Resolved

In the last day or two I've had a couple epiphanies.... moments of enlightenment.... or maybe more aptly: moments when suddenly things settle when the pot has been stirred for a while.

#1 - I'm swimming the moat again. Have you read the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert? Or seen the movie? There is a part where she goes to India to study meditation/yoga/whatever. She meets this man that torments her for a while and then kind of becomes her mentor to help her learn to meditate. He says to her, "If you want to get to the castle, you've got to swim the moat." I love that phrase. You've gotta pay the price, pay your dues, however you wanna say it. I've been putting off the inevitable all in the name of healing, but I needed the time to heal. And now that I'm healed, I'm diving back into the moat .... with a new vigor .... and with another phrase in my back-pocket: "The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results." So, I'm doing something different and that is what makes me say I've got new vigor ... enough vigor to join match.com that is. Can you believe it? For years I've stubbornly refused any form of online dating, and then on Easter this year a woman in my ward gave a talk about Easter, naturally, and closed her talk, started to walk away from the pulpit, but then returned and said this, "And by the way, match.com really does work." For some reason that struck a different chord in me. So I've been thinking about it ever since and made the mistake of mentioning it to my coworker, Greg. He's been bugging me about it ever since until I decided to join two weeks ago. Whoa. It's been .... okay. I'm corresponding with a couple guys .... that seem ..... nice. So yeah. And the moat part of all of this? I'm finally facing the inevitable ups and downs of dating again (the moat) so that I can eventually get to the castle that's gotta be closer than ever than in the past.

#2 - My statistics professor is more reasonable and generous than I gave him credit for. Four and a half weeks ago I took my statistics midterm immediately after arriving home from my trip to Europe. As soon as I looked at it, I knew I was going to bomb it. There were new terms on the exam that I had no idea what they were. He told us to study the key terms in the book and that is what I did, but these terms were not in the book. I found out the next day that the vast majority of the class was outraged by his exam and for telling us to study one thing and then introducing another entirely. That night, we tried to reason with him, but he would not listen at all, would not even consider it. We were livid, but we could tell we were fighting a losing battle, so we gave up. I think we subconsciously and independently, but therefore collectively, didn't take any action since we decided to see how he graded the exams. Four weeks later, earlier this week, he finally returned our graded exams to us. A LOT of us were flabbergasted at how generous he was. He gave us points we didn't deserve, and he has improved his teaching to clarify his expectations better than he did before the midterm. Maybe he really did listen to us. So yes. I'm entirely shocked, but very pleased that he has heard our pleas.

One last, unrelated note: Martha Stewart's Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies are so good! I just made them tonight.