Don't worry, BYU fans...

... the Church is still true.

The 86 I'll love forever

Let's say you're a student. Let's say you have a full-time job, a growing family, a demanding church calling, and yeah, homework.

So let's say further that one of your professors assigns a take-home midterm. You have one week to complete it. During this week, however, all heck breaks loose at work. As a result, your time at home is consumed with taking care of the family.

You also forgot that the mid-term was worth 25% of your grade. You look at the midterm about 3 hours before it is due. You have a mild cardiac--not associated with the steak dinner you ate the night before.

You do your best, and think, "Well, I'm not sure more time would have helped me with this thing, anyway." You shrug. You print off your work, and trudge to class. You turn in the midterm assuming you've just blown 25% of your grade.

As you walk across campus, you visit with a classmate who says she spent 6 hours on one problem. You shrug, after all, you really did the best you could under the circumstances.

In class, you hear classmates discussing the hours and hours they spent on the midterm. Some spent all weekend. Others were up for hours at night trying to figure it out.

Oh well, at least you have your bachelors degree to fall back on.

Then you get an email from the professor saying grades have been posted. You hesitate... how bad could it really be? You look anyway, part of you secretly hoping for a total disaster of a grade--a hideous blatantly poor grade. The other half of you hopes it's remotely passing.

You see an 86. You pause, and thank yourself for blowing off the midterm until 3 hours before it was due, which saved you undue stress and untold hours of work which might have netted a few more measely points.

You're beyond obsessing about grades...! Well, at least until next time.

Lost

I really don't watch much television. Between work, school, family, church and the ever elusive pursuit of happiness, there's just not much time. Plus, there's really nothing good on anyway.

So last Spring my wife and I happened to turn on the TV, and she convinced me to turn off the talking head news channels I usually like the watch. We flipped over to ABC, and happened to catch the first episode of LOST, in re-runs. Needless to say, it caught our attention.

The next week again we just happened to be flipping channels, and came across LOST again. "Oh yeah, we saw this last week." Well, after the second exposure, we decided we'd have to remember to watch it the following week.

Which we did. And continued to do so each week all summer. In fact, we got irritated when ABC skipped an episode (there were more episodes than weeks in the summer, apparently). So we did something we've never done heretofore: we bought the LOST Season 1 DVD collection. I mean, really. You can't skip 5-6 shows and still know what's going on. For example, it's important to know that the daughter of the guy that Jin beat to a pulp was watching a news report about an overweight US lottery winner--who happens to be on the island with Jin. Nifty, eh?

Anyway, we watched LOST every night for what seemed an eternity. Then the regular season started back up. I wasn't quite mumbling the numbers 4.. 8.. 15.. 16.. 23.. 42.. in my sleep, but I think I came close.

One day I was bored at work, so I googled some LOST sites to see what was out there. There are some pretty whack theories out there about what's going on in this show. One of my more favorite comments was in reference to the numbers I listed above (which for the non-LOST fans out there, show up in startling regularity):

I know the significance of the numbers. They're all prime
numbers. I bet there's something to do with that.

Eeeeeeyeah. Well, all prime numbers except for 4, 8, 15, 16 and 42. So, yeah, 23 is a prime number. I think that guy skipped math class and watched "Contact" one too many times. I mean, I like Jodi Foster and all, but let's get a grip.