A Rant.

I am getting depressed about the state of our society.

I am a little bored right now during Hannah's nap--I don't feel like watching Bobby Flay, and the only two shows I wouldn't mind watching are playing episodes that 1) I've seen very recently and 2) I don't like that much. I've used up all my energy and health on Mobsters so I have to wait for that to refill. I've looked at PostSecret. And I can't think of many other things to do. I just read a message from Lindsey about how they're starting a book club, and was kind of wishing that I was in an online book club somewhere because that would be a nice thing to do right now. So I looked around a bit.

Craigslist has discussion forums, so I went there and looked for a book one. They don't have one. They have a film forum, a gaming forum, a music forum, a TV forum, and approximately 70 other forums--but no books.

I went to the Wylie View, which is a local site like Craigslist. They have a TV forum, but no books.

That is when I started this post. What is wrong with people! Stop watching so much TV and go read a book! Make your brain work a little bit! Learn some new words! Learn how the words you already know are supposed to go together! Geez!

I begin to suspect that I may have been born in the wrong era.

A Word About X-Ray Vision...

Whenever x-ray vision comes up, there is one thing that I always wonder about it; and since I have never heard anyone address it, I have decided to do so myself. I think that there must be levels of x-ray vision, and if you have it then you can control what level you use it on and when. (Surely you wouldn't want it on all the time--then you'd have to see everyone naked everywhere you went.) But then that brings up a point: Would it just be seeing people naked? Or would you be seeing through them completely, as though they were invisible? Or maybe you'd see their organs and stuff? Maybe all three. I think you'd need to be able to control it; otherwise it wouldn't be that useful.

I am feeling kind of sad right now and I'm not sure why. I have some ideas.

--I am listening to the BYU Forum that Grandmother is watching, and Steve Albrecht is talking about learning to listen in order to make the right decisions. As part of his talk he is sharing a lot of really sad stories about people who died or had terrible things happen to them because they didn't listen, and just read the lyrics to Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin.

--I had a dream last night that Mike and I had a baby. In the dream I called her Jaylee, and then I thought "wait a minute, Jaylee is Dafni's baby, not ours... what were we going to name ours?" And I couldn't remember. It wasn't actually sad in the dream, but now it's getting me a little down when I think about it.

Don't worry, I am about to start my period and that is probably responsible for my weird emotions today.

The All State Guy Has a Beard!

I just saw it in a commercial. A-may-zing. I think it looks pretty ridiculous, but then as a general practice I am not a fan of facial hair, so I might be biased. I tried to find a picture but couldn't; there are a couple of him with a goatee but that is not the same. You'll just have to keep an eye out for him yourselves.

Take a look, it's in a book...

I heard something very sad this morning.

Reading Rainbow is being taken off TV. I didn't even know it was still on, but the part that makes me sad is why they're taking it off--no one will pay the funding because the show doesn't have the right focus on reading. Apparently the Bush administration changed the focus toward shows that teach kids how to read (with spelling and phonics and that kind of thing), instead of doing what Reading Rainbow did, which was teaching kids why to read and how to love it. It's so backward.

I'm all for shows teaching kids how to read, but it is so much more important to get kids to enjoy doing it, and in fact it is a really bad idea to drill phonics and spelling into their heads without doing that. What you get then is a generation of kids who think of reading as a chore, and can't enjoy doing it--and then it's all downhill from there. Darn that Bush administration.

One More Thing...

Am I the only one who thinks that having a pointy, bristly stick in immediate proximity to your eye is dangerous enough without adding motorized vibration? I hope not. I mean, you're just asking for a sliced cornea.

