Pyrophosphate

blog title courtesy of Trent. It has nothing to do with this post mind you. so dont get to the end and think, "so what is a pyrophosphate?" cause then you might want to google it- seriously not worth it. Rather, you should get to the end of this post and think, "oh, that's why she tittled it Pyrophosphate" Basically this post is so meaningless I couldn't even think up a good title. I could have done "4 days left!" or "Warner" but when Trent suggested the above word that starts with a P, I thought- perfect. done and done.

My little countdown gadget used to excite me. I would read "55 days, 19 hours..." and think- less than two months, I can do this.
I needed it then. I wanted the end to come fast, and boy howdy did it.
Yesterday I took my very last test ever in the BYU testing center. With all my bazillion final exams and projects going on the past few weeks, I haven't had time to check the countdown on a daily basis, but now that I am practically done with school(with the exception of finishing up two group projects) I finally feel like I have time to post about life. That is until I pull up my blog site and the first thing I see is "6 days...", "5 days, 8 hours...", now its telling me I have a mere 4 days and 19 hours to get everything done that I need to. At this point I usually close down the computer down and scamper somewhere else to do something productive. But so is not the case today. I got an email from my mom on behalf of my beloved little nephew, Warner and I just had to share:

AMELIA and TRENT, ujsj54udiuoheeeeu 48u07--054029198`98`89`89899iyoioo7oo8[plnkfvfrewazswert5432qjhgyu7 8hhggf (Remember when I use to wrestle with Trent? That was fun. I want to come to your house.) Love, WARNER

love that boy to pieces. More posts coming soon- black eyes, chemistry goggles, and top ten lists

hair picture

I haven't been super excited about posting the pictures of my hair drama because I unfortunately didn't take the before picture as was promised. Its okay though, all you have to do is think of the worst underdeveloped color of highlights you can possibly imagine and just paste that on the tip top of my head and there you have it. I tried to do a google image search but nothing even came close to how bad the bleach sploch was that I created on my hair. I did however manage to get an after picture.

Its amazing really how well it covered it up. You almost can't even tell a bleach spot exisited underneath the *ash* brown. It's ash people. She put straight green and blue on my hair, no red. I know, it still pulled a little red. But I like to pretend that it pulled perfectly ash, 'cause I don't do red y'all.

even more goodell goodies

While I was at work two nights ago, my friend Ali surprised me with a bag full of her famous cookies and rice crispy treats. She came all the way down to the basement of the library just to deliver her most amazing goodies to me. Who does that? now I've got you thinking about your visiting teacher, but did I mention Ali is not my Visiting Teacher? Yep, she's amazing. It's like she can read my mind. After being in the basement for four hours straight with one hour remaining, and three days into my detox, there was nothing more that I wanted than a bag full of Ali's cookies and rice crispy treats.

Two weeks ago she dropped by my basement apartment with some amish friendship bread, along with a bag full of the starter mix. The bread she had prepared was so amazing, more amazing than I ever remember amish bread being. I went out and bought whole wheat to continue the starter "healthy" style. It actually made really yummy chocolate muffins which I decided to share with my sunday school class. I waited until after the class devoured them before mentioning they were "healthy". Wikipedia says you can freeze the starter for later use, which I think I will do instead of giving the friendship bread to a friend. I am so bad, I know. But that way I can use the remaining three starter bags to make more muffins for my class. At least I'm sharing with someone, right?

Finally, Something Good to Blog About

In high school I had a hairstylist that I absolutely loved. Her name was Holly and she was amazing. But ever since I moved to Provo trying to find a stylist that did as good of a job as my Tallahassee stylist has been an ongoing battle. In fact, it wasn't until April 23rd of last year that I actually found someone who did my hair exactly how I wanted it. Her name was Maren and she worked at 7th Street Salon.

Remember this post? It is the one that originally had a picture of a sliced ham to go along with the new slicing technique that I had recently discovered (I later took off the picture of the ham since I thought it looked stupid). The part of this story that I failed to blog about later, was my search for Maren, the girl who introduced me to this new hair technique. About four months after my first slicing, I decided I needed to have her do it again, and for the first time in four years, I was planning on calling the same stylist for a second appointment. All I knew was her first name, as she had given me a salon punch card and wrote Maren on the back.When I called the salon and asked for Maren they said they didn't know anyone by that name. Come to find out, the salon had been sold and Maren had left. I tried calling the previous owner to see if she knew where Maren went, but no luck. At one point I got so desperate that I started calling different salons around town asking for Maren, but of course I never found her.

And then came last Friday. There I was, one horrible hair stylist, one decent hair stylist, and one person who didn't know a thing about how to do hair (myself) later. My hair was pulled to the side with a bobby pin hiding the big splotch of orangish-yellow hair-- from my recent do-it-yourself mishap-- on the top of my head. My poor hair was at an all time low. I decided to go to the VITA(volunteer income tax assistance) lab early since my class got out early. Turns out they were a bit behind in the lab so I was able to take one of the prior hour's appointments. I sat down with the couple and started thumbing though their W-2s. And that's where my story comes to an end.

I got to a penciled-in 1099 MISC form that read "Seventh Street Salon" in the Payer's name box, and "Maren" in the recipient's box. I preceded to tell the couple the whole story which they of course got a kick out of it. I was really weirded out and excited at the same time- afterall, I was siting next to The Maren that I had been looking for for so long.

