It's a good thing I love crowds so much!

So I'm in Dallas, right? I checked the weather forecast for while I was gonna be here, and the average temp is supposed to be in the 60's. So I brought my jacket (not my coat), which is pretty normal for Christmas in Texas. You just don't need anything heavier. Now, there was a cold front scheduled to come in Sunday and Monday, but I figured that's when I'd wear the jacket. (It's not as if I need it for 60-degree weather.)

The cold front came in a wee bit early, but no worries. (The temperature dropped 30 degrees Saturday afternoon. It was crazy.) So I wore the jacket to church on Sunday, as it was really quite cold. I also left the jacket at church on Sunday. [rolls eyes] I realized at the end of Relief Society that I no longer had my jacket with me, but by then there was another ward having sacrament meeting in the chapel, where I left it.

Today, Dad went back over to the church (he has a key) to look for it (Mom has a key to the library, where the lost and found is located). It's nowhere to be found. So now I need a new jacket, as it's below freezing. (I've actually wanted one for a while, but couldn't really justify it when I had a perfectly good one. Now, however, I don't!) So it looks like I'm going shopping. With all the crazy holiday shoppers! That'll be a good time. :(

Santa FAIL

My mom just went back to her room to do some wrapping. She came back out all confused. "Your father is weird," she says. "He wrapped everything. Labeled it from Mom and Dad. Santa isn't coming to our house this year." We all had a good laugh. See, in our house, Santa gifts don't get wrapped; they're just stacked under our stockings. But now, if they wanted to unwrap them, they'd need to identify which ones are which things, so they don't have to then re-wrap stuff. 

So, yes. Santa apparently looked down on the Johnson clan (which will be all assembled this Christmas) and said "no ways!"

I know everybody's favorite stories are the ones in which I am an idiot.

Story setup: Yesterday evening found me on campus, printing up programs for today's sacrament meeting. Well, Kyle was also on campus, in his lab, so I decided to pop over and visit. when we left, he offered to drive me back to my car, since he was parked in the grad parking garage right by his building and I was parked clear across the snowy, icy campus by the law building. (I had already almost died getting to his lab in the first place!) So he dropped me off at my car and we agreed to meet back at my house. 

Actual story: I get in my car, start it up, and assess my options. I could back out of my spot, but, due to the layout of the lot, that would require making a fairly tight turn on the previously mentioned ice and snow in order to get back in the direction I actually wanted to go. Clearly, the better plan of action is to just pull through the empty spot in front of me. I mean, really; why wouldn't I do that? Well, a bump, thud, scrape, and a crunch later, I learned why. I had, for unknown reasons, failed to notice the parking block (apparently, that's what they're called!) in front of me, and now I was stuck. I tried reversing back over it, but my car wasn't going for it. And I didn't dare try to go any further forward over it. So I called Kyle. "Hep! Hep! I'm an idiotic girl who trashed her car and needs help from a manly man." [rolls eyes] I hate confirming stereotypes. Oh well.

Kyle arrives back on the scene and just walks up to my car laughing. He was spared a good smacking by the fact that I was also laughing. After all, it was funny. In a very pathetic way. Like when I recently kneed myself in the face. If I couldn't laugh at myself...well, I'd do a lot more crying, that's for dang sure. He couldn't sort out how I managed to do this; he'd pictured snow piled up on one side of the block that I had used as a ramp to get over. There was, in fact, no such anything. Just the parking block, which I had somehow monster-trucked right over. 

I had not yet, at this point, gotten out of my car to assess the damage. Turns out that I only got one wheel over (the front right one). T'other had driven smoothly forward through the space between blocks. We develop a plan: the clearance on my car is high enough (barely) that I can maneuver a bit, and the space between blocks seems large enough that I should be able to get back through it. (Fortunately, the spots around me are empty, so I have plenty of space.) Just as this plan is being implemented, a big ol' SUV tries to pull into the space in front of me. "They can't DO that!" I yell, and Kyle waves them off. But the driver, nice man that he is, gets out to assist in the helping of the damsel in distress. (Clearly, this is two-knight distress.) So he joins in instruction-giving, which is of dubious helpfulness. I'm pretty sure that I kept turning the wrong way because when he said "go left," he meant something other than what I understood "go left" to actually mean. Anyway, we eventually got things sorted out, and my car was saved! 

...about half an hour later, my heart rate came back down to normal. :)

Just one more way in which my knees hurt me...

So I'm over at Kyle's, and a bunch of us are watching a movie, right? Kyle and I are on a couch, and I'm sorta curled up, with my feet on the couch next to me and my knees up. I don't even remember what, but something happened in the movie, and I jumped. A lot. In fact, I kneed myself in the face. My left knee barely missed my glasses--went straight to the cheekbone instead. Which, let me assure you, hurt. A lot. Of course, it was also hilarious, so I was laughing hysterically for a coupla minutes. I think most everyone else was just horrified. Personally, I'm just hoping it doesn't bruise...

I still don't know where the original ended up. Perhaps it actually ran away?

On Monday, I came in to work to discover that my nice chair had been stolen. I was very annoyed, but it was really just one in a number of things making Monday a nightmare. I casually asked the missionaries when I next went out there if they had stolen my chair (just kidding, because they already have nice chairs). Sis. Hendrix was absolutely furious that somebody had taken my chair. It's so rude! One of our super-nice elders stole me back a chair while I was fixing something for Sis. Hendrix (he wouldn't tell me where he got it from). And when I got here on Tuesday, there were signs posted: "DON'T STEAL CHAIRS!!!"

I love our missionaries. :D