And Then There Were Two

The other day Aleigha called me from work and asked if I would be willing to watch, in addition to Hannah, a three-month old baby girl named Lana one day a week. I said sure, and I was actually excited for several reasons--one, it's more money for something I'm already doing; two, I'll get to take care of a really little baby again; and three, it'll be really good for Hannah to have another baby around! That girl. She's approaching two years old, and let me tell you, I think she knows it. She's started throwing arbitrary temper tantrums--kicking, crying, throwing herself on the floor, the whole bit--it's awesome. :) But she doesn't get to be around other kids that much, so it'll be good for her.
Anyway, so today's the first day that I'm watching Lana, and so far it's been really nice! I don't know if it's because Lana's here, but Hannah's been really mellow today (which is a wonderful contrast to yesterday), and she even just sat on the couch and cuddled with me for an entire hour, which she never does for that long. Lana is pretty low-maintenance, which is actually a little weird--I'm so used to constantly entertaining Hannah that I feel like I need to be doing something with Lana all the time. I feed her, I change her diaper, sometimes she falls asleep... but what do I do the rest of the time? She doesn't play with toys or anything, so I just kind of talk to her and stuff.
Hey, I just realized why I'm at such a loss with her. When I worked with infants before, it was at a day care where I had approximately ten babies to share with one or two other teachers, and we definitely did not have that much time to spare for individual ones. (That is why I will never willingly put my child in day care.) So I've never had one this young on my own like this.
One funny note before I go help Lana out: she has trouble hanging on to her pacifier. She actually sucks on it so hard that she keeps spitting it out, and she's not big enough to pick it up herself yet, so I have to keep putting it back in for her. Good thing she's not too attached to it, or she'd be screaming every three seconds!

The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud

This is the first book in the Bartimaeus trilogy, which I've seen around a lot but had never picked up until I went to Arizona and my cousin Bryan demanded that I do so as immediately as possible. So, I did. Mike and I went to the Richardson library, where I found both Bartimaeus and the second book in the Percy Jackson series (called The Sea of Monsters, and since I've already done the first book in the series and won't be doing reviews on the rest of the books, I'll just tell you here that it was just as fun to read as the first and went even faster, and I'm looking forward to the third one when my hold comes in at one of the libraries). I started reading them as soon as we got home. Some summary: there are two main characters, Nathaniel (a human magician's apprentice) and Bartimaeus (a djinni or demon, although he gets mad if you call him that). Nathaniel summons Bartimaeus at the beginning of the book, a magical feat that is supposed to be much too complicated for a twelve-year-old apprentice to accomplish on his own, and sends him on a mission that ends up getting the two of them in a whole lot of trouble. The book is a lot of fun to read, and split between both Nathaniel's and Bartimaeus' perspectives--personally, I enjoyed the Bartimaeus sections a lot more, partially because he is sarcastic and irreverent and very amusing to read, and partially because I find Nathaniel irritating and prideful and I sometimes want to smack him. It's a very fun book to read though, and I'm excited to start the second one (after I finish the third book in the Last Apprentice series, which I'm about to start now that I just finished the second of the Percy Jackson series). By the way, the book is much more appealing if you find the version that I've posted a picture of, and not this one. This cover is perhaps why I had not picked it up prior to my conversation with Bryan. I feel like the sequels to this one, unlike in the Percy series, might have an effect on my overall perception of the trilogy, so I'll give the book a 7.5 and we'll see if/how that changes after I've read the others.

One minute I held the key/ Next the walls were closed on me...

Isn't it funny how one minute, everything is freakin' fantastic and your life just feels totally put together and awesome, and then ten minutes later everything can be a giant mess and you don't see a way out of it? (In the interest of balance, I will say that the reverse situation does also happen and it is pretty great when it does. Unfortunately that is not the case today.) Just exactly two hours ago, Mike and I were driving home together feeling great and talking about all the lovely things that have happened in the past couple days. Now Mike is at school and I'm sitting at my parents house feeling bummed out and irritated by some decidedly un-lovely things that have happened in the last hour. Lame. I'm probably going to go home and clean stuff now. Also lame, but hopefully it'll take my mind off being upset.

Ahhh!!

Pictures of my adorable niece Alexandria's first day of kindergarten! She is the cutest kid.

