My Sundays...

For those of you who are obsessed with me and are upset that my schedule does not have Sundays on it, allow me to tell you about my Sundays of late.

First off, I have made mention to, and will not cease to mope about the fact that church begins at 8:00am. I have to wake up no later than 7:00am to shower and get ready in time. Most Saturdays I am out late - hey, it's my weekend. Other Saturdays, like this last one, I am working until midnight. This makes a 7am wakeup time difficult. I usually hit snooze as an instinctive reaction without even opening my eyes, or (I think) losing my place in my current dream. When it hits 7:30 I realize that I now have no time left for proper preparation. I throw on the best smelling shirt/pants combo I can find and an aloha tie to match. Then I run out realizing I have not combed my hair yet. I go back. Then I lock my door only to realize that I left my comb in my hand, not my room. I take my keys back out unlock the door and put the comb back. As I am about to close the door, I realize that I set my keys down on my bed in the ordeal of returning the comb. Once I have my keys I decide to pat myself down to make sure I have it all. This is when I realize that I have a beard that Paul Bunyan would be proud of and Davey Crocket envious of.

I decide to leave it.

When I get to church it is about :30 seconds or less before the Bishop starts welcoming the ward. Since most of the ward has similar experiences with the morning routine, I am still one of the first there. I get asked to do something, usually bless or pass the sacrament as no one else is there. This last week I said the opening prayer.

Once our nap is over...er...the closing hymn is starting the congregation as a whole begins to make the checks. The girls put the earrings back in that they took out to rest their heads on the men next to them. The men rub the red mark on the forehead from the preceding bench. Some people put their shoes back on. Others put their lesson manuals away thinking that if they don't have their lesson plan ready enough by now, they never will.

When I get up, I start to notice the people around me. The girls are cold, and wear some sort of sweater or shawl that doesn’t match that well. They still look nice. The men, on the other hand, look bad. They look worse than I do. Most people say you can tell a single RM by the way they look. Here, you can tell an off campus from an on campus student. One distinguishing feature is nationality. Most of the polys are on campus, since they are on scholarship and have to live on campus. Same goes with most of the Asians. But that's not the real distinguisher. It's the way they dress and look.

I don't know what it is, but all of those off campus guys look like they woke up on the wrong side of the dumpster, found an unemployed Enron employee's old work clothes, throw it on with the cheapest D.I. tie available and some old slippahs. I thought I looked bad. They make me look like Pierce Bronson at a Hollywood premiere. I just want to keep my comb in my hand next time I leave with it by accident so I can hand it to these slobs and hope they get a clue.

In priesthood, I sat there in awe as I realized that I could actually pick out each and every off campus person accurately. There was one Asian that I was unsure of for a second, but then I saw that he had a lot of hair for an IWES (foreign scholarship) student and it wasn't combed at all. Must be off campus. Their hair is always too long, over the ears and into the eyes. They don't comb it, but they might throw gel in it without combing to make it look more messy. Now there's a good idea for fashion.

Another good indicator is their feet. They never wear socks. Ever. Even if they are wearing shoes, it's without socks. Maybe they should write home and ask for some. I understand that some people wear slippahs to church. The polys who wear lava lavas for example. But they are clean cut, wear nice dress lavas and sometimes a neat tapa cloth around. They look dressed up. It's different. These guys are not lazy, the bum ha'oles are.

Leaving socks and hair alone, we have the outfit in general. Almost never with white shirts. Often no tie at all. If they do, it has to be bigger than their girlfriends bikini. It usually is some shade of tacky brown with puke orange stripes. So long as it looks like you had to go grave robbing to find a tie that bad they are happy with it. To match the brown hue of the tie, they grow scruff. Don't call me a hypocrite, I know that I said I come with a shadow, but these guy looked like they haven't shaved since I saw them that way last Sunday. One guy seriously had a beard, and I know that he has no "beard card" which gives him permission to have it. He blessed the sacrament. How do these off campus guys get away with this? When I sit with these guys in Elder’s quorum, I feel less like I'm in church and more like I'm in Zoolander's "Derlelique" fashion show.

That rant aside, let me get on with my day. I am the Ward Clerk. I also am the resident computer aficionado, so I am there for all the work. We must count all of the tithes and offerings. Usually not a very huge deal. This week, we did it for the first time as I just got done setting up our computer and syncing up with Salt Lake. We had a pile of about 200 tithing envelops to do. We have 10 members in our ward according to the computer and our records. I had to enter each individual separately into the system before I could enter the amount they gave. I also had never used this software, I just had to figure it out as I went. I'm glad I have a proficiency for that kind of stuff.

After a few hours, we had it all in the system. Then we had to total it up. We had to spend the next hour and a half fixing our totals for those who paid in checks. We did that only to find that our cash count was off as well. I don't know how many times we went through the envelopes. Five hours from the time we started, it was done. I missed breakfast and lunch. I got home at 4 and slept.

I always take a nap. This is prime time for people to call me. Jake, for example, has a radar in his head. It rings, "Jared is sleeping! Call him NOW!" He does.

I then usually go to dinner if I didn't eat too much at lunch. I come home and wait for Fox's Sunday night lineup. They have not started the season yet, so they play an old movie or something I don't care about. I have to wait till after Halloween for the Simpson’s Season Premiere which is a Halloween episode. This year Halloween is on a Sunday and The Simpsons is waiting till the next week to show the episode. Someone at Fox needs to be fired.

Then I kick around on the computer until I am tired enough to go to bed. If my hair is starting to look like an off campus kids, I cut it myself on Sunday as well, usually once Arrested Development is over.

Before I go to bed I regret knowing that I didn't do my homework and dread waking up for work/school the next day.

I guess you can understand why I chose not to put all this on my schedule.