Casa de Paige

My other favorite part of my exodus to Arizona this summer was spending a week at the home of my sweet best friend Paige! I still remember the first day that wee Paige came into my life *sigh*. I was visiting my old roommates at the Dew Drop Inn in Provo and in walked next door neighbor Paige, so cute and hilarious I couldn't help but love her! Its been seven years since that day, and in that time Paige has vomited over me, introduced me to my husband, provided thousands of hours of laughter, created hundreds of inside jokes, listened to me through my tears, shopped till we dropped, proved to be an absolute kindred spirit, and so much more. And Sean's not so bad either:)
It was so fun being roomies again! The only downside was my separation anxiety when I had to leave. Oh how I miss my friend!

Paige and Sean on the Ferris Wheel at the Fair


The beautiful couple on their wedding day!


Three roomies and my weirdo hand-it looks like I'm clawing Paige's hair

Thanks Paige and Sean for a fabulous time!

Questions, Thoughts and Rants

Periodically as I am driving around or going about my somewhat mundane life I have random blog thoughts. These thoughts consist of small ideas I have, questions I would like to pose to the world, or some small annoyance that I just need to let out into blogland but don't warrant an entire blog dedication. I usually forget about them, however today I think I will let you into the clutter that is my brain.

1. Is it possible to retrain yourself to be organized? I have always secretly wanted to be healthily neurotic about organization in my life, but alas I not only have multiple junk drawers, but also a junk room, and a junk storage unit. Granted Adam helps in this endeavor by having thousands of small nondescript hunting items, but still I could at least put them in a box marked Hunting Things That I Step On and Spout Curse Words. I am trying to overcome my lack of organization by trying to rewire my brain. My first step was organizing my closet into colors. I have never found this necessary, nor have I ever been irritated by colors all together, but now I am trying to make it annoying. Update coming forthwith....

2. This leads me to another issue I have. In my opinion there are two types of people in this world: Those who get a lot done in the day, and those that don't. I fall strongly into the latter classification. When I organized my closet into color schemes, it took the entire day, I'm not exaggerating, I woke up inspired, and went to bed when I was done. Some of you may be shocked, this will be the indication that you fall into the first classification. I am endlessly jealous of people who can get out of bed early and get things done, is there some secret? Please let me know!

3. I become instantly angry when people can't hear me and I have to repeat myself. It makes me insane, which is dumb because I tend to mumble.

4. I am so tired of living in apartments in a town filled with people who married at an extremely young age. Case in point, my visiting teacher got married during her senior year of high school, not because she had to, lest you think there were extreme circumstances, but because she wanted to. She has miraculously turned out to be normal and I love her immensely. However the problem I have is I am surrounded by people who basically don't know how to interact with each other in a mature way. I liken it to the freshman year of college mindset when you don't know how to live with anyone besides your family. This mindset leads to many immature fights about dishes, hair in the bathroom, and loud noises etc. By the time you've lived with say 50 or at least 5 roommates or so you start to learn how to be tolerant, flexible, and communicative. Here we are surrounded by people who have not had 50 roommates, more like 2 so they are still learning.

Case in point: Our parking spots are micro-machine size and Adam's truck doesn't fit in one spot so he usually will park on the street, but sometimes he parks in two spots if no one is around. The other day he went out to his car and an anonymous girl in our complex had left a scathing note on it telling him to park in one spot. One particularly poignant line went something like this, "How hard is it to park in one spot you idiot?" Although I fully understand that parking in two spots can be extremely annoying, a proper reaction might not have included childlike insults. Perhaps said person could come to our door and request he always park on the street because they don't ever have a spot, or they could find out why Adam parks in two spots etc. Any option would have been better than having a mini temper tantrum and writing a childish note without signing it. Incidentally Adam and I had a good laugh and chose not to observe her request, we decided that when she asked like a normal adult we would gladly always park on the street. This is just one of many instances of dealing with immature neighbors, all of which are like flashbacks to the dorms.

5. I have a few blogs that I follow where I don't know the author, I think it is referred to as blog stalking. Some of these people are so funny that I wish I knew them in real life. I guess its no different than reading a book and wishing you were friends with the author or even the main character i.e. Georgia Nicholson

6. I miss cable, I have no idea what is going on with SYTYCD and Project Runway is coming up. I thought I would watch less TV without cable, which I have somewhat, however now all I do is watch all my seasons of Gilmore Girls over and over. At least now I do housework while they are on since I have seen them so many times. We are saving quite a bit of money at least...

7. It is already getting cold here, bleh.

8. One thing I like about Idaho is EVERYONE has a garden, and they share. We have received SO much free produce that I am in vegetable heaven!