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

My wonderful aunt Debbie gave me this book while we were staying at her house in Arizona, and I read it on the car trip to Utah and then the plane trip to Denver, and I really enjoyed it! I wanted to read the second one as soon as I was finished, but every copy of every book in the whole series was checked out at my library and the Allen library, so I had to wait until I found it at the Richardson library. I was excited to find it there, and they also had the first book in the Bartimaeus trilogy, which my cousin Bryan recommended to me. I've started reading that and am really enjoying it--but that is beside the point. Here we are discussing the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series... which I happen to think is a very unimaginative title. However, the books themselves are very imaginative and a lot of fun to read, so don't let that deter you. I don't want to tell you too much, so I will basically tell you what you can find out on the back of the book: That there are Olympic gods and goddesses involved, and that Percy finds himself on a quest to retrieve something important that was stolen and blamed on him. It's a tad on the cheesy side (as in, a lot of the dialogue sounds like something a Power Ranger would say), but just remember it's for kids and try to look past it. If I could do it, I promise you can. :) I give it a 7.

The Last Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney

Revenge of the Witch and Curse of the Bane are the first two books in the Last Apprentice series, which we learned about through our Utah book club last year. Mike read them then and liked them, and I planned on reading them but didn't get around to it until we moved down here, and then, I had the first one on hold at two different libraries for approximately eight months before I got my hands on it! It was highly ridiculous. The story is, I had it on hold at the Wylie library but it was one of those overdue books that you start to get the feeling is never coming back... so finally I put it on hold at the Allen library, and after a few weeks it came in. It was a fun book--but surprisingly scary at some parts! Be warned. I actually considered not reading the second one, but then I saw it at the library and changed my mind, and I'm glad I did. The series is about a boy named Tom who becomes apprenticed to a Spook (who is responsible for getting rid of ghosts, boggarts, witches, and all the other nasty creatures of the dark), and the things he learns and experiences. They are fun books to read, and they go really quickly because there are super gigantic margins and illustrations at the beginning of every chapter. There are a few more in the series, and I'm pretty interested to see how they turn out. I will just tell you, though, for those of you who have read it--that Alice character drives me crazy! I do not like her. Anyway, so that's that. I will probably not review all the rest of the books in the series unless something dramatic happens in one of them that I just have to tell you about. For the series overall so far, I give it a 7.

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Well, we are home! We have been all over the place in the last week and seen a LOT of family, and we both had a lot of fun. If you want to see all the pictures you'll have to go to Facebook, because I loaded 180 of them there and I won't be trying to post all those to my blog. :) However, I am going to write about the trip, so I will post some photo documentation along with my report here.

Thursday morning we finished all our last-minute packing, returned some movies to the library, ran to Walmart, headed to my parents', realized we were missing some things, went back home, and had my parents pick us up there on the way out to the airport. We parked the suburban and took the airport shuttle to our terminal.

The flight to Denver was a little rough, for a couple reasons: First of all, even though we all bought our tickets together, not a one of us sat next to anyone else from the group. Mike sat across the aisle from me, both of us in the middle seats; my parents sat in the exact same seats three or four rows back from us; and Talia, Benjamin, and Joseph were spread out in three different areas somewhere behind my parents. So that was a little lame. Then, by the time we landed in Denver most of us were feeling really nauseated (to the point where a few of the others actually got out their barf bags, just in case). We'd all eaten Burger King just before we took off, and I hate to say that I'm pretty sure that's why we felt so awful. Recommendation: Be careful what you eat before you fly.

So we got to Denver and hung out there for an hour and a half before catching our connecting flight to Phoenix.

That flight was much better for everyone else. (For me, it was not so good--remember how I was worried about being congested on the flight? Thankfully it wasn't too bad landing in Denver, I just had some pressure in my head; but when the landing going into Phoenix was incredibly painful. Also, my ears popped really bad and I actually didn't fully regain my hearing until the next morning.) Alan and Lisa, who are wonderful, picked us up from the airport and took us back to their house, which is where Talia, Dafni, Brandon, Benjamin, and Joseph stayed for the weekend. We hung out there for a while before Mike, my parents and I headed over to Warner and Debbie's, which is where we were staying. We all stayed up for a while talking, and then we went to bed.

The next morning, exhausted though I was, I woke up at around 5:00 am, couldn't sleep for an hour, and decided to get up. I went outside, where the weather was beautiful, and read for about an hour. Then I was feeling like I might be able to go back to sleep, so I went back in to try it. I got about 45 minutes, but then I woke up and that was it. So that day we went to the Gifford Health Institute (GHI), which my uncles started, and they gave us the tour. We were there for a while, causing me to feel sorry for their patients because we are not a small (or particularly quiet) group.

