Holy cheese

Yes, I believe cheesy is the perfect word here.



oh man, the constitution is hanging by a thread people!

The meanie gotcha journalist gets me every time...

And you know, when faced with evil gun-toting liberals (wait a minute...), the best defense is a good ol' fashioned slingshot.

Anyway, I'll stop my sarcasm now.

Folk hymn

This is crazy.

I was doing some research for our ward's Easter program (yes, I need to plan that far in advance) and there's a French hymn that I like that talks about going to a garden to pray, etc. and I thought it was very fitting for easter right?

I just saw the most ginormous meteorite ever. I even heard it for goodness' sake! Holy cow!

Life happens

I thought this was a powerful ad.



That's all.

In my inbox today

Round trip for two people from Las Vegas to Paris:

$1698.38

Per person:

$849.19

On top of that, we got it with Air France, which means we both get bonus miles. Woohoo! Thank you, thank you. I'd like to thank my parents, who have taught me to be financially responsible and to learn the value of patience and savings. Mark Davis, for amusing me with hours of trip planning, Lydia cherie chou who helped me think out-of-the-box, and Adam and Sho just for inspiring me to go foreign. And be cheap. I don't know which one of those comes first. Probably the cheap part.

Andrew

Quick question

I'd love it if you'd take the time to answer my poll to the left up there

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I'm toying around with the design, etc. and I want to make sure the loading isn't completely obnoxious.

Thanks!

New stuff

Check out this week's Who What When Where Why!

Driving education and dmv in general is severely, severely underfunded...

Singin' in the rain, and other musical awesomeness

An all-time favorite....


French style!
Ignore the video, it's awkward to watch people recording songs.




Nora Arnezeder behind the scenes.

Chinese mom

If you haven't heard about this book yet, you probably will soon.

It's caused quite the uproar. The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother reveals what the author claims is Asian-american kids' true reason for success: the "Chinese mom." Her main argument is that Americans have failed because they are too soft on their kids and care too much about feelings, whereas "Chinese mothers" are authoritarian and more focused on results. It looks like tons of fun, and from the excerpts I've seen, it's also quite funny. And who knows, she may just be onto (on to?) something. The world doesn't do kids any favors the moment they leave the home... Although after reading this review, I may just change my mind. Wow. Scathing. Although I still want to read it just to see who's right.

Also, I learned the origin behind the term "soap opera" today:

Pasta continued

Well it turned out pretty dang well if you ask me!

made my dough, let it sit for a while, rolled it out nice and thin...

France

We have our tickets! and here's the best part: Andrew is so awesome he managed to find two tickets for the price of about one normal-priced tickets. Woohoo! I'm really starting to get excited!

Pasta!

I am a pasta lover. Farfalle, gnocchi, macaroni, fettuccine, you name it--I love it. Actually my least favorite is spaghetti... I'd take Capelli d'Angelo (Jourdan, aren't you proud of me?) over that any day.

French people love pasta almost as much as Italians--which is probably why we tend to get along quite well.
Except during the world cup. Grrr.

Even when I have no idea what I'm going to make for dinner, I typically put some water to boil without even thinking about it. So today, I'm making my Marco Polo pasta (a rip-off of Guru's version) for our good friends tonight and I'm thinking... I want to try my hand at fresh, homemade pasta!

It's so expensive to buy it fresh, and for goodness' sake it's only flour, water and some egg--it shouldn't be that much! So here goes, I'll keep you updated on my success--or failure.

Here are a few recipes I've found so far:

Gnocchi

Pasta dough

Now all I need is one of those nifty pasta roller add-ons for the kitchen-aid! Ooh, and a ravioli maker!

So, are any of you experienced pasta-makers with tips for me?

Girls night out (in)

Awww yay a FLSR reunion... sigh. I miss these girls.

Miss Cassi (ok, she's actually been married for over a year now but I still think Miss Cassi sounds better... it's an alliteration thing :) graced us with a visit from China, where she is currently exiled. Of course, it was a fantastic excuse to get together, plus our awesome sister missionaries got to show off their mad skills!

Ukulele playing

Asian photo-taking 

I'm terribly jealous... Oh well, I have no one to blame but myself.

You know what else I missed?

the bloggernacle

Very interesting article!

Back in business

Ok, here it is.... my first day back to the newsroom in months.
Things went pretty smoothly, minus the stumble in french, but oh well.

My intonations were so bizarre in french, I'm going to have to practice on that--I've been training in English for so long that I'm applying English intonations to a Latin language, and that's just wrong. Oh well.

English:


French:


Excusez le petit blocage au début... le téléprompteur me jouait des tours! C'était une première pour moi de le faire en français, donc j'entends des tonnes d'intonations américaines, j'y travaillerai au cours du semestre. À force de m'entrainer en anglais... voilà quoi!

Don't judge, it's been a while...