I will post a picture of the before and after later this week once I have Maren fix it.

Forced Happiness?

I took a quiz online for my Strategy class yesterday that was supposed to be a freebie.
The instructions at the top of the page read "Just put True for everything to get full credit." However, like usual I skipped to the first question, at which point I got too excited to put False that I didn't even take the time to go back and read the instructions. I'm still laughing about this one.

And there you have it- at BYU, happiness is forced :)

So now you are wondering why I wasn't having a great day? When I pulled into the school parking lot I realized my water bottle and ipod nano were sharing spots in the center console by the e brake. The sad part was that my bottle was leaking, and my poor nano was slightly submerged. The water level was just high enough for it to seep in though the headphone hole, and after a brief period of flashing screens, my baby ipod no longer works. I wanted to try putting it in rice (supposedly it sucks out the water) but I had to go to class. I still think I should have gone home to try the rice :(

On a positive note, I have realized that days like yesterday make days like today seem a whole lot better. But then again, that doesn't really make yesterday worth it. Lets just hope my next post is positive, this pity me stuff three posts in a row is getting old really quick.

The Cherry on Top

Saturday: The perfect ending to my sad sad week see the following post below. I was sick and in bed all day, but gradually got better and finally around 7 I was up for going to SLC for our valentines dinner. We went to the Restaurant at the Hilton because we had a gift certificate there. At restuarants.com we paid 4 bucks for a $25 gift card. I got to wear my most favorite pair of shoes with my new dress that my mom gave me for Christmas.The dinner was amazing, but the trip to Trent's parents afterwords was even more amazing. When we got out to our car we found the back passenger side tire to be severely lacking air, as it had leaked out though a small nail hole. We threw on the spare which we then discovered to be pretty low on air as well, but we decided we would keep it on and just drive very slowly until we reached the nearest gas station to fill it up. We only got about a half a mile before the spare went completely flat. We pulled over and called AAA. Luckily my parents still have me on their membership and we were able to get the car towed to a Chevron where we replaced our spare with the original and filled it up with enough air to make it to Trent's parent's house. Here are some pictures of me helping Trent change the tires.

Sad, Sad week for Mrs. Savage

I can't remember the last time I cried two times in one week for purposes of self-pity, but this week proved to be the perfect week to do so.

Monday: after spending over an hour preparing imitation meatloaf for dinner (lentils, rice, chopped veggies, etc), I placed the casserole dish on an unknowingly hot stove eye and a few minutes later the dish burst into a million tiny little shards all over the kitchen floor. [insert self pity tears] On the up side my sweet husband whipped my tears and hugged me until my tears went away. And as an extra bonus we were able deep clean our kitchen which was very much needed.

Tuesday: While backing out of the driveway in the snow, I scrapped my neighbors car. I got out of the car, inspected the damage-- none to our car, a tiny little line of paint removed from their car-- then went and told the neighbors. I felt so bad cause my neighbors are the nicest people I could ever ask to live beneath, and although I wanted to cry in self pity I didn't have time. I was already running late to my dentist appointment with my friend who is learning how to become a hygienist. Combined with the horrible traffic due to the snow, I was 30 minutes late.

Friday: I couldn't breath all night, which in turn meant I couldn't sleep all night. Early in the morning I had the brilliant idea of taking my allergy medicine which enabled me to get into a deep deep sleep starting around 5 am. I was supposed to be in my stats lab at 9, so when I awoke from my deep sleep and noticed it was 9, I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and made it to my lab at 9:25ih. I was stuck on my last homework problem that everyone else had already finished when one of my classmates kindly asked me what I was working on and, well [insert self pity tears]. So embarrassing [insert more self pity tears here].

Recalling these stories just makes me laugh, and although sometimes I am tempted to cry when adversity hits, a better alternative is just to laugh.

grilling gone wrong

The last time we tried to fire up the bbq it wouldn't keep a big enough flame to cook anything. And the two times before that Trent singed off all the little hairs on his left wrist. The same wrist that was holding steady the lighter just below the little hole on the bottom of the grill.

Today I wasn't going to let our past mishaps repeat themselves.

My first plan was to call the 1-800 number on the front of our grill, but since they closed at 6 pm eastern time perhaps this is yet another thing to look forward to with the move, I had to fall back on plan #2: Read the grill instruction manual. In the manual I learned two lessons proving that perhaps it was worth it to store the manual for 2.7 years: first, the lid is supposed to be open when igniting the grill, and second, a match is required.

No matches in the savage household, was my first thought. I bought a three pack of pink lighters for the specific purpose of lighting our grill, and although that method worked for 2.7 years, my lighters were suddenly non substitutable for the old fashion match.

My second thought: It's a good thing Trent's sister gave us an emergency preparedness backpack for our wedding. This does constitute an emergency, right? what if I told you I had already formed the buffalo meat into patties? AND the buns were on the verge of going bad. Thats what I thought, emergency at its finest.

In my desperate frenzy to find matches, I came across a letter in one of the pockets of the emergency backpack. And you wouldn't believe what I found inside the envelope with the letter-- A Chili's gift card. What an amazing surprise.

So I scrapped the buffalo patties and near moldy buns, and we made a quick run to Chili's. I kid, of course. The match method worked and the burgers turned out great. Thanks Sabrina for saving us from a near catastrophe, and for the fabulous new found gift card!

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."