Bit of Ivory

This is going to be a nice big post, because my blogger looks empty. Not that anyone knows it exists, yet. But I still want it to look like it’s been around for longer than two days.

I think I might have whiplash. A little before Christmas, my sisters and I were getting on the freeway when someone rear-ended us. There was no damage to either car, so we just went on our merry ways. But since then I’ve had some weird stuff going on with my upper back and neck–radiating pain, twinges of nerves, and such stuff. It’s not a happy feeling. Guess it’s time to visit the Chiropractor. Yuck.

So I was walking through the BYU Bookstore today, and I noticed a cool phenomenon. For those of you who have never been there, the BYU Bookstore isn’t like most college bookstores. For one thing, it’s huge–three levels. It carries everything from textbooks and BYU T-shirts and such to regular books to candles to stuffed animals to music to shorts to formal dresses and everything in between. Also, many students walk through it on their way to and from class, so there’s a tile path running down the middle of it. At one point it passes by the stairway to the lower level, and the space makes it pretty acoustically live. I have a one-and-a-half hour break on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, so I was killing time by browsing. I’d just finished looking up the origin of “How come?” in the Oxford American Dictionary (I’ve been wondering where and when the phrase “how come” came to mean “Why?” It started out as being more of a “in what manner did this occur” phrase, but now it usually just means “why?”, as in “How come you’ve got a sword?” Anyway, back on track), and the reference section is right next to the stairwell, and it was a class break. So I started listening. And the sound of hundreds of footsteps on the tile floor echoing and bouncing in the stairwell was really cool–like fairy footsteps. It was a fun wonder-moment, what Emily Byrd Starr would have called The Flash, from L.M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon series. Anyway, I thought it was cool.

I really want spring to come, because then the crows that sit in the trees outside my window will go away. There are about four of them, and one sits on the trees outside my window, and one sits in the trees across the street, and one sits on top of the high school that’s kitty-corner to my apartment building, and another sits on top of the McDonald’s that’s across the other street, and they all take turns cawing at each other. Starting at about 6:00 in the morning. And I wonder why I can’t get any sleep. Of course, once we get rid of the crows, we’ll get the robins and the sparrows and the seagulls. If I wasn’t a good person who loves animals, I’d borrow my brother’s BB gun. But I am, so fortunately for all the little birds and unfortunately for me, they’ll go right on making noise.

Time for bed.