Going back

I'm going back to the newsroom tomorrow...

and I can't wait!

Bookcase and dresser... rainbow style!

I just went around the apartment this morning reorganizing and throwing away junk, and I'll tell you, it was about time... But my favorite parts are right here:

Dresser and books organized by color!

Can you tell I do a lot of non-colors?

The little basket above the bookcase is what I call "containment": stuff piles up there anyway, so why fight it... just stick a basket there and it instantly looks better!

Christmas vacation

It was so wonderful to go to Andrew's parents' house for 10 FULL DAYS, probably the longest break I've had in a long time. I had to telecommute some, but it wasn't nearly too bad. It was great in fact. And we had such a good time.

Our cute nephew had a great Christmas; he's really into Toy Story right now, so he got Toy Story (and Cars) themed everything! And let me tell ya, it's so much more fun with kids around on Christmas morning.

His parents came up with the clever idea to stage quite the scene. You see, he opened all his gifts and there was a Woody doll, but no Buzz. He had been hoping to get Buzz, but he didn't show his disappointment too much, until his mom asked him if he was sad not to have gotten Buzz. "Yeah..."

So we finish up and then someone says "let's open the blinds, it's pretty dark in here."

Lo and behold, we looked out the window and:

You see, Buzz had fallen out of Santa's sleigh and busted out of his box (in the background) in his attempt to get to his new kid on Christmas morning! Basically, it was awesome.

We also launched air pressure rockets

Skyped with my family back home

Did plenty of cooking, movie-watching, reading, spent family time, and got cool new clothes

I got some awesome reporter clothes, which I will show off as soon as I start anchoring WWWWY! I'm also taking a broadcast performance class in which we'll be practicing anchoring, so that'll be tons of fun. Where else do you get to do make-up seminars?! :)

Oh, and we took a sunrise flight back, as evidenced by the orange on our faces and our lackluster expressions...

I will say though: it's so much better than the Greyhound...

Blog book?

I just read this post over at "Or so she says" and I'm pretty excited about it.

She essentially explains how she made her blog into a photo book using blurb, and I can't wait to get started. I've always wondered how I could preserve everything I've done with this blog, because it really has been the most consistent of my records. (My journal doesn't get much attention...) While I do think I need to write more in my journal, I love using this blog as a record of events and coming and goings, and some of my thoughts on life. I think that a journal could be more useful as a recording of spiritual impressions and revelation, and so I guess this is one of my goals for this year: I'm in a D&C religion class and all of this talk of revelation has really got me thinking. I also have a theory on Joseph Smith, but I'll talk about that later because right now I have to get to class!

And thanks for reading, for those of you who do. It's nice to not be a voice in the wilderness too often.

I also need to get in on this...

My friend the writer

A friend of mine from back in the FLSR just so happens to be an excellent writer. He recently posted this short story entitled "Sanctification" which is just awesome, so I had to share.

Check it out here

And here's an excerpt:

Though muffled by distance and tinted Escalade windows, the crowd’s angry chants were still distinct. Maria closed her eyes and breathed in. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. She exhaled. Charlotte regarded her with folded arms.

“I still advise against this, you know. There are other ways.”

“There are other ways,” said Maria, “but there are not better ways. No guts, no glory, you know.”

With a lithe forefinger, Charlotte swept back a single bit of loose hair and tucked it back with the rest. “Yes, well, if you want to be a goddess, you’ll need to come up with some original platitudes.”

“A little Gibran, a little Nietzsche, and I’m set. No one reads them anymore anyway. Everyone will think I made it up.”

Charlotte reached over and squeezed Maria’s hand. “Please don’t do this.”

Maria raised the slender hand to her lips and kissed it. “I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be worried.”

“What if you lose your memory?”

“I’m satisfied with what we saw from the test subjects.”

“Six out of seven. That may be good, but it isn’t amazing.”

[...]

Read the rest here!

Happy new year

...et bonne année!

Andrew and I celebrated the new year doing what we love most: dancing! We went to his old dance studio here in Las Vegas where he took some lessons before going on his mission, and about 20 people (mostly middle-aged women and a some men of all different ages) where there. It wasn't a big fancy event but it was lively enough, and it was nice to go out just the two of us and dance for pure enjoyment's sake. I had to share Andrew though, all the little ladies wanted in on the fun :)

I've already stated on Facebook that I won't be making any new year's resolutions, for one because I never keep them anyway, and for two because I already have goals and don't feel the need for new ones. I need to keep focusing on what I'm trying to accomplish and not let myself get carried away by day-to-day things. I've already quit team, so here's to simplifying!

Oh here's a funny story: one of the ladies came up to us and told us about how she had been on a cruise where people were celebrating their 30, 40, even 50 year anniversaries and she was just amazed at how long those people had been married. And then she said "I can tell you two will be one of those."

I guess we're doing something right.