Weekend Things

Here are some things I did this weekend:

Tyler got some good news from work on Friday, so we wanted to celebrate! We went to Red Robin with Jordan and Megan. Thought about hitting up a parking-lot carnival after, but everyone was too tired.

Saturday morning, Tyler had to catch up on a few things at the office. I decided the nice weather was actually picnic weather. At the grocery store deli counter, I picked out "fancy" meats and cheeses to attempt to recreate his favorite restaurant-style sub sandwich.

Turns out we don't know where any parks are, and we ended up at some sort of bird/wildlife preservation area.

Ideal park experience:

Approximate park experience:

We found a shady spot in a semi-grassy-ish area. Tyler thought it was altogether too hot to be outside, but was gracious enough to participate in my picnic plan with minimal grousing. Even took his shoes off!

After an hour and a half of outdoor time (during which Tyler had a shouting match with the sun as it slowly crept across our picnic blanket), we packed up and headed to Melissa and Raphael's house. We were going to grill... something. We were hoping a plan would just come together, but at the mention of charcoal, we quickly lost motivation. We ended up going out for dinner instead.

On Sunday morning we put some corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage in the crockpot. Tyler kept calling it leprechaun meat. I also made some mini-cupcakes for our Primary class at church (we teach the 9-year-olds). We made them work for the special treat by giving them a simple test at the end of class. Despite high stress over the testing, they all passed and everyone enjoyed the green-cream-filled cupcakes.

Lowbrow blogging. You know, for kids.

I'm not actually a huge Twilight fan, but I like the books and movies well enough. It's just the uber!crazy fans that worry me somewhat on occasion.

And really, I've never understood the Team Edward vs Team Jacob mentality. I mean, who are these people on Team Jacob? Why would you CHOSE to be on the losing team? Are they just saying that if they had to chose, they would likely choose Jacob over Edward?

Well guess what, Jacobians. You are not the central character in the middle of that particular love triangle. Her name is Bella Swan. She may be silly, but she still gets to chose her romantic partners. You do not get a choice. She does. Understood? Bella chooses Edward, and it was pretty obvious from the beginning that she was going to. PAINFULLY OBVIOUS.

It's like when sports fans watch a game where they know their favored team has no chance what-so-ever of winning, but they still cheer for them like it will make a difference. YOU are not playing. Nothing you do will affect the outcome. At some point your loyalty may have been earned, but there comes a time where it becomes foolish. Cut your losses and seek out greener pastures.

It baffles me.


Whenever I think about my blog anymore, I always whine to myself about how I never have anything I want to say. So I have forced myself to take a terse and flippant status message and turn it into a terse and flippant blog post. You are welcome, internet.

Frittering away.

I realize it has been ages since I blogged. I apologize to all three of my readers. However, I feel like I haven't had much to say lately.

But, I suppose I have to end the lack of blogging eventually. So here are a few things in my life:

• I am turning 25 next week which kind of terrifies me. Being 25 will greatly reduce my ability to pretend I'm still in my early twenties and still allowed to be "figuring things out."

• I got a jury summons in the mail a few days ago. I am not really looking forward to it, but it probably won't be as bad as I imagine it will be. Also, not wanting to get jury duty is one of the reasons I've never registered to vote. (Feel free to judge me. I judge myself for this.) I guess that's not really a valid reason anymore. Especially since I didn't allow the possibility of jury duty to prevent me from getting my driver's license. Oh well.

• I went shopping with some of the money from my tip jar yesterday. For the longest time I wasn't spending any of that money at all because I was saving for a Kitchenaid mixer. But once I surpassed that goal, I felt like I could start spending a bit here or there to tip the pizza guy or do something fun that wasn't in my budget. Yesterday I managed to spend $80 worth of tip money that I had brought 'just in case.' But it was fun. Martin and I drove an hour and a half to meet our eldest sister at the city halfway between us. We saw Cowboys and Aliens and got lunch and I bought a couple new shirts that I really like even though I thought they were too expensive.

• Martin and I keep our 72-hour-kits along with a few gallons of water on one of the shelves in our pantry. This morning we discovered that 3 of the 4 gallons had sprung leaks (probably a few days ago) and soaked down into a box of my cookbooks and random recipe papers I'd stashed there (with the idea that I would eventually type the up and keep them forever). Now I'm too sad. Plus, how annoying is it that THREE OF FOUR gallons randomly started leaking without any discernible reason. The only good news was that I had waterproofed everything in the kits, so none of that was ruined.

Blogging From My Phone

So I have recently acquired a fancy new phone. (Don't judge, it was totally in the budget.) I am currently writing this post with my phone on the super-useful slide out keyboard. It is that awesome.

Along with my fancy phone, I also aquired a fancy new phone number. I had a few reasons for doing this, but mostly I just wanted to. Please do not be offended if I have not personally contacted you to notify you of my nw number. I didn't even give it to my dad. If you want it, ask. And then I will decide if you are worthy of it on a case-by-case basis. (Kidding!) (Mostly.)