That afternoon my dad's siblings and their spouses all got together at Warner and Debbie's for a lunch, during which time my siblings and I went to the mall in Scottsdale (which, if you didn't know, is where the hotel is in Twilight that Bella, Jasper, and Alice stay at).

That night we had the memorial service for my grandfather at Alan and Lisa's house, and at final count it lasted about eight hours. It went until 2:30 in the morning, and we left at around 3. Then, although we were so tired we literally could not stand up, my mom, Warner, Debbie and I stayed up talking in the kitchen until after 5:30 am. (If you've been paying attention you will notice that at this point I had been up for almost 25 hours.) It was absolute madness, but we had a good talk and I really enjoyed getting to know them better.

The next morning I woke up much earlier than you would think, considering how exhausted I was--at 10:30 I was up and couldn't fall back asleep. I went to Grandmother's house with my dad, and a couple of his siblings were also over there. Grandmother got a blessing because she had been having problems with her legs and was in a lot of pain that weekend, and afterward I sat in her room and talked to her for probably about half an hour. I am pretty sure that was the first time in my life I've ever gotten to do that. I also got to talk to my aunt Virginia and her husband Bob, both separately and together, and I know that was the first time I've done that. Then I went back to Warner and Debbie's to shower and get dressed, and that evening we had a pot luck dinner for the whole family at Alan and Lisa's house. We presented Grandmother with a gift that Angela made and that all the siblings pitched in for, and we had basically a Grandmother Appreciation night. Again, we were there late talking and visiting, and it was a lot of fun.

Sunday morning we went to Angela and Kenneth's house and visited, and they showed us the presentation video for the sculpture garden she's creating. It's going to be displayed at Thanksgiving Point, so when it's up you should all go see it because it is going to be amazing! Anyway then we went to see our old house and Talia's and my old elementary schools, and then we headed over to Keith and LaRee's. Levi, Priscilla, and Thomas were there, along with David and Rachel, Marilee and Wendell, and Grandmother. Trevor and Brenda came over after a while, and we all sat around the living room talking about how to run photo-enforced intersections without getting caught and telling stories of how all the couples met each other. At some point Keith came in and said everyone who can, grab your chair and carry it across the street, because we're going to eat. We all went to Keith Alan (Beefy) and Alice's house, where they and middle LaRee and Becca (and probably Brenda, although I don't know) had cooked a giant, amazing dinner, and we all sat around and ate and talked about books we were reading. My sisters and I ran across the street to Jeremy and Danean's house to see their brand new baby girl, who'd just been born on Friday morning. Then we had to say our goodbyes, go pick up our things from Warner and Debbie's, and head over to Alan and Lisa's, where we were spending the last night.

In the morning Dafni, Brandon, Mike and I woke up early and left around 5:00 for our road trip. It was a long trip and quite uncomfortable in their two-door car, but we had a lot of fun. Number one highlight: We drove past a McDonald's in Hurricane, Utah, and there was a man standing on the roof, and Dafni yelled "Don't do it!" out the window at him. It was very funny.

So eventually they dropped us off at the Shortens' house in Orem, and that night we had a yummy barbecue dinner and celebrated belated birthdays for Dan and Kennedy. (We got her The Goose Girl, which I'm really hoping she'll like. We decided we might as well be the aunt and uncle who always give books, since that's pretty much what happens anyway.) We finally got to meet Foxx, and Cillian totally didn't remember us when we got there. We went to Target with Anna, Kennedy, and Mia, we had dinner, and then we played Imaginiff afterward.

Tuesday morning we slept in late, took a long time getting ready, and then drove around to some of our favorite places. We went up Provo Canyon to Nunns Park and walked around, took some awesome pictures, went to Teriyaki Stix so I could get a hot-n-spicy chicken bowl (how I've missed those!), went to the mall food court so Mike could get spicy honey chicken from Hibachi San, and then went home to get Nathalie and Anna and go to the South Salt Lake Farmer's Market to see Rick and Bob's band play. Afterward we made a stop at Grandma and Grandpa Shorten's house in Holladay, which was nice. Mike really enjoyed getting to see his grandparents. We went to Dan and Candice's house afterward to visit for a few minutes, and then we went home.

