Fourth of July and Random Geek Good News

I am a horrible, horrible blogger lately.  And it isn't like there isn't good stuff to blog about.  Tracy and I had an awesome Independence Day Weekend.  It started with a really fun dinner with Tracy's family on Thursday night,  Tricia came with Julia and we went out with Chris and Stacia and Talon.  I got to see Chris and Stacia's new house, and it's really cute.

Friday I was in my pajamas until 1:00, which is always a good day.  For dinner we went to our favorite local park and had a picnic, and the best part was that there was hardly anyone there.  It was quiet and shady and fairly darn perfect.

Then we lit off our own little stash of fireworks (I bought  aerials for the first time and they were all kinds of awesome) and did our usual tradition of watching A Capitol Fourth, which always reminds of us our favorite Fourth of July when we were in D.C.

There - YAY!! I blogged about something - there is hope.

On the geek front there were two really fun pieces of Arrow related news today -  Brandon Routh who played Superman in Superman Returns just got cast as a recurring character who is also a superhero (one I've never heard of, but still, very cool) and they're adding my favorite character from the show,  Felicity Smoak, to the new series of Green Arrow comic books.  Fun.

Christmas Spirit?

So I am totally in shock that Christmas is only a week away.  I am totally not ready for it.  I honestly don't know where December went.  I know part of it is that I've been sick a lot, but still, it's been tough to wrap my brain around.

Anyway, tonight Tracy and I finally got our Christmas tree up. (Our anonymously donated tree from last year :-)  And I also put up a cute decoration that my Mom and I made as a joint effort when I went to visit in October.  Hopefully if it looks like Christmas I can get my head around it.

Grateful

This has been one of those spots in my life where things have just been happier.   Even with having two weird flare ups of not feeling well, it's still been a amazing couple of weeks.   On the serious real-life side of things I have an internship with the Church Archives starting in January.  Still only part-time, but it's really interesting work that's going to pay decently.  That combined with teaching for the U and for SLCC actually makes me feel downright employable.  It's an extremely good feeling.

I've also watched three good movies in the last week.  First, Thor 2 last Saturday, then the epic Doctor Who special screening on Monday, and today Catching Fire.  All three of them were respectably clean and thoroughly entertaining.  It was a great run at the movies.  It also reminds me of how grateful I am to be married to the world's best movie buddy.  Tracy isn't nearly as in to Doctor Who as I am, yet he still went with me and we had a really fantastic time. 

There's also been a bunch of other things, both serious and silly that have gone on in the last few weeks.  I got to babysit my friend Pam's little boy this week for a couple of hours, and in spite of going through the terrible two's he was a total angel for me.  My long standing favorite show  (Castle) and my new favorite show (Arrow) had great episodes that were again respectably clean and also mushy.   I had a great chats on the phone with my Mom and my cousin Jennie.  Thanksgiving dinner turned out really yummy.  I got the "Jayne's Cunning Hat" card while playing the Firefly board game with Chris, Stacia and Tracy.  Tracy's Mom and Aunt came for a visit last weekend.   It's almost December and I went outside without a coat today. I got an amazingly sweet note from my friend Becky.  In fact, it's been so awesome, I feel like I'm forgetting things.

And can I just say again that I'm married to the most amazing-perfect-fit husband on the planet!

Like I said it's been a lovely few weeks.  I definitely have a lot to be grateful for. 

Labor Day Adventure

So I've been seriously craving some trees, water, and mountains and so today Tracy and I decided to check out the Alpine Loop which winds up behind Mt. Timpanogos and comes out in Provo Canyon.  The scenery was really incredible. (I mean look how cute this guy is!)

On our drive we went to an area called Cascade Springs where they had a hiking path and boardwalks around a series of springs and waterfalls.  It was a little crowded but lots of fun.  All in all a great day!

