another thing to look forward to

In 84 days my schedule will no longer look like this:

but rather something more along the lines of this (hopefully):

40 glorious hours of work in one week. Beautiful.

Now, now, don't get me wrong. I am actually loving my classes, and my teachers, and all the fun people I get to study with. And I imagine that once I leave, I will miss it.

All I am saying is that I am excited for the future.

p.s. I heart google calendar.

what an interesting observation

My sister-in-law, Brittany, is quite the observant lady. In a recent comment, she made the following observation. According to her baby countdown widget on her blog, baby #3 is due the day before my graduation date, according to my countdown widget that is. If I remember correctly, Brittany's baby 1 and 2 came a week or two early, so really what this means is that I will have a beautiful new 1.5 week old baby nephew to look at, in addition to my other new-to-me nephew who will be 8 months old at that time.

well, at least lets hope baby rex is 1.5 weeks old on the day that I parade across that graduation stage. After all, my mom did agree to be in two places at the same time.

86 days, and the race begins. One thing is for certain, I will be pulling for you, Brittany.

p.s. I searched high and low for a customizable countdown widget. If you need to make your own countdown widget with a specific date and time in mind, look no further than whatever it says over there, springwidgets.com or something like that. I was telling my cousin sally, who recommended we start a countdown, that I have been looking for a widget for a while but all I can find are predetermined date countdowns for the movie twilight, christmas, new years, etc., and of course the baby countdowns. I just couldn't handle the floating fetus next to the text "countdown to graduation."

Florida Gators

One of Judy's students made this adorable poster for Trent. The student, Ryan, is the nephew of Trent's high school basketball coach. I thought this piece of art was too good to not put on the blog. Thanks Ryan!

its my blog so I can post lame stories if I want to

Last night I was trying so hard to study since next week is going to be c-razy, but it just wasn't working. "Trying so hard" is probably an overstatement considering I was laying on the couch and the TV was on with the ever exciting winter X games. so distracting. The couch was also distracting- hello, taking a nap on the couch is definitely on my top 10 list of favorite things to do. And we all know that naps never go over well when it's past 8 pm, especially when your usual bedtime is around 10 pm. I started out reading on the couch, then the TV comes on, then I fall asleep. on the couch.  Those who have tried, know that getting me to move from the couch to the bed is a hard task. Calling it a "hard task" is probably an understatement. Thankfully for Trent, I don't fall asleep on the couch too often, but it has happened enough for him to figure out a few tactics that don't work. Like waking me up and saying, "come on, lets go to bed" or even physically getting me up. nope, doesn't work. So Trent came up with a new tactic last night that definitely did work. He took my phone off the charger in the other room, made sure the ringer was on, set it on the table next to me, went to bed, then called me and asked if I was going to come to bed. So innovative. 

This morning after waking up feeling well rested with no neck ache (thanks to Trent's creative strategy), we went to breakfast with our adorable newlywed friends, David and Erinn. We went to a place in Spanish Fork called One Man Band, so fun. Supposedly there is one man who works there and cooks every one's food. I thought it was going to be a shack with like one row of bar stools and a single bar where the cook takes your order. I was surprised to find a rather large restaurant with ah hem, three employees. I know, they should call it Three Man Band, right? I was even more surprised to find out that David and Erinn have a blog. How did I not know that? turns out it's relatively new. here's their link: davidanderinn.blogspot.com 

My Mom

My mom is an amazing person too (and so is her husband :) ). She has been so cute about the whole University of Florida thing with Trent. Every time she sees something gator she thinks of us, and tells me about it. So of course when she saw the national championship cereal at Publix, she had to buy it. I got home before Trent the day the package arrived. I knew there were some CDs in the package for me so I opened it up and put the cereal on the table. When Trent got home I was outside. He went inside and immediately saw the cereal and came running back out with the cereal in hand to show me his amazing new gift (as if I hadn't seen it already). It doesn't take much to make him happy.



These pictures don't quite capture the initial excitement... if only I had my camera out the day we got it.

Trent's Mom

Trent's mom is an amazing person. So is her husband Wes. We were able to spend time with them this Christmas break and we really enjoyed every moment in their company. Highlights include: playing cards, their new Wii, football games, opening presents, relaxing, building (but not finishing) a snowman, dinner with Ben Baggett, Twilight, making letter blocks, and playing cards. We had so much fun that when it came time for us to leave I started to get a little emotional. I remember on our way out the door we told them that the upcoming semester was going to be rough for us so we probably won't be able to come up as often as we would like, and Judy said, "oh, I'm going to ride the bus down on the 17th so I can see you and take you out to lunch." When Trent and I got in our car I got all emotional and asked Trent, "who does that? take the bus down to Provo just to take someone else out to lunch? Is that normal?"

Saturday Judy came down and took us out to an amazing lunch at Magelby's Fresh. Before lunch we were able to set up a blog for her. It looks like she already has a few posts up, you can check it out here: judyandwes.blogspot.com

Maria

My Taiwanese landlord is no longer the one to blame for me being mistaken as "Maria," but rather it is my own inability to say my own name. I realized this today after leaving a message for my career counselor and getting a call back from the same counselor who was looking for someone by the name of "Maria." Fantastic (spoken in very sarcastic tone). My old inside joke with Trent, who occasionally will call me Mar-ee-ah, has now become the painful reminder that I am in dyer need of those speech lessons that I never received as a child.

