a real update with pictures will come later

I know, I know. I promised I'd update more. I lied. So a quick update. We finally moved! We found a 2-bedroom apartment in Provo that would let us keep our cats, so we're really excited about that. Eric is still working and going to school full-time, and I am doing neither of those things. I am applying to grad school at BYU and sort of looking for a job though, so I promise I'm only wasting about 80% of my life right now.

Anyway, we brought over the rest of our stuff from the old apartment last night. A pretty good portion of this was bags full of papers and other things I'd had in my filing cabinet at home, so all of it is from my pre-college days. I am going through it currently and throwing away a lot of the stuff that I just don't need to keep. I came across almost every paper I've ever written in high school (most of which are not going to survive the purge), all kinds of drawings I did when I was a kid, birthday cards and other miscellaneous letters from relatives, all the awards I got for being a good student throughout school, and other random things that sparked my memory. I had fun going through everything.

I found a couple of poems that I wrote with my mom in high school for two different English classes that I had with Mrs. Critchley (probably my favorite high school teacher ever). I enlisted my mom's help on these projects because she's really clever and I think she has a way better grasp of how Chaucer and Shakespeare would have written than I ever will. My sophomore year, the project was to write a poem in the style of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and my senior year, we were to write a parody of Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquoy.

I'm glad I still I have these. Here they are.


Pilgrim: The Farrier

A farrier of Smithfield we did meet
Whose voice was so honey-tongued and sweet,
He was a young lad, maybe sixteen years,
And sounded like a woman to our ears.
He wore thick rough-spun clothes and woolen cape
Yet still appeared thin-shouldered in his shape.
His hair was blond, the color of ripe wheat
And, although thick, unusually neat.
As true mahogany his eyes were brown,
And as he walked he kept them both cast down.
For one who made his living shoeing mares,
I thought it strange his hands were clean and fair.
His nails were trim, not one of them was broke,
He often kept his hands hidden beneath his cloak.
His rosy cheek was smooth and soft as silk,
His complexion quite comparable to milk.
Quiet he was, averse to cpmany,
Unless among the women he could be.
He sat near them to eat his meat and drink,
He did not care for fellowship, I think.
Before the fire he joined the Wife of Bath,
Where they would sing duets, and talk and laugh.
We took delight in listening to their song.
Right glad I was that he would come along.


Soliloquoy

To wash, or not to wash - that is the question:
Whether it is better for the dishwasher to suffer
The stains and blotches of caked-on food
Or to take up soap against the dried-on mess
And by rinsing end them. To wash, to scour -
No more - and by scouring we say to end
The filth, and the thousand vile viscosities
That dishes are prone to. Sparkling dishes are the perfect finish
Devoutly to be wished. To wash, to scour -
To scour - perchance to clean; ay, there's the scrub,
For in that scouring wash what suds may come
When we have eliminated this mortal soil,
Must give us pause. There's the concept
That makes disaster of washing dishes by hand.
For who could stand the chapped and reddened hands,
The broken plates, the sharp forks stabbing,
The insolence of soap, and the little flecks of suds
That flick into the unguarded eyes,
When the vassal might be freed from all
With an automatic dishwasher? Who would cauldrons bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after washing,
The odious task of drying, from which chore
No one escapes, frustrates freedom,
And makes us rather do the chores we have
Than end up being punished beyond reason.
Thus lemony-fresh Joy makes dishwashers of us all.

happy new year

Hopefully I will be much better at updating this blog now that the holidays are officially over. Plenty happened over the last month or so. We went and saw Coldplay with Lindsay and Mark, I dyed my hair much darker, we had a Christmas party at our house (Chris-mas??), we spent a lot of time with family, we had a wonderful Christmas (and got to talk to Kelly in Italy...can't believe he's almost done!), and we went to Las Vegas for a couple of days for our anniversary. I just uploaded around 200 pictures from the camera onto the computer that we've taken over the last while, and there's no way I can put even half of them up here. Maybe I'll make a slideshow or something...