The next morning we were leaving. Nathalie made yummy food, including my favorite breakfast casserole ever, and Candice brought the kids over. Dan stopped by for a bit when he got a break during work. We had a good time, and then Nathalie and Rick took us to the airport. The flights were pretty uneventful, except for some fun pictures that I took between Salt Lake and Denver, and then my parents picked us up in Dallas and we were home!

It was quite a trip.

Well, I Am Sick.

True story. Yesterday, three days before our trip, at 7:15 am I woke up with a sore throat after a night of being unable to sleep until 2:30. I was expecting it to go away as the day went on, but it didn't, and in the afternoon I developed a runny nose and random sneezing on top of it. I drank a ton of water all day, took vitamin C and drank some aloe vera juice, and had chicken soup for dinner. Then we made sure to go to bed really early. However, I think the effect of that was ruined a bit by the fact that I woke up every hour all night long.

So this morning I've been sneezing and coughing a lot. My nose is still runny, but I prefer that to it being stuffy, so I'm not complaining. However there is a lot of pressure in my head and I am praying for that part to go away, because if it doesn't then the flight on Thursday is going to be very painful. I flew home once with a cold, and I had excruciating pain in my head during the whole landing process because of the changes in air pressure. So. Fingers crossed everyone, if you please. I'd rather not go through that again.

Sad Day...

I couldn't sleep last night until 2:30 in the morning, and I woke up at 7:15 today to go to work, and I have a really sore throat now and I'm really worried that I'm going to get sick right before our trip. I've flown before when I was sick and it was the worst, so I hope I at least won't be getting congested. Landing when you're congested is incredibly painful, I don't know if you knew.

Anyway. So I'm drinking as much water as I physically can to try and backpedal the damage a bit, which means I have to pee about every half hour because my bladder has the capacity of a teaspoon.

The Kirkus. I Mean Circus.

I went to the circus last night for the first time ever. It was not what I expected, but I still had a lot of fun. Unfortunately there was kind of a sweet smell the whole time that made me a little sick to my stomach, so that was a small inconvenience. But it could've been worse.

So. In the first place, the circus was at the American Airlines Center, where the Mavericks play when they're at home. That made it a little weird, not quite as dramatic as I'd expected. My mom went once when they had it in an actual tent, and I wish we could've done that as well. Also, the clowns didn't do anything--there were some, but basically they were there as henchmen for the guy who, in the storyline of the circus, was competing with the ringmaster for control of the circus. (That's something else that I wasn't expecting--it was basically like a play, and when I say play I mean musical. Did everyone know they sing in the circus? Because they surely do, and the songs were not my favorite part.)

They had dogs doing crazy Frisbee-catching tricks, pretty white horsies with blue plumes on their heads, people riding on horses doing crazy tricks (standing on the horses' backs, flipping around and riding backwards, going under the body of the horse while it's running...), tigers, elephants, acrobats, contortionists, trapeze artists, clowns (even though they didn't do anything), girls dressed in weird outfits doing silly dances, and all kinds of madness. They had motorcycle riders in that big hamster wheel thing, which was amazing, and they had a motorcycle in the air on a little wire--those were probably my favorite parts.

Anyway, I shall post some pictures and then I think this is all I'm gonna say about it for now. Overall it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I've finally been to the circus now! The end.

Dinosaur Comics

About Time Already...

