Fabulosity and such.

Here are various pieces of news in all shapes and sizes: 

• When I was little I had a cassette tape called Lamb Chop's Nutcracker Suite. It was utterly delightful, and I still hear some of the words Sherrie Lewis put to Tchaikovsky's songs whenever I listen to or see the ballet. I don't even remember whether I saw the ballet first or heard the tape first. All I remember is that my mom gave me the tape for Christmas one year with a Lamb Chop puppet, and that I listened to it a few hundred times. However, a couple of years ago I brought the tape down to Provo and I haven't been sure where it ended up. I was looking for it because I wanted to digitize it so that it wouldn't be obsolete when my current boom box died (which will probably happen soon - the CD player makes funny noises, and after all I've had it since I was 12). In any case, I haven't been able to find it, so I decided to look around for it. It's very out of print, and buying used copies runs anywhere from $60-360. So I turned to my favorite place - the Orem library. They came through again, and even had it on CD. Since I own the tape somewhere I didn't even feel guilty about ripping the CD to my computer, which gives me about the same result as digitizing the tape would have, but without all the hassle. Hurrah! I think every single person should hear this production, so if you're interested, by all means talk to me.li>I finally found some movies I want to see this holiday season. Seven Pounds starring Will Smith looks at least good enough to give a chance. Valkyrie looks like it could be decent despite the weirdness of Tom Cruise being a Nazi with a bunch of other British Nazis, mostly because the rest of the cast includes people like Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terrence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, Tom Hollander, and Eddie Izzard. It's such a random assortment of people I have liked in one place or another (even Tom Cruise, as much as he bugs me, has made the occasional good movie), and it's pretty weird that Bryan Singer is directing it, but I just think the weirdness could add up to something enjoyable. I'm crossing my fingers.
  I still very much want to see Doubt, largely because of its cast, and despite the not-so-stellar reviews I want to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I still want to see W. as well, so hopefully it sticks around until I can find someone else willing to see it. 
• I don't know if any of you remember this show, but I used to love the show NewsRadio. Dave Foley was amazing (sad that he's not doing much these days) and how can you go wrong with a show featuring Phil Hartman and Stephen Root? (I didn't know Stephen by his name either, by the way. He's in lots of stuff, including O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he played Jimmy James on the show.) In any case, I recently discovered the Hulu has some 60 clips of that show online for all to see! I'm pretty delighted about the whole thing. 
• Thanksgiving was great, and not only did we discover this amazing recipe for lemon cream pie (maybe I'll swipe it from my mom and post it here, because it is truly fabulous), but our Thanksgiving took many unexpected but welcome turns. It started with Clark and Linda deciding to come to ours before going to Linda's family's (it was going to just be me, the parentals, Aunt Helen and Grandma Winegar), and then proceeded to a whole party of people when Sister Kristina Hoffman and her companion stopped by. Sebastian (her brother, for those of you who don't know the Hoffmans - they were both in my ward at the Glenwood) had called me a little while before to ask for the sisters' phone number, because he knew that Kristina was serving in my home stake. They got permission to see each other while he was up at his roommate's house for Thanksgiving, but couldn't get in touch with each other. In any case, when Kristina stopped by, I called Sebastian back and told him to come over, so we ended up with a Glenwood/missionary reunion in our living room.  
• The final news is this: I think I need to go away to grad school. After several months of having bad luck with jobs and of having an abysmal dating life, I'm beginning to feel like the universe is trying to tell me something, and that something is that I can't stay in Provo and do my little online degree. There are lots of reasons for this, including the fact that I probably wouldn't ever work at BYU if I stayed here to go to school (if I end up doing academic libraries), there are other internship/assistantship/etc. possibilities when you actually go to a place that you don't get when you're trying to work through it online, I'd probably get more bang for my buck (which is going to be a lot of bucks, so I'd better be getting a lot of bangs) and I'd get the experience of living outside of Utah. I told my mom that it's like a mission but I can talk to her whenever I want and come home for Christmas. :) Anyway, I'm heading that direction at the very least, and looking into several good schools in cool places. I'm grateful to have friends in a few of them so that I can talk through some possibilities with people who know. All of that said, I'm scared to death, and the idea of taking off to go somewhere across the country where I don't know anyone is completely horrifying. I hate it. But I also think it could be really good for me in a lot of ways, and I think it's what I'm supposed to do. I'm sure there will be more updates as I get my lazy self in gear and start filling out applications. Sigh.