Rave Review

K, so about ten days ago Luke and I went to Layton to get my rings soldered together. Because, annoyingly, the closest Kay Jewelers to Logan is in the Layton Hills Mall. Annoying to have to drive so far for such a little errand, but it is a good excuse to get out of Cache Valley for a while, so we don't complain too much.

Anyway, after eating lunch at the food court - Chik-Fil-A, (YUM! )and lemonade from Hotdog on a Stick, (YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, best lemonade EVER!) we're heading back to the freeway . . . only to discover that there is a Jason's Deli in Layton.

And what is Jason's Deli you ask? Goood question, because I'll admit I'd never heard of it before either. Anyway, it's this sandwich chain that was actually started in Beaumont, cool, no? And apparently it is amazing, because Luke was soooooooooooo disappointed that we'd just eaten.

So yesterday we went back down to pick my rings - well, ring now - up. It's so weird . . . it's going to take a little getting used to having them as one ring! Anyway, we went to lunch at Jason's Deli. And it is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The menu is huuuuuuge, and I had the hardest time picking just one thing. We've decided that we're going to eat there everytime we take my ring down for inspection - twice a year, woot!! I had a chicken wrapini, and it was totally delicious. Luke had a muffalotto . . . muffolotta . . . something like that . . .and it was pretty tasty too. It was really different - pastrami and provolone cheese with practically a mountain of green olives and olive oil. Holy crap, that food is good!!!!! You have GOT to try this place sometime!!!! There's one at the Gateway in SLC too. When we finally get around to seeing Salt Lake (Luke still hasn't really seen Temple Square, or anywhere else for that matter) we're totally eating there again. And the best part? Free, unlimited soft serve ice cream cones. Dude, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!! And they have, like, a million different kinds of cheesecake. Blackberry cheesecake . . . . MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, that's all. I'm just still kind of amazed at how delicious the food was. And how huge! Luke got a quarter of a sandwich, which kind of confused me because he's not usually one to get the half-size version of anything. And then I saw the sandwich. And his quarter sized moffalatto or whatever was bigger than a big mac - holy crap! So yeah, when you go - get the quarter sized sandwich. Unless you want leftovers for a couple of days. But you have got to try this place sometime. And that is all. :-)

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There is a very good reason why I don't watch crappy daytime talk shows. (other than the fact that we don't have tv, I mean.) However, that means that I also miss the occasional hysterical gem like this one. Huge thanks to Emily for telling me and Luke about it!! I will never again be able to hear the words "chicken tettrazini" without laughing.

Back to Work!

So this was the first week it was possible for me to sub . . . and I worked two days this week! Yay! Not only that, I'm booked for one day in October, two in November, two in December, and one in January - the money's rolling in now!!! :-) Okay, maybe not so much . . . but this is definitely an improvement. Even just working once a week would be, among other things, a financial miracle for us. Woot.

Thursday I subbed at Millville. It was fun, but kind of overwhelming. And I'm so glad Drew was there too, because holy crap that school is confusing when it comes to finding your way around!! I'm probably still going to be getting lost at the end of the school year. The first group I worked with were little terrors . . . well, the boys were. The girls were pretty good. Sadly, we only got about halfway through the lesson because I kept having to bring the boys back on task. I think they could tell I had no idea what I was doing. Then the last thing I did was hall monitoring - that was weird. And I felt really short when these fifth graders walked by that were almost as tall as I was.

The hall I was in had one of those huge maps of the world. I was looking at it idly and I noticed that something about Russia just didn't look right. It was too big. And I was pretty sure I could see the word "soviet" in there, but it was all spread out like they do with big countries and I was too far away to tell for sure. So toward the end of my hall monitoring time I wandered over to the map. No Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia . . . it had the good old USSR. And Yugoslavia. And Czechoslovakia. (did I get that even close to right?) That one was really weird for me to see, because I distinctly remember the day my fifth grade teacher explained to us how the Czech Republic and Slovakia had split, and yesterday they were one country but now they're two countries. So I had to find a date on the map. Guess what date I found. No, seriously - guess.