So. We're going to Arizona at the end of next week for my grandfather's memorial service. I have never met that grandfather because he and my grandmother split up a long time ago and he didn't have a good relationship with the family, so it's not too much of a sad thing. I'm actually excited for the trip because it's been four years since I went to Mesa last, and now I will get to take Mike with me for the first time.
Then, instead of flying back to Dallas with the rest of my family, Mike and I are going to be driving up to Utah with Dafni and Brandon to visit the Shortens for a couple days. The original plan was to road trip up to Utah with Talia in September for Dafni's baby shower, and then obviously we'd get to visit Mike's family; but then my grandfather died and the memorial trip got put together, and that cancelled out the September road trip, so we had to find a way to combine the trips or not be able to go at all. It turned out that it only cost $20 more per ticket to fly back from Salt Lake instead of Phoenix, so we jumped on that plan. So we have kind of a crazy week ahead of us: flying to Phoenix on Thursday, driving to Orem on Monday, flying back to Dallas on Wednesday, and back to work on Thursday.
Okay, I'm basically done. I just felt like it was a little bit ridiculous that I hadn't mentioned this on my blog yet, since stuff about it has been all over Facebook lately between conversations with my Mesa cousins and Mike's family in Utah.

And finally, here's something that I have always found really hilarious. I know some of you have seen this before but what the heck, it's still amazing. :) Unfortunately the one on my computer isn't a video, so it won't upload properly here, so I just had to find a video online--and they all have this other little video at the beginning that is not the one I mean to show you. That one's pretty funny too, but nowhere near as funny. So if you want to skip the first one, go to :55 in the video and watch from there.

Vair, vair amusing. The end!

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery--9/10

I just finished Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, and boy did I love it. It is just as much fun to read as the movie is to watch, which is sadly not always the case (*cough* Lord of the Rings *cough*). Anne Shirley is one of the most adorable, lovable characters I have ever read, and I wish I were more like her. I will be reading the sequel sometime soon!

Amazing!!

Saw this on Elise Crane's Facebook and had to post it here! It was accompanied by this text:

Looks like the Disney Vault has a purpose after all - to keep us from realizing how similar our favorite classic Disney movies truly are. According to this video, Disney only ever made one movie, and they've been tracing it ever since.

Quite interesting--but you should know that it doesn't influence the way I feel about Disney one bit. (And in the first place, that statement is more than a little hyperbole.) I think it's pretty funny that we never noticed it and even funnier that they did it in the first place! Check it out.

Technology Woes

Sigh--maybe Mike was right. This morning when I was leaving for work, he half woke up and said, "You should get a Mac." He seemed like he wasn't fully awake, so I kinda laughed and said "Yeah? How come?" And he said, "Well, you always have problems with your PCs. So we should get a Mac. And then we could have a Mac and a PC, and that would be cool." And I laughed again because I was thinking... when do I have problems with my PC?

Now I remember.

They're not serious problems, usually. Just annoying ones. And I don't know that they would be fixed with getting a Mac. But it was just amusing that his little sleepy revelation coincided with yet another strange problem my computer is having.

The date and time keep changing, and I can't figure out why. The time zone is set correctly, so that can't be it--and besides that, there is no time zone that, while it is actually 11:30 here, is at 7:00 am yesterday. So I get the impression that my computer is shutting down and, I don't know, starting over or something when I close it. Makes no sense to me, but also I don't know how to fix it, so for the time being I just keep resetting the time (and, today, the date). Who knows, maybe we will get a Mac the next time we're in the market. It might not be better, but I'm sure it can't be worse or they wouldn't have all those clever commercials and devoted buyers.

Riddle me this, Batman...

What is wrong with people who think Shout and Twist are good names for humans? I ask you. Kiki and Marina are pretty bad but at least they are not verbs.

The Luxe, by Anna Godberson

I was surprised to like this book. I'd been prejudiced against it based on the cover, associating it with Gossip Girl and other such frivolity that I tend to detest. However, it's possible that I should have known better, because the books in the Gemma Doyle trilogy have much worse covers and are some of my favorite adolescent books. That's as far as I'll compare The Luxe to Gemma, though, because I like Gemma much better--but as I said, The Luxe was a surprisingly fun read and I went to the library for the sequel as soon as I finished it. I give it a 7.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows--9.5/10

Last night I finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and while I loved the ending, I was so very sad for it to be over. Like I said in my last post, it is impossible not to love the characters in that book. They are amazing, kind-hearted people, and you read all about how they took care of each other during the war, and you find out how the literary society changed their lives. I mean, you have a man who used to be a drunk who now reads and quotes Seneca regularly (hence the title of the last post). And you have a bunch of people who used to be strangers and are now as close as a family, talking about literature in actually quite insightful and often poetic ways, and not afraid to be honest with each other. I love it, and I will buy it as soon as I can get my hands on a copy (I may even buy a hardcover simply because I know it'll last through more readings that way). 

