the laundromat for their entire lives. What do you do while you are waiting for your laundry at places like that? Is there food? Are there tables for you to sit at? I am guessing that they have a large supply of Reader's Digest. What place would be complete without them.

Check back later for more astute observations on daily college life.

Back on Track

Blog Entry for October 1st

I'm alive! I know that you probably didnt think so, but I am still going strong. In fact that is the reason I have been lax in my blogging, I have been going so strong I havent had time for anything other than those things that are absolute necessities. Sadly, blogging does not fall at the top of my list of things that have to be done each day, although I would like it to be. I hope to post every 2 or 3 days from now on, hopefully I can begin to settle into a normal schedule.

The trivia contest will now resume with a bang with 3 questions. Get all 3 right and win a gmail invite. The first to 10 pts will still get one as well. You are free to win as many gmail invites as you want. Give them out to your friends, do with them what you please. Its a beautiful thing.

Lately rumor has been spreading that Mt. St. Helens may blow its top again. My parents had their graduation postponed because of the eruption of 1980 and I have seen many pictures and heard many stories of the event. I am sad that I am not going to be there for it this time, but not too sad. You can't drive your car in the ash, which means that my sister will be stuck at home with my parents for long periods of time. Something that I am sure she would not want to happen. It also is such a huge pain to clean up and take care of, although pushing the ash off of the roof might be fun, Shaylene and I always enjoyed sneaking onto the roof of our house when we were younger.

I have been so busy because I got invovlved with BYUSA a few weeks ago. It started out when I became a chair for Fall Fest (I ran the X-Box station), and continued from there when they asked me to be the Baby Pageant director. I am just following in my mom's footsteps more and more every day (My mom has run and been involved with our local Junior Miss Pageant for many years). I was/am excited about it, but I dont think I could have ever predicted what a huge time commitment this activity would be. Katie, my supervisor, wants to meet with me every single day. I feel stressed about whether I should sleep, finish my homework, or work on the baby pageant. And on Wednesday I skipped all of my classes to finish the proposal. Definitely not good. I have been debating whether I would like to become a part of BYUSA (as opposed to just a volunteer) but there are so many pro's and con's to the issue that I have a hard time knowing what would be right.
Pro's
-Great leadership experience
-Good way to pump up a resume
-Meet fun people who share the same interests
-Learn how to develop business relationships
-I get to tell people what to do
-Have control over the activities that go on at BYU
-I get a name tag
-After you get a program approved you get to use the BYU credit card
-How cool is it to be given $1000 and hear "Okay do what you want with it" (well sort of, this is tithing money so they are very careful about how it is spent, but essentially I get to design whatever kind of a program that I want)

Con's
-Very time consuming
-Hard to find people to delegate work too, end up doing too much myself
-Very stressful
-If I dont like the people that I work with I will be spending 2 hours a day with them
-I have to block out M-F 3-5

Those are the basic things that I have a hard time/really like about it. I will have to keep mulling it over until the pageant happens. I know that I cant wait until the 1eth to decide because I will be so hopped up on excitement that it will seem like an easy choice. I hate choices.

I am excited for General Conference this weekend for a few reasons.
1. What other time do we have to sit around in our pajamas and watch TV and not feel guilty about it?
2. I love playing conference bingo and trying to get as many people as I can to play Don't Eat Pete
3. I think the prophet is the greatest man on the face of the earth and I love listening to him
4. Its always exciting to find out what conference rumors are true and which are not
5. You know that the a huge uproar is going to follow the actions of the protestors over the weekend. The Daily Universe will most definitely have something to say about it (whether or not that something will be good/worth saying is very subjective)

Happy Conferencing to all of you Saints, and a great weekend to the rest of you. You will hear from me soon.

By the way, I loved this little gem of a post.