1989. Crazy, no? That map is older than my little brother. My little brother who is a high school graduate. Talk about outdated materials!!! This is why the one thing in politics that makes me mad is education cuts. (the main reason nothing else makes me mad is because I don't understand it . . . seriously. any and all Washington talk is completely Greek to me.) I mean, come on! You give kids materials that are twenty years out of date, and then you expect them to have a thorough and accurate education? Umm . . . not happening. I am firmly convinced that this is the reason for Miss South Carolina a couple years ago. Obviously it's no wonder that Americans are so terrible at geography - on the off chance that they actually look at a map that shows more than just the US, it's probably from a time period they don't remember, either becuase they were too high on *insert popular drug of whichever decade here* or too young.

Anyway. This one wasn't supposed to be a rant. Friday I was at North Park. And I did more or less absolutely nothing. Good times. The lady I was subbing for was supposed to be giving her kindergarten kids a test, so Aunt Loretta tested them (and how convenient was it that we were in the same place almost the whole time?! Score!) and I got to color all day. Well, watch them color. Good times. It made me want to break out the coloring books I bought in Florida . . . I haven't colored in ages!! So I did. Yay!!!

So here's hoping to a lot more subbing gigs in the future. I like this game!

Luke-ism for the week: so last night we were talking about babies . . . I think we'd been watching some silly baby videos on youtube or something. Anyway, he asked me if all babies like peek-a-boo, and I tell him every baby I've ever met does. And he says, "So it's like all babies come with peek-a-boo pre-installed?"

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In case you didn't get my reference earlier. I love the look on Mario Lopez's face at the end. He's this close to absolutely losing it!

I Swear I'm Not Drunk! I Don't Think . . .

K, so something really weird is going on . . . somewhere. For the last couple of weeks I've bee having these weird dreams where I dreamed I was half-awake. They're really clear and I'm convinced they're for real - until I ask Luke in the morning and he looks at me like I'm nuts.

Like the night before last. Since it was cold, Luke wore his sweats to bed instead of the basketball shorts he usually wears. He sort of half-woke me up in the middle of the night when he got out of bed, changed into the basketball shorts, got a drink of water, and came back to bed. Imagine my confusion when he was wearing the sweats again in the morning . . .

And then last week. There have been some issues with the internet around here (meaning the whole complex) for the past couple of weeks or so, and Luke is the resident internet-fixer. So from time to time he'll go to an apartment to fix with something, or down to the laundry room to play with the modem for a while. Anyway. Last week. Luke wakes me up getting out of bed. He's getting dressed. It's, like, three in the morning. So I ask him what he's doing. He says he's going downstairs to reset the modem and he'll be right back. I'm confused, but I say okay and go back to sleep. In the morning Luke tells me it was a dream.

What the crap? It's always the same sort of thing - either a conversation we didn't really have or Luke doing something random and waking me up . . . only not really. And it's happened five or six times in the last two weeks. So weird . . . am I hallucinating? I mean, I haven't taken anything . . . that I know of . . . I'm so very confused.

Am I the only person who's ever had dreams like this? Is somebody I know about to die or something? Maybe I'm about to win the lottery . . . yeah, that's gotta be it. :-)

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Dude, I want to go to Japan just for the game shows!

Ice, Ice Baby

Yeah, you're so going to have Vanilla Ice in your head for the rest of the day, mua-ha-ha-ha!!! For the record, I like that song. It's so perfectly cheesy . . . so perfectly 90s . . . so perfectly mockable . . . it's just . . . perfect.

So last week it looked like fall. And this week it sure feels like fall!!!! And I gotta say, it's so handy to sleep with a furnace in your bed. When your toes get cold you can just roll over and warm them up! :-) But seriously, is the whole human furnace thing a guy thing or just a Luke thing? It's so nice . . .

I'm so excited for fall. Granted, I am a little worried about discovering just how acclimated I got to Florida . . . but I've survived the last couple of days!! And the chill in the morning has reminded me just how end-of-the-yearish it is now. And you know what that means . . . holiday time!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I absolutely can't wait to dig out my Halloween decorations next week, and it's taken every ounce of willpower I have not to start blasting the Christmas carols already. My favorite season is spring, but this really is the best time of year - everybody is celebrating something. It's so much fun!!

