I found a misspelling in the hymn book on Sunday. Hymn 173 and 174 are both entitled "While of These Emblems We Partake", and thus have the same words, yet different tunes. In 174, it uses the word "splendor" in the fourth verse, while in 173 it was printed as "spendor" (no "L"). I also noted that this only occurs in the newer 1998 Second Edition version of "Hymns", not the 1985 First Edition.

Well, for the end of the year I got a cold. Not too bad, though. Just some congestion and sneezing.

I recently listened to two copies of Ernest Hemmingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" - the first: a cassette reading from the library; the second: a CD reading available free at Waldenbooks. It's a pretty good story. What I was interested to find out is that the actual snow on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro is melting away at an alarming rate. Apparently, this story was also made into a movie with Gregory Peck.

I was trying to figure out what an advent calendar is for, when I stumbled across some websites that contained a lot of background information on some of the mythology, legends, and traditions we take part in sometimes unknowingly. I guess Advent is a Catholic religious holiday. I also learned that the Catholic church, itself, isn't quite sure whether or not "St. Nicolas" is real or not. Did you know that tinsel (garland) supposedly originally came from a spider's web strand, and that holly berries apparently started out white (or yellow), not red?

UPDATE: in my Sept 13th blog, I asked about Heinz and their 57 varieties. I've now found an article from the Straight Dope that asks and partially answers the same question, including providing some badly needed background research.

The 'Ensign' magazine recently changed their fonts - 1 thumb down, in my opinion. I like the old ones better. I also just finished listening to two vintage Sherlock Holmes audio plays: "The Blackmailer" and "Scandal in Bohemia". You know, I suspect the Holmes mysteries used to be all the rage, but they seem to be a little too simple and undeveloped to me. Maybe I've just seen too many mystery movies or something, but I expected the plots to be more developed and entangled. 2 thumbs down for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I've had a little bad luck with library audio tapes this past round. Two of the audio books I've checked out were hosed: "Unguarded Moment" by Louis L'Amour, and "Dragon" by Clive Cussler. L'Amour's tape was cut in half, and Cussler's was crinkled and folded upside down so all the audio was played backwards.

Two of the albums I recently obtained didn't live up to expectations. "Home" by The Dixie Chicks, and "Cry" by Faith Hill. Earlier albums by both were much better. I found two hilarious sites that ultra-condense books and movies down to their bare essense: Book-A-Minute and Movie-A-Minute.

The El Pollo Loco across the street from Parkland Mall sucks compared to the one on Prater in Sparks. Their Chicken Tostada Salads don't even compare. We recently watched Adam Sandler's "Mr. Deeds", a hilarious film with Winona Ryder. I also just started participating in Project Dolphin. (Check out my stats.)

Just saw a cool Animal Planet program on the 10 toughest survivors on the planet. The Water Bear is virtually indestructable. It can survive the vacuum of space, extreme temperature variations (-350*F to 300*F), being frozen solid, in a desert with no water, etc., and can come back to life over 100 years later after retreating into a death-like state. Simply remarkable. I also didn't know that Komodo Dragons are extremely stinky animals. Hmmm.

Christmas photos coming soon...

I recently played my best game ever in Monopoly (via Playsite) - click to see screenshot. I don't like the new Denny's logo - I like the old one better. We've recently had a couple of power outages because of snow and wind storms lately. On the latest one all but one circuit in our apartment went out - very strange. We have now driven over 33,333 miles on our car. We went shopping at the mall again today. We got a wonderful 'strawberry blast smoothie' from Gloria Jean's Coffee. Something at the mall has something to do with Green Dog, but I still haven't figured it out yet. We recently watched the James Bond movie 'Goldeneye' on TV. Had somehow missed it in the past. It was interesting to note that one of the women in 'Goldeneye' is Dr. Jean Grey in X-Men (Famke Janssen).

We hear all the time about computers having bugs, but you've never heard about this. If you like Star Wars, but have forgotten some of the older episodes, you've got to see the refresher films - each episode is around only 5 minutes long! Does anyone actually know where "The Lakes, Nevada" is really located?

UPDATE: Yeechang to the rescue! (He served his mission here in Nevada, so he was uniquely qualified to answer the question.)

Well, I just got back from a short business trip to Oakland, CA. I stayed at the Marriott on 11th and Broadway, just a block away from Oakland City Center, and across the street from Verbena and the 12th St BART station. The training, itself, was held at Preservation Park. I flew Southwest Airlines both ways, and noticed that the peanuts on the flights were provided by Kings Delicious Nuts.

I didn't get frisked at the airport on the way there because I learned my lesson the last time - remove my belt and shoes and send them through the X-ray machine along with my carry-on, jacket, and pocket contents. It was always the belt and shoes that beeped me before. I did, however, get accosted on the return trip because my boarding pass had the 'checkerboard' pattern on it.   =(

In the movie 'Shrek', Shrek at one point says the phrase "Hapaya, hapaya!" (according to the subtitles). I looked it up, but couldn't find much. Apparently, 'hepaya' (spelled slightly differently) means "restaurant" in the artificial language 'Sona'. 'Hapaya', however, is not translatable at Babelfish, nor recognized by Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com. Further documentation is available at these sites: DreamWorks SKG Fansite, and Shrek Script.

Apparently, the term 'hapaya' might be a Sri Lankan (Sinhala) word that has something to do with chewing betel. It might also be a Russian word (or name), but not likely. I'm still looking into this one.

I find it hilarious that the movie '10 Things I Hate About You' contains so much post-secondary vocabulary (seeing as how it's a high school movie). Uncommon terms found in the film but not in most peoples' vocabularies include: vapid, rampallian, turgid, tumescent, repartee, genre, defeatist, misogynist, and a few others.