The only only problem with my new number is that it seems like the previous owner of it is still using it / giving it out to service techs and collection agencies. I get at least 3 calls a week for Sergio and often they are from people telling me they will be showing up in the next 15 minutes to install my new cable box. Or telling me I owe them a lot of money.

Stupid Sergio.

Tips for a Happy Life

So the place where I work has a tip jar. A lot of people just drop in their change, and a few regulars sometimes throw in a little more. At the end of each shift, we split it up and everybody usually ends up with a dollar or two and large handful of change. Which I take home and put in a jar.

I kind of thought it would be cool to just keep the money in there forever and see how much I could collect. But, um... it was getting really full. And there is really no point in that kind of "saving," is there?

No, I didn't think so.

So last night I took it to the grocery store and turned all the coins into an amazon gift card worth almost $50. (If you use a CoinStar machine to get cash, they'll charge you a 10% fee. But if you are willing to accept a gift certificate instead of cash, there's no fee.)

So this is what I got with my tips:

The Ender's Shadow Series Box Set AND the Ender Quartet Box Set. Plus, I still have like $40 in one dollar bills. Any suggestions on how to spend it?

Color Coordination in the Kitchen.

Guys. Martin says I shouldn't show this to you because it reflects badly on our housekeeping skills. But GUYS! It is so awesome. I give you...

MOLD!!!

Sometimes I like to soak things so they won't get all crusty by the time I get around to dishes. But in this case, I think it may have been counterproductive. Let's look at it again...



Isn't it pretty? And it kind of matches the bowl! Now that's fancy!

Dear family,

See you soon!



~Holly

Bits and Pieces

• I do not have a job at this time. I had a second interview for a job last Friday, but they have not called me back. This is disappointing because getting to the interview was super stressful and I kind of feel like the universe owes me.

• Last Thursday my eldest sister came up with her four kids and spent the day with us. Saturday, two other nieces came up and spent some time here too. I think that every doorknob and light switch in the house is sticky at this point.

• Martin bought a table a while ago, but it was on back order and finally came in a few days ago. So we pulled all the seats out of my car and brought it home to assemble. And now I can't get the seats back into my car because it is too hard. Also massive cardboard boxes and various other packing materials have taken over the kitchen and dining room.

• I finally got stuff hung on the walls in my room. I also rearranged my furniture a while ago, and my room is officially awesome now. Humphry sleeps in there all the time, and Martin even comes in to watch movies sometimes.

• Martin bought a little wooden Christmas countdown thing with two numbered cubes that you can move around each day. But the blocks are really only designed to display numbers 1-25, and there are currently 39 days left. So I turned the '8' block on its side so it looks like the infinity symbol. I think it is bumming Martin out.

Conflict of Interest.

I had a boss that always had an answer to everything. Problem was, sometimes he'd just make it up. Like the time he told someone that corned beef was named because it was traditionally serve with corn. Um... no. It's called corned beef because of the peppercorns used to season it during the boiling process.

Now, he's not alone in telling this kind of lie. People want answers, and often making them up is the easiest way to satisfy everyone. I've done it on occasion. And parents, in particular, seem to be huge perpetrators of this kind of lie.

Martin and I were actually talking about this the other day. Sometimes I'll be going about my normal day and it will suddenly dawn on me that some "fact" my parents instilled in me (when I was an impressionable, malleable child) is completely without basis. And not just the old wives' tales like don't swim for an hour after you eat.

No, no. These were outright lies they made up so they would have some sort of factual reason for making us stop our annoying behavior in a way that we couldn't argue with. On long car trips, they told us that the back seat reading lights would blind other drivers and we had to keep them off. "For safety." Clearly, they just wanted us to stop playing with the lights and sleep. But to this day I still get nervous when someone turns on interior car lights when I'm driving at night.

Anyway, back to my former manager. One time we were doing inventory of our ice cream novelty items, and I mentioned that sales would probably drop off now that it had started snowing. He told me that ice cream sales actually go up during the winter. I was properly amazed by his knowledge of all things sales-related, and then moved on to counting individual sticks of cheese.

But the other day, I was actually discussing ice cream consumption in winter, and my brain immediately piped up with that long forgotten factoid. After thinking about it for a minute, I became a bit suspicious. I decided to turn to my pal, the Internet to get some real answers.



See? I knew Internet would tell me the tru...

Wait a second... NONE of the top results can agree with each other? Internet! You have failed me! Can I trust no one?



*sigh*

How I wake up. Every single day.

The cat is upset.
The cat is upset because the door is closed.
The cat is concerned that I am unaware of his displeasure.
The cat attempts to make me aware of the problem by:

(a) meowing
(b) swiping his little cat paw under the door
(c) scratching
(d) more meowing

I do not open the door.
The cat does not give up.