I can't wait until it's cold enough to make hot chocolate . . . I need to get some coffee creamer so we can have homemade Stephen's. :-) And I need to get a teapot. And some honey. Because I have totally fallen in love with herbal tea! You see, year before last when Dad was on the rat poison drugs he couldn't take any regular medicine, and he got a cold. Holy craptastic, right? So Mom bought a few different kinds of herbal tea, and dad didn't like some of them, and Ashli and Shay didn't want them, so Mom sent them to me with my Christmas packages. And they turned out to be pretty good. You gotta add a little honey though - otherwise they're pretty flavorless.

Then in New Zealand last summer Luke and I bought some kiwi fruit tea. It was really good. It smelled just like a kiwi . . . yummy!!! The crazy thing is though, by itself it tasted like warm water. Add some honey though, and all of the sudden we were eating a sun-warmed kiwi. Sooooooooooooo good!! I'm glad we were able to get it through customs though - Team Jayla had some wood-bound journals they'd bought as Christmas presents for Jason's family taken away when we went to Australia. I still don't get why they weren't allowed . . . I guess I just don't understand customs well enough. Which is understandable since I've only done that whole song and dance once. Well, three times technically. But it was all in one trip. Anyway. Kiwi tea = awesome.

You know what? I think I just might get my Halloween decorations out today or tomorrow. My mother will be scandalized - "absolutely no decorations out more than a month before the holiday!" - but I'm feeling festive.

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Crazy concept? Check. Silly song? Check. Slightly annoying? Possibly. But you won't be singing Vanilla Ice anymore. :-)

Tidbits

No big rant or even topic today, just some random stuff that happened this week.

~ So one of the front wheels of Luke's car is practically about to fall off, so Luke's started walking to work since it's only about 15 minutes away and I pick him up since he gets off at midnight. So Monday while I'm walking back to the apartment I'm walking under the porch or walkway of whatever that's lets the people on the second floor get to their door and I feel something fall on the side of my head. I figure it's . . . actually, I had no idea what it was, but I kind of shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair and I couldn't feel anything, so I figured whatever it was just kept falling right on down. If only. So I get into our apartment and I'm taking my shoes off and I feel/hear something fall and there on the floor, having just fallen out of my hair, is this GINORMOUS SPIDER!!!!!! Seriously, it was, like, twice the size of a quarter. Have I ever mentioned I'm rather arachnophobic? And that the intensity of said arachnophobia is directly proportional to a) the size of the spider, b) if it's moving, and c) how fast it moves? Because . . . yeah. It was big. And moving. Slowly, but it moved. *insert scream here* Except for I'm not really a screamer. Mostly because - especially when I'm startled by the sudden appearance of spiders - mine is a rather paralyzing fear. I seriously couldn't move or speak for a minute or two. And of course Luke was in the bathroom, and I couldn't let that thing get away, so I had to go get the little dust buster vaccuum we got to suck up box elder bugs ad suck the thing up. And of course, because my luck is like that, we had neither used it nor put it on the charger for a while, so there wasn't very much suck left in it. (side note - if a vacuum really sucks, is that a good thing?) So I'm holding the vacuum up in the air watching as the spider sloooooooooowly gets dragged into it (it's clear . . . Luke likes to watch the little bugs he's just sucked up wader around inside it) and listening to the sucking sound slowly die and hoping it'll last long enough to get the spider inside. You know how in monster movies when someone's getting sucked into some weird flower monster's mouth and they hold onto the floor trying to slow the sucking down? It looked kind of like that. the good news is, there was just enough suck left to get the spider in. Neither of us had ever seen a spider that looked like that before. Luke was bored a couple days later at work so he googled it, and apparently it was a cat-faced spider. And super luckily they don't bite unless you really goad them into it. This thing was in my hair!!! Holy traumatizing. Seriously, I keep imagining I feel something falling onto me . . . I hate spiders.