Slow and steady gets you run over in the middle of the road

There was a car with a Maryland license plate across the street when I got to work today, and it reminded me of Lindsey and a certain red Corolla she used to own that was a kind of twin to mine. Ah, good times. Miss you Lin. :)

So. Stream of consciousness as I was driving to work today:

...hmm, there's something in the road. looks like a piece of cardboard. hmm, that cardboard is being blown by the wind. wait a second, that is awfully controlled movement for being blown by the wind. oh no it's an animal walking across the road! why is that animal walking across the road when there are cars coming toward it? it has a shell. it's a turtle! a giant turtle is walking across the road and oh no there's a car coming and I'm going to see it get squished. 

That moment was kind of a panicky one. I have never seen the process of making roadkill in action, you see, and as the turtle was quite a large one it probably would have been grosser than normal.

Crisis averted. Thankfully. 

Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.

First of all, I am loving The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and put it down only reluctantly. I'm about three-quarters of the way through it. I wish Juliet was my friend, and I wish I could go to Guernsey and join the Society! Two things to learn from this: Always trust Lindsey's book recommendations; and I can't think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy this book, so go read it already. 

Second, I am back at work this week! I missed Hannah all last week, and it was so great to see her little face this morning when she woke up! She is just the cutest kid I know and I'm so glad I get to help raise her.

Third, I keep hearing about how hot it is in Arizona and I am getting a little apprehensive about our trip there! According to my uncle Alan it was the hottest July on record and they were up at 120 degrees! That is absolute madness. We've had a really hot summer here, and there have been many days over 100--but nowhere near 120. That is bad news bears my friends. I hope I don't die.

Fourth, we need to discuss our trip with Mike's family and make sure that people are actually going to be able to spend time with us! It's unfortunate that we can only be there a couple days and in the middle of the week; this means that we'll have to schedule our time very well to make sure it's not a total waste.

Fifth, Mike is bringing me lunch and we are going to get his schedule worked out for school. I really wish I was taking some classes too... turns out I miss being in school a lot. I'm still trying to figure out if I can afford to take a class or two just for fun. The answer is yes if I get a grant, which I'm sure I will because Mike did, but the grant won't come until after tuition is due, so the question is really whether we could come up with the money until the grant comes in. We'll see how it goes.

Sixth, I find myself drifting away from people in more than just the we-live-far-away-from-each-other-and-don't-get-to-talk-much way... it is now more the our-personalities-and-interests-are-no-longer-as-similar-as-they-used-to-be kind of way. Sad day. 

Seventh, remember my cooking hobby? Thankfully this has not been one of the things that I quickly lose interest in. I still have seen a decline in my interest, but I attribute it to money. We have had so little of it lately that we've had a hard time just getting basic groceries, much less Gruyere, orecchiette, fontina, pork shoulder, farro, mascarpone, and all the wonderful things I need to make the hundreds of recipes I have saved, bookmarked, and written down. Plus my lack of a grill pan and a food processor has become an obstacle. One of these days, I suppose... In any case, I do still cook a lot and am still trying out recipes, even if they're not the exciting ones I want to try. I'm sure it will pick up again once we are back on our proverbial feet.

And speaking of the proverbial feet... well it is just taking us a really long time to find a second job for one of us, or a better first job for that matter. I won't say I can't believe how long it's taking, because Mike and I both have too much experience job hunting to say that. But I will say that it is frustrating. Nothing new there. :)

Interesting how the tone of this post changed from the beginning to the end, isn't it? Started out really excited and ended up a tiny bit melancholy. Hmm. 

Crazy Times

books I'm reading right now = my stack is dwindling. 

Talia's birthday present = most time consuming thing of my life.

Joseph's friends = truly crap faced people.

period cramps = go away!!

book club tomorrow = four out of nine members got to read it... yay!

upcoming visits to family = very exciting.