I don't know if this slideshow thing lets you copy pictures from it, so if anyone (family or anybody) wants any of these pictures for any reason (I know I'm always stealing pictures from people's blogs), just let me know.

a glimpse of winter...from a few weeks ago

The other Sunday (about 3 weeks ago) the weather was pleasantly chilly and the skies were cloudy and I was getting really excited about Christmas coming. So I made some delicious pumpkin soup (yummy and easy to make, but very very filling - I couldn't even finish a whole bowl!) that we had with cranberry scones. If anyone wants the recipe I used, let me know. Super yummy.


After eating lunch I got this craving to go play in the snow. Probably because it still hasn't snowed down here yet and to me, in Utah, snow=Christmas. At least until January 1. Eric and I decided to take a little drive up the canyon to Sundance, where we found artificial snow...


...but really not very much. Still enough for Eric to try to start a snowball fight though. It was basically packed ice and stung when it hit the back of my knee. I missed him three times. I'll have to work on my aim...

After finding no real snow at Sundance, we made our way up to Aspen Grove and had much better luck! We walked a little ways up the trail towards Stuart Falls, but we both were wearing shoes without very much tread on the bottoms and it was pretty treacherous going. We made it though, don't you fret.

and now for something a little more positive...

THE LOVE LIST

1. Actor-network theory (and I’m not even sociocultural emphasis!)
2. Airplanes and flying in them
3. American Association of Museums
4. Animals
5. Banana Republic
6. Barack Obama
7. Bedsocks
8. Being successful
9. Blatant creepiness
10. Britney Spears
11. Brown rice
12. Café Rio
13. Cartoons that involve talking animals (i.e. Madagascar, Ice Age, Over the Hedge, etc.)
14. Catch Phrase
15. Catch-22
16. CFL lightbulbs
17. Chapstick
18. Christmas
19. Citizens of Humanity jeans
20. Clean laundry
21. Cloudy days
22. CNN
23. Coats
24. Coldplay
25. Cooking
26. CSI
27. Cuddling
28. Daybreak in South Jordan
29. December 27
30. Digital cameras with memory cards that can store more than 40 pictures
31. Discovering something new
32. Dollar theater
33. Dressing up
34. Dyeing my hair
35. Edward Gorey
36. Eric
37. Expressing myself
38. Fall
39. Flowers
40. Google and all its components
41. Horseback riding
42. Hot chocolate
43. Ikea
44. imdb.com
45. Inside jokes
46. InStyle magazine
47. Interior design
48. iTunes and my iPod
49. Jewel tone clothing
50. Laughing
51. Learning
52. Leopard print
53. London
54. Long pants
55. LOST
56. Ludacris
57. Making connections
58. Making lists
59. Most Disney movies
60. Museums
61. My bed
62. My bike
63. My family
64. My friends
65. Mythology
66. NAGPRA (not any paperwork that goes along with it though…)
67. Naps
68. National Parks
69. Native American cultures
70. New ways of thinking about old ideas
71. Oak cabinets and furniture
72. Oregon
73. Pasta
74. people.com
75. Photo Albums
76. Photography
77. Pillows and blankets
78. Planning
79. Public transportation
80. Pumpkin pie
81. Rain
82. Raspberries
83. Sex and the City
84. Slot canyons
85. Snow Patrol
86. Swimming
87. Sydney and Paris
88. Temples
89. The beach
90. The blog “Get Rich Slowly”
91. The Devil Wears Prada
92. The gospel
93. Trashy reality TV
94. Traveling
95. Vacations
96. Warm comfy sweatpants
97. When I’m not the tallest person around
98. Wooden spoons, bowls, or cutting boards
99. Yoga
100. Zoos

lindsay did it, now i am too. haha.