~ Thursday Luke was off. We went to Preston. I know, it sounds really lame, but Luke's a huge Napoleon Dynamite geek and he's been dying to go ever since he found out how close it was. I was rolling my eyes the whole time. Drew and I were talking later, and like we said, people around here may love Napoleon, but nobody here goes to Preston. Because Tremonton and Richmond and Smithfield are all exactly like Preston. But it was fun . . . even though I did feel a little silly going into King's and DI and taking pictures. But it was pretty cool to be driving down the street and suddenly seeing Pedro's house. Even though we were looking for it, it was still a little bit of a surprise to see it - it looked so familiar, and yet I've never in my life been to Preston before, unless you count driving through it a million times when I was younger. I'd never been off Main Street, so I don't count those times. We did take a lot of pictures, I need to get them up on facebook.

~ I have a job . . . sort of. Aunt Loretta hooked me up and now I'm a reading aide sub for North Park And Millville Elementaries. I have no idea how often I'll be working, but it's better than nothing. On that note, however, if you hear of something full-time or even part-time with more consistent hours, I'm totally still up for that.

~ So I'm the ward chorister for sacrament meeting. Well, one of them . . . we switch off every week. I was the RS chorister in Florida, so when I was called it didn't seem like a big deal. But I don't pick the songs this time around. All four songs today had four verses. And we sang all four of all four. I made the mistake (I kid!) of telling my visiting teacher about my old calling (because it's hers here), and let's just say I'm really glad she didn't need me to fill in for her today as she has before, because by the end of sacrament my arm was DEAD! I should probably start doing push ups or something. Maybe one-handed push ups.

~ Okay, last one. Luke has, like, no experience with little kids. I don't think he's ever even held a baby. That would be such a weird concept to me if I hadn't met about a dozen other people like that before I met Luke. Anyway, today in Sunday School there was a baby in front of us, just a few months old. And the baby had the hiccups. (side note - aren't baby hiccups one of the cutest things in the world?!) Luke starts chuckling a little, so I ask him what's so funny, and he leans over to me and whispers "That baby is malfunctioning." I almost cracked up, which would have been awkward since we were in the middle of the lesson. But seriously, how funny is that?! Luke is always saying silly things like that. It's like I'm in a never-ending episode of "Kids Say the Darndest Things" . . . except Luke's, like, 26. Well, almost. Things will certainly be interesting when/if we have kids. (Aunt Loretta - isn't that almost better than a Tannerism even?!)

Aaaaaanyway . . . yeah. That's all. Good times.

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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I only watch the audition episodes of American Idol.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Autumn . . .

There's a passage in one of the Anne of Green Gables books - I think it's the fourth one - where Anne is talking about the differences in silences. The sound of the silence of the meadow vs. the seashore vs. in town and such. She says you could take her somewhere blindfolded and she could tell where she was just be the type of silence she heard.

I noticed years ago that sunlight is the same way. The type of sunlight you get coming through your window at 3:00 pm in June is not the same as the sunlight you see at 3:00 pm in November. I like to think I'm the only person who's ever noticed that. :-) And I think if somehow I lost my memory and didn't know what the date was, I could still tell what season it was by looking at the light.

The sunlight has been very fall-ish this past week. It's been easy to notice since I've been doing the same thing I've done all summer in the afternoon - sitting in the living room reading or killing time on facebook. The temperatures haven't cooled down a lot yet, except in the mornings, but out the window the sunlight just looks cooler.

I'm so excited for the temperatures to start dropping . . . this will be my first real fall since 2005!!! Spring is my favorite season, but I love fall too. The leaves crunching . . . the cold-but-not-cold-enough-for-a-jacket-ness . . . knowing all the end of the year holidays are practically here . . . I love it all.

(side note: it's halfway through September already?! What the crap?!?!?!?!?! Where did this year go?!?!?!?!?!?!)

The light changes in Florida too, but it's not the same. It's never chilly in the fall, so everyone is still wearing shorts and flip-flops. The leaves fall, but they don't dry enough to crunch, and even if they did it rains all the time anyway so they wouldn't. The seasons in Florida go something like: 1) spring-ish, 2) unbearably hot and constantly raining, 3) bearably hot and slightly less rainy, 4) icy cold one day and scorching the next. Even the cold isn't real cold - you can tell that it would be chilly but pleasant if the humidity would just drop under 30%. Can you tell I've missed having seasons?