Macaroni Grill Bread

Macaroni Grill has a deal right now where you can get a three course meal for $11.99. What makes this such a great deal is the fact that you can split it with someone. Even though you are splitting a meal, with all that free yummy bread you will leave feeling very full . If you go with a party of 8 or more they automatically add an 18% gratuity which brings the total bill (including tax) to about 15 bucks, or 7.50 each.

However, an even better deal (if you have the time) is to make fettuccine Alfredo from scratch AND some Macaroni Grill Bread. Voila, same exact meal for a fourth of the price.

ps. I am not speaking from experience here- I have never made Macaroni Grill Bread myself (or any type of homemade bread for that matter) but I do have the secret recipe, and it looks easy enough. And cheap. So I think I am going to try to make it this weekend.

Macaroni Grill Bread
1 T. yeast
1 T. sugar
1 c. hot water
let sit and rise.

Add slowly
1 ½-2 1/2 c. flour
2 T. rosemary
1 t. salt

Let rise in bowl until double the size. Roll dough into one large round loaf, or two small. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, or until top is golden brown. When out of the oven, melt butter over the top and sprinkle with salt.

the one serving of fruit AND veggie to die for

Maybe that was a bit too strong. Maybe I should put it this way- I would feel guilty if I didn't tell my loved ones about this food product. Its called V8 Fusion. Not to be confused with V8 Splash, or V8 Smoothie, and definitely not the plain V8. Just go try it. You get like 12 servings of fruit/veggies for $2.78. And that's it- no high fructose corn syrup (like its Splash counterpart), just plain ol' concentrated fruit/vegetable juice and water.

Now, now, don't go running off to buy a bottle for yourself quite yet, I do have a few words of warning: Don't get any of the flavors that have the words "acai" or "light" in bold face on the front of the bottle. Unless you have tried something flavored acai berry, and liked it, just stay away from that flavor (I think it tastes like medicine).

And the "light" varieties are just a marketing hoax. Anyone who knows how to add/subtract/multiply would read the following: "half the calories and sugar" and then the following: "1/4 serving fruit plus 1/4 serving vegetable", and then compare that to the regular/non-light kind: "1 serving fruit plus 1 serving vegetable" and decide to stick with the regular kind. If you really can't handle the 120 calories and the 25 grams of sugar (if no sugar is listed on the ingredient list it is all the natural kind, right?) then just drink half a glass, at least your still getting 1/2 serving of fruit plus 1/2 serving vegetable rather than 1/4.

That still leaves you with at least four options to choose from (not including the one with a blue cap):

and to seal the deal here is a coupon for one dollar off: click here.

Goodell Goodies

Ali Goodell is my bestest friend ever when it comes to bringing over treats. Last night she brought over little smokies wrapped in bacon, and they were mmmm... indescribable. In addition to last nights spectacular, in the past she has also delivered cocoa rice crispy treats, her famous chocolate chip oatmeal cookies (of which recipe I posted a few months ago and am now realizing was probably against our friendship code), and yummy banana bread, oh yes, and how could I forget- I still think she is the most probable suspect of dropping off little blueberry muffins with the mysterious "happy thanksgiving" message attached back in November. It's a shame we weren't in town when those scrumptious looking little muffins were delivered, 'cause who knows how long they were sitting on our dirty front steps with only a single layer of tin foil covering them, or else we might have tried them. Regardless of whether you are indeed the mystery muffin deliverer or not, thanks Ali for sharing all your delicious goodell goodies.

apology

Did I seriously mention the words "new year" in my last post without any mention of my goals? I apologize. 

This year my goal is to prove my workout-aholic of a husband, the one whose nickname is jim- but spelt "gym," the one who oft goes to the gym two times per day, and who's major IS exercise science, WRONG.  He says I am "NEVER consistent in my working out." And for the first time in our entire married life, I am going to concede and say "you're right," (i joke of course, but it's true- you can ask him- I am usually right). Anyway, the point is that he isn't going to be right for much longer. So here are my steps to meet my goal of consistently going to the gym:

1. define consistent: check (husband defines consistent as 3-4 times per week, forever)

2. create incentives, (did I ever mention my econ minor? its all about incentives): check (I get to write a big yellow G on the appropriate calendar square upon arrival from gym- thanks to Brittany we now have a lovely new calendar to make such markings in)

3. go to gym: for the entire month of january so far- check. But that's not what this goal is about. I've done two weeks before. Heck, I've done two months before, but now we're talking consistent, and consistent means forever.

woo hoo! new year, new (permanent) blog look, and...

new post. 

This is quite the accomplishment considering my last post was over a month ago. SO here we go, picking up from where I left off on December 8th of last year (the sweet and condensed version)...

I worked on turning my family vhs collection into dvds, took my finals, worked on the dvds, spent quality time with Trent's family, worked on the dvds some more, and finally finished the dvds. I sent the dvds out to the family on Friday the 9th and am now enjoying life outside of the multimedia lab. And besides that, I am surprisingly still loving all the snow. Perhaps it's because I spent most of the cold winter days during the break inside the media lab. But my real gut feeling is that it's because I can see the light. Unlike the past four years, this year I don't have the dread of knowing I will be doing it all over again, in the snow, next year. I can just enjoy it, as if I am on vacation.

So, here I am, still waiting for the day that I wake up, walk outside, and realize that I endured an entire arctic-ish winter with out a peep of complaint, and am now in sunny Florida.