Memorial Day Fun

Yesterday Tracy and I went on a picnic with his brother Chris, Stacia and Talon. Chris suggested a park in Bountiful which ended up being up in the foothills.  It was a beautiful park that had been landscaped to leave patches of scrub oak and shrubbery and it had an amazing view across the valley.  There was hardly anyone there and we really had a great time.  It led Tracy and I to go check out a park near our own house that we'd never been too, and it's really cute and has great trees, so I think we will be going back sometime soon.

Merrily, Merrily Christmas World!

So I've been a bad blogger lately, but our lives have been insane.  I've been determined in spite of my health and house dramas to have a dissertation chapter turned in by the end of the year, and as the previous entry mentioned Tracy and I handmade 90% of our Christmas gifts.  It's been a wild, wild ride. 

Still, I just turned the chapter in.  My pumpkin pie for one of our family dinners just came out of the oven.  I still have a warm house, an awesome husband, and lots of family holiday goodness to look forward to this weekend.  There's bright sunshine out my window, no snow in the forecast (sorry skiers) and I'm feeling the Christmas glow.    I truly hope that everyone has an amazing Christmas, and that the spirit of a baby born in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago feels you with love and joy. 

Merry Christmas!

Handcrafted Christmas

What I love about making most of the Christmas gifts:
- You save on the budget, while still giving something nice
- It's easy to customize things to people's personalities
-The sense of accomplishment when something turns out cute

What I don't love about making most of the Christmas gifts:
-The sense of gloom that sets in when something gets screwed up
-Constantly wishing I had actual productive skills of some sort, like sewing or baking, or anything useful. 

Yeah, I'm annoyed today, but hopefully things will all work out.  Too bad I can't give people historical research gift certificates, huh?

Just a note to say....

    Happy Thanksgiving!!!    

Okay, so technically it's a day early, but I wanted to make sure I had a Thanksgiving post so I thought I would do it now while I'm thinking about it.  If all goes well tomorrow our relaxing Thanksgiving for two dinner menu will be:

-Grilled Rotisserie Turkey Breast with Apple Juice Glaze and Rosemary, Sage and Garlic Butter (cooked by Tracy!)

-Smashed Red Potatoes with Butter and Sour Cream

-Slightly Experimental Mostly from Scratch Stuffing

-French Bread (Store bought, I admit it) 

-Fresh Green Beans

-Homemade Pumpkin Pie (okay so Pillsbury made the crust but I still think it counts) with Real Whipped Cream 

 The nice thing about it being just the two of us, is that we're feeling more experimental.  You can make up a stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving when there are only two of you and if it fails no one is going to care.   We will miss our families, there's no doubt, but we're looking forward to our quiet Thanksgiving.

I hope everyone has an awesome day full of good food and good feelings.

Thanksgiving Prep

So my presentation turned out to be a low-key, good experience.  I received a lot of good feedback and an indication of some changes I can make when I go to rewrite the chapter.

I just got back from grocery and Thanksgiving shopping.  I was a little nervous about braving the stores the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but it was surprisingly pleasant.  I was also happy that I was able to afford a few splurges (fresh flowers, fresh herbs, pricier turkey breast, butter) and stock ups (three meals worth of pork chops, dirt cheap canned fruit and veggies) and still come in somewhat under budget.  A definite blessing to be thankful for!  I think part of the miracle comes from the fact that our produce basket this week contained not only the regular fruit I was hoping for, but three quarters of the extra stuff I knew I needed for Thanksgiving, like red potatoes and extra celery and onions.  Now if the cooking goes as well as the buying we will be in business.

Trick and Treat

So last night as I opened the door for trick or treaters, I opened the door to see a cute little boy standing there, my immediate thought was "I know this little boy."  It took about a second to realize that he looked exactly like our nephew Talon.  Since he and his parents recently moved to the north end of the valley, it was possible that it could have been him, so I looked around to see if I could see his parents.  Off to one side was another group of trick or treaters, including some parents but they didn't look familiar, so baffled (and starting to think our nephew had a doppleganger) I gave the very friendly little boy his candy, and dealt with the next group.