I can't wait to show Luke what a real fall is like. And on that note, where's the best corn maze around here? And by best I mean, of course, the cheapest one in the valley. :-)

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You've probably seen this one, it made the rounds a while ago. But it never fails to make me laugh.

A Life-or-Death Rant

Okay, so this one's been building for a while (like, since I got back to Utah) but driving with Ashli finally pushed me over the edge.

What is with Utah drivers?! Seriously . . . why are so many of them so terrible, irresponsible, reckless, and inconsiderate?! The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Where does this "I pay my tithing, therefore I can run this red light" mentality come from? Is it pent up aggression from not telling people exactly what you think of them in church or what?

The thing I have the biggest problem with is how close people get when they stop behind you. As most of you know, I was in an accident of the rear-ended sort a few years ago. (10:00 pm the night before my 21st birthday by a drunk driver - how's that for a "don't drink, love God" unnecessary sign?) Ever since I've always kind of freaked out a little when the car in my rearview mirror gets too big too fast. I've actually started to stop a looooooong way back from the car in front of me so that when the car behind me get too close I can roll forward a little. Of course, it's not very effective since the idiot behind me almost always goes forward too, and usually ends up even closer to me than they were to begin with. Dude, I swear one of these days I'm going to feel someone bump me from behind because they got too close.

Why do people get so close at stoplights anyway? I mean, it's not like they've got to keep that close to keep someone else from cutting in line . . . and even if they did, how elementary school is that?! Can't they wait five more seconds to get where they're going? I don't get how these people can preach patience at the pulpit every Sunday and then me so incredibly impatient on the road the rest of the week. Utah has got to have the highest concentration of hypocrites in the world. (side note: the only time I really feel safe driving in Utah County is on Sunday.)

Driving with Ashli Friday was just plain terrifying. It was like a window into what it must be like inside the cars of drivers I loathe. She was drifting into the opposite lane, paying more attention to the radio than the road, and tailgating like there was no tomorrow - which is ironic, considering she was in the same accident I was. She tailgated one guy so bad I really thought we were going to hit them when he started tapping his breaks. It only took her almost a mile to get the hint and slow down. Needless to say, I don't plan on getting into a car with her again even if my life depends on it . . . in fact, especially not if my life depends on it.

On the surface it seems so weird that Utah of all places would be the crappy driver capital of the world. But I would rather be back in Orlando driving amid all the stupid lost tourons than in Provo with all the soccer moms and their stupid family window decals taking up the entire back window of their MAVs. Unless the tourons in Orlando have Utah plates. Then you'll see me heading for California.

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I hate twitter, but I can't stand the Jonas Brothers. Therefore, this clip is an epic win for Lacey. :-)

Well, That was Interesting . . . Yeah, I'll Stick with Interesting.

So I spent Labor Day weekend in Washington at my grandparents cabin. Luke couldn't get work off, so he spent it here in Logan. It was a lot lonelier than I thought it would be.

I did some calculating on the drive home. We were away from each other for about 78 hours. Not that much, right? Right . . . until you add the in the fact that that is the longest time we've gone without seeing each other since we met over two years ago. Between working together and always having something going on somewhere in the evenings, I don't think we went more than a day, maybe two without seeing each other the first four months we knew each other. Then we started dating . . . and of course we'd seen each other every single day since. So this weekend was kinda . . . something else. To say the least. I'm really glad to be back!!

It was a fun weekend, sort of. It rained the entire time. Well, Monday dawned bright and sunny. And we (Ashli, Team Jayla, and I) left at about seven. Cruel, cruel irony. On the bright side, I learned how to play pinnochle . . . although that's probably misspelled. And I always love going to Washington, no matter how rainy it is.

Anyway, point being - soooooooooooo not going to be doing the whole "separate vacations" thing that you hear about couples doing. At least not for quite some time. I did take a few pictures, I'll put them up on facebook sometime this week if anyone wants to see them.

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Well, I won't be using this website anytime soon!