Ok this is getting too long, and I have so much more to share, but will hold back for the time being:)

GCTT 2009!

One of my favorite things about my visit to Arizona was my week long stay with my dear old roommate and best buddy Jill.
Jill and I first became roommates when we both moved to Arizona 6 years ago. We didn't meet until the day we moved into our shared bedroom in the Smoke House on Alma School Road (named thus because of the smoke that came in through the vents from our smoking neighbors). We quickly bonded over our shared depression upon leaving Provo and soon became hilarious pals. Jill and I were room roommates for 4 years and not a day passed that didn't involve some sort of hilarious antic. There is something about Jill that inspires true spazziness in me and our week long reunion was full of spaz in epic proportions...

One of my favorite moments occurred the last night that I was there. Jill's roommate Amanda has within her possession the largest candy collection of all time. She has an entire shelf dedicated to treats, yes we too became fast friends or candy soul mates if you will. She has bins full of candy, fruit snacks, soda, salty treats and much more, it was a candy addict's (i.e. me) dream come true. On the final eve of Jill/Angela Fabfest we were sitting around eating haribo gummi bears and I innocently asked Jill which of the gummi bear flavors was her favorite. Fifteen minutes later, with the help of Amanda and her boyfriend Dave, we had assembled the Great Candy Taste Test 2009. The concept was simple: carefully taste each flavor of candy and then list the order of preference. We tested at least five different candy flavors and the results were astonishing! Flavors that I loved, the others hated and vice versa. I would never have thought that taste buds could vary so much. It really made me rethink the abolishment of yellow starbursts, and the wisdom of eating so much candy. Despite cleansing our palate's with milk between each flavor, we all became very ill and I had to abstain from candy for the next few days...
ok...hours...

Here is the documentation for posterity:)

My score sheet


Dave, Amanda, and Jill displaying the GCTT '09 set up


Thanks Jill and Amanda for a truly fun week!

Essay: On My Summer Vacation I...

Welcome back to me! I haven't blogged lately because I have been dabbling in the land of Java, otherwise known as taking a 3 week summer course in Southeast Asian Music. I had to finish my last music history class for my doctorate so I took a month off of teaching and ran off to Phoenix. Although I missed Adam dreadfully, I had so much fun in Arizona!
My class was hilarious! The only 3 week course that was offered was Southeast Asian Music. At first I was kind of disappointed because I didn't think I would learn anything of worth, but it turned out to be totally awesome. My class was mostly about the music of Central Java, an island in Indonesia, and specifically the gamelan. Ah the gamelan...
If you are anything like me you have no idea what a gamelan is, well it is ensemble that is made up of gongs, sarons, kepuls, ketuks, bonangs, pekings, genders, and many more crazy named instruments. Basically its kettle drums, various-sized gongs, and xylophones that you hit with beaters.
My typical class day consisted of one hour of lecture and another hour of me banging around on funny instruments and laughing my head off. It was a blast!
I've included some pictures to give you an idea of the fun!

This is after class was over one day, my teacher is in the middle. He has just finished yelling at me because I was playing the gong standing up. Apparently you are not allowed to play the gong standing in Java, even if your knees are bleeding from kneeling on the carpet...


Here is the illustrious gong, and my new haircut!

Tuwanda!

So Adam and I have taken the big plunge...we have unplugged our cable and DVR box! We decided that we spend WAY too much time watching really stupid shows, so yesterday we took out the cable cord and rearranged out living room furniture so there could be no going back. On tuesday I will call the cable company and cancel everything and we will be a TV free family! Well not totally TV free, we'll still watch movies and the shows we really like on the internet, but our days of laying around watching Frasier are over. So far we've been without cable for 24 hours and its been a little hard, but mostly nice. So far we actually had a conversation while eating dinner, I did almost all of our laundry (miracle of all miracles), and we went to bed at a decent time last night. Its been so nice! I'm sure future days will include feeling isolated from the outside world, and me pulling my hair out for one glimpse of Full House, but for now we are enjoying our major life change!

Question

Does anyone else get a little embarrassed when you are watching a tender show (i.e. baby story or what not to wear) on television and you realize you are half smiling without knowing it? Perhaps I am alone in the world...

cash issues

Lately I've been doing that thing where you pay for groceries with cash to try and stay within a budget. Its worked out nicely so far, except I've noticed something. Whenever the checker gives me my change, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to put it away as fast as possible. The second they hand it to me, they are done with our transaction and are moving on to the next person therefore I loose my right to the little purse platform. It stresses me out, my bills get wadded up, and my coins end up in the bottom of my purse in my mad dash to get out of the way. I used to pay with cash all the time and I don't remember feeling this way. My neat little debit card has spoiled me forever I guess.