THE HATE LIST

1. “In America, we have…”
2. 2-carat engagement rings
3. 6th floor girls
4. Aeropostale
5. Army National Guard commercial
6. Basketball
7. Big moles on people’s faces
8. Birth control
9. Blisters
10. Blizzards
11. Burglars
12. Burnt out lightbulbs
13. Caked-on makeup
14. Cancer
15. Car commercials
16. Cat hair everywhere
17. Caveman Geico commercials
18. Cheap extensions
19. Class
20. Clear bra straps
21. Cougareat
22. Crazy foreign roommates
23. Creepy Clearisil commercials
24. Crying
25. Deal or No Deal
26. Deforestation
27. Dirty cars
28. Ditzy girls
29. Driving in the snow
30. Eating one’s burrito in under a minute
31. Emo Polaroid pictures
32. Emotions on reality TV
33. EZ Cheese
34. Fake people
35. FaMOUSE people
36. Fishnet shirts
37. Fresh papaya
38. Girls with 8000 best friends
39. Glenn Beck
40. Guns
41. Hot Topic
42. Huge tattoos in Old English font
43. Hunting
44. Idaho
45. Ignorance
46. Interrupted naps
47. Kevin Federline
48. Kids in sacrament meeting
49. Korrie
50. Lace-trimmed clothing
51. Lurking
52. Man bands (like Daughtry, Lifehouse, Finger Eleven, Nickleback, etc.)
53. Matching outfits in engagement pictures
54. Melting ice caps
55. Mormon celebrities
56. Mormon movies
57. Mud
58. Nancy Grace
59. Onch
60. Paramore
61. Pastel colors
62. Pawn shops
63. People who stare into your car as you drive by
64. People who text while having a conversation
65. People who travel all the time
66. People who use Macs to be trendy
67. Provo all-stars
68. Puddles
69. Scene kids
70. Scion xB’s and Honda Elements
71. Scrunchies
72. Shirts with one sleeve
73. Shouting in commercials
74. Skinny jeans
75. Slugs
76. Smog/Pollution
77. Sound Warehouse commercials
78. Sparkling vampires
79. Spencer on the Hills
80. Stallions
81. Stray hairs everywhere
82. Striped polo shirts on girls
83. Stupid jokes
84. Subway
85. Tacky people
86. Temecula
87. Texas
88. The Home Shopping Network
89. The pictures on the walls
90. The Shark
91. The Wendy’s girl
92. Tila Tequila
93. Twilight superfans
94. Utah drivers
95. Utah Lake
96. Utah Valley
97. Waking up before 9 am
98. When holiday job employers actually call your references
99. Wind
100. World of Warcraft

veteran's day

I just finished reading this article on CNN about a medic who fought in WWII and was put in a POW camp for a few months before it was liberated. I think his story is amazing, not because of what he survived, but because of what he did while he was there. He felt it was his duty to record everything that happened to him, and even after the war, he wasn't allowed to say anything about it.

I am so grateful for those people who have served and do serve our country in any capacity. I obviously don't agree with war, but I am grateful that there are people who are willing to put others before themselves even if it means they will lose their own life.

"You only live once. Let's keep trucking. If we don't do that, who's going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?" he says. "The world is full of hate, and yet they don't know what they want.

Thanks to those veterans.

paris does more tricks.

We don't have children, so I am forced to write more often about my cats. Yes, it's true. Especially Paris, who actually does things. This is her latest trick (it might be sideways again):

a glimpse of oktoberfest and the ghoulie madness

mark, chris, and eric eating the fondue. i don't know why i don't have any pictures of lindsay and me there. weird. i also don't have any pictures from oktoberfest. i do have this video though...chris, don't kill me. at least it's not on facebook! (and yes, you'll have to watch it sideways. that's the way i took it on my camera.)

after oktoberfest we went searching for the ghoulie tree.

when we spotted the ghoulie tree, chris pulled over and turned off his lights. eric and mark made a mad dash for the tree and grabbed as many ghoulies as they could in a three-second period. mark even went back for one he dropped.

mark and eric were proud of the treasures they had just captured...

more wildness ensued.

lindsay and i found time to take a picture of ourselves where we only look mildly terrified of what was going on around us

fly, ghoulie, fly...

ghoulies love apple beer

eric depositing the ghoulie on a car at the end of the night.