I looked around again, didn't see anything and finally shut the door.  I turned around to Tracy and said, "You should have seen that little boy, he looked just like Talon!"  I can't remember if it was more trick or treaters but something made me open the door again.  And this time I heard familiar laughter.  To my relief, I was not in fact crazy.  The little boy was Talon, and we had a great quick visit with Chris and Stacia.   That's my kind of Halloween prank. 

Happy Almost Independence Day!

So normally I take great joy in writing a blog entry for the 4th of July, but this year do to scheduling craziness, I probably won't get to it.  So, even though it's almost a week away, I thought I'd leave you with two of my favorite patriotic themed links.  The first is a Mormon Tabernacle "flash mob" at Colonial Williamsburg.  The singing is great, but in the beginning are people in full period getup reading the Declaration of Independence, which I also think is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBXXLzE0-rY&feature=player_embedded#MoTabTour

The second link is a man who blogged about his son's experience with the Star Spangled Banner exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  It was one of my favorite experiences in D.C. last summer and I recently talked with my Dad who saw it this spring and also loved it.

http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/2011/03/if-i-could-just-get-inside-that-glass-i-could-hear-the-song-in-there.html

Have a great Independence Day everyone!

Happy Easter...at Home!

I am ridiculously relieved to be home from my trip, and this morning after eleven hours of sleep, I'm feeling downright human again.  I also had a few hours of clarity yesterday to put the finishing touches on my talk for Sacrament Meeting today.  There's something about giving a talk on Easter that gives it extra significance and a little bit of extra pressure, so I'm both nervous and really looking forward to it. 

So Happy Easter everyone!  I hope this day finds you just a little wired on chocolate eggs or bunnies, and in the mood to ponder about the miraculous real reasons we celebrate this day.

And did I mention I'm GLAD to be home!

New Decorations

It used to be that I would decorate for the holidays with anything that was cute, regardless if it matched the rest of my house or not.  I still think there's a lot to be said for that method, but lately I've been more into matching the holiday decor to my home, since my living room is basically earth tones and red, this is usually pretty easy.  Red is an amazingly versatile color when it comes to holiday decorations: Halloween/Thanksgiving - Red, Orange and Yellow, Valentine's Day - Red and Pink, Fourth of July - Red, White and Blue, Christmas-Red and Green.

There is one holiday however, that throws a wrench in this handy scheme....Easter.  Everything for Easter is pastels, or even more frustratingly, neon bright.   I've been keeping an eye out for Easter decorations that would blend in to my living room and there are some, but, like the $25 rabbit at Cost Plus, none of them had been budget friendly.

So, since I always like having some sort of basic project to do while watching General Conference I decided to try my hand at painting some of those bright plastic eggs I had on hand from previous years.  I wasn't too sure about whether or not I liked the first one, but Tracy encouraged me to keep going, and I think in the end they turned out pretty good.  It also sparked my creativity enough that I made a cute Easter sign as well.  Now, these don't match perfectly, but the muted tones are much better, and I was just happy I could come up with something cheap.

Love, love, love

Happy Valentines Day!

Does it have an apostrophe or not?  I am chronically apostrophe challenged, so who knows.

Tracy and I actually celebrated on Saturday, we went out to dinner and had a great day.  I think that Valentines Day should be about all kinds of love.  Love for family, love for friends, love for humanity in general.  So I'm sending everyone a big mental hug today!

A New Year

Happy New Year everyone! 

New Years always makes everybody think about resolutions.  I do think the idea of having a time to reflect on what we want to accomplish is a great idea, on the other hand I think it can be a bit depressing to realize that at least half your resolutions are the ones you made last year.   I have, once again, pledged to give up soda and deep fried food, and to match my husband's resolution of 15 minutes a day on the treadmill (that one started today).  Now, I have already set these goals, accomplished them, and then slowly faded back into bad habits.   I also want to have a draft of my dissertation completed and my current novel finished, also both goals, that in some way, are hold over, or at least extensions of, last years goals.  I'd also like to at least crack the second level piano book that I've had for five years (to be fair, I'm nearly finished with book one after three years, ugh).  

I've always considered myself good at setting goals, and at least mildly successful at achieving them, so taking stock of the last year, in which I feel like a lot of wheel spinning went on, is a tough look at myself.  Granted I have excuses - surgery, lots of traveling for my job, having what amounted to a full time job for most of the year etc.  Still, its sobering to feel like I could have done much better.

Yeah, this is depressing blog post.   So to make this blog and myself more cheerful, I'm going to end with a few things I did accomplish.

-  Defending my dissertation proposal and acquiring at least 3000 pages of research in Washington, D.C.
-  Writing least 150 pages on the first two Capstone books. 
-  Reading the Book of Mormon again
-  Maintaining, for another year, my ridiculously happy marriage.  (Of course I can't really take the credit for this, I'm married to an awesome guy.)

That's not such a bad list, right?

Here's to 2011, may it be a great year for everyone.  We all could use it.

Merrying the Christmas

Tracy and I had a great time in Boise with our families.  It's hard to make such quick visits, because we love hanging out there, and we have so many people there that we love and enjoy spending time with.   I'm especially a sucker for the nieces and nephews. (Which include the fabulous Becca and the amazing Hunter, who are apparently dedicated readers of my blog, with a little help from their parents :-)  We missed a few of the kids this time, and that was tough, but we did leave gifts so hopefully that will earn us some uncle and aunt brownie points.

I'm always amazed at how much work my Mom and Mom-in-law put into making Christmas a terrific time for the kids and grand kids.  I know it's a labor of love, but it's still very impressive. 

Anyway, I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas!

Christmas Lights

I may not be the world's biggest fan of snow and ice, but they do make the Christmas lights look good.

Idaho

According to Leonard J. Arrington's History of Idaho, Idaho was the last of (what are now) the 50 U.S. States to be visited by European-Americans.   How did an Idaho girl like me make it to graduate school before learning such a cool factoid?

Speaking of Idaho, Tracy and I had an adventure trying to get home this last weekend.   The usual route we take was closed due to weather so we took the route that goes through Pocatello.  Things were going pretty well until the last hour and half when a storm set in and reduced us to driving 25 miles an hour in very limited visibility.  So we stayed overnight in Pocatello on Sunday night and finished our trip home on Monday.   It was a great weekend though, we had lots of fun with our families!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I was thinking this morning about things that I am thankful for.  The big, important things never change.  I'm thankful for my husband, my family, my friends, the basic necessities of life (especially a warm cozy house) and for the knowledge that I am my Heavenly Father's daughter and He loves me.

This morning, however, I tried to think about other blessings I needed to count - and became really thankful for books and for reading.  This will come as no surprise to anyone.  However, I realized that 90% of my life is tied up in my love of reading and writing.  

- My job pays me to read.  This week I was reading about Chief Pocatello, strangely enough. 

- My schoolwork is almost entirely reading and writing (especially now that I'm at the dissertation stage).  

- For fun I read novels, write novels, and journal in scrapbooks.  

- My communication with family and friends, thanks to e-mail and blogs, involves a great deal of reading and writing.

- To feed my spiritual needs I read the scriptures every day. 

In fact I can't think of a part of my life that isn't profoundly impacted by the ability to read and write.  Today I stopped to realize that I am very blessed to live in this day and age.  For most of the history of the world, ordinary people, especially women, didn't have the resources they needed to learn how to read and write even at a basic level. Not only that but, thanks to the miracle of libraries, I can read books for free.  (Well, for $4.50 in library fines :)  I can't imagine a world without words.   So my special bit of gratitude for today is to be thankful for books and the fact that I can read them.

Crafty

I think I love Fall.  As long as I don't think of it as winter's prologue, Fall and I get along spectacularly.  When I was shopping for Tracy's birthday presents I saw some beautiful fall wreaths, which, even at 50% off were over my budget.   Dollar store to the rescue!  Eight dollars, four glue gun burns, and some existing supplies later I had this little guy. 

My other new, and entirely adorable, fall decoration was a gift from my friend Becky C.  Having never done glass etching myself, I found it mystifyingly impressive that she could do this.