My new baby

This is what all the fuss was about.
Isn't she pretty? Adam is the best husband on the planet.

When we're rich and famous...

...and Adam is an internationally renowned opera singer, he's going to wear these to a performance. Really swanky tux, overall stunning appearance, made even more perfect by these cufflinks:How can we even contain the awesomeness? They're from an etsy shop, and I found them from a blog, but I don't remember which one.

Those poor reindeer

I've been thinking about holiday traditions (now who on earth does that around Christmas?). It occurred to me that my siblings and I were awful cruel as children, although we hope it was unwitting. For years, every Christmas eve, we would leave out a plate of cookies for Santa. One year, however, it occurred to us that Santa wasn't the one doing all the work. Those poor reindeer had to carry a sleigh around, while flying, and Santa just kept getting fatter as the night went on! Why aren't we feeding them instead? So, in addition to Santa's cookies (can't risk offending the big guy), we would leave 9 bowls of carrots out, one for each reindeer, with the expectation that they would have disappeared by the time we awoke. Next morning, sure enough, the cookies would be all but gone, as well as the carrots. Some of the bowls had the remains of a few of the vegetables, suggesting that they left in a hurry and couldn't quite finish. Clearly, the reindeer appreciated our thoughtfulness. Sometimes Santa even left a note thanking us for feeding his poor steeds.
The question is, did my parents actually eat all those carrots? Because if so, dang it. I'm sorry. Like I said, we were cruel children.


(my guess is they just went back in the fridge)

*image from schlerplotti.typepad.com, but they got it from somewhere, which got it from somewhere, which got it from somewhere...which got it from the movie . Man, I love that flick.

Mystified

This evening, in tearing apart my apartment, searching for a Christmas gift purchased over the summer and then stashed somewhere safe, I discovered a box of shoes, just my size, which I have no recollection of buying. I was kind of excited. Then I tried them on and realization dawned. The box contains two shoes, but both of them are right.

Does anyone know of someone who could use them?

A quirk, not a quark

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

As promised, an Adam oddity coming right up.

Every once in a while, you'll be talking to Adam, when he'll break eye contact and instead look closely at a spot on your face, squint a little, look confused, or concerned, or something, and then snap out of it and return to normal conversation. It's not a tic, or a spasm, he just likes to bug people by driving them a little bit insane. It works on me. In fact, you might say that it sends me bonkers. After that, I can't focus, or talk. My hands go to my face, convinced that there's a horribly disfiguring blot or something (yes, I'm vain like that). I have to go find a mirror.

I'll try to capture this on film so you can have a visual. To tell the truth, I did try to find an image online that somehow conveys the disquieting nature of this look, but what do you google for that? Concerned looking closely? Faces looking confused? Not so much.

I really, really like this guy named Adam

...in case you haven't figured that out yet. However, sometimes he thinks that I only post his oddities on this blog, instead of all his good parts. As I've discovered some quirks of his that are too good not to post, I'm getting on his good side by writing a glowing description of the love-of-my-life before I get to the fun stuff.
I'm a fan of the blog Cupcakes take the Cake, although they publish somewhere in the ballpark of 803 posts a day, which is overwhelming for my already over-stressed brain. This might seem out-of-character for me, since baking has never been a strong point, but eating is, so it's all good. Some of their photos just make me drool. On last Monday, the 15th of December (or maybe the Ides of December. Does that work?), they announced National Cupcake Day. What's not to love? I mentioned it to Adam, with a proposition for cupcake-making later in the day, but with finals and everything, we didn't get around to it (did I mention that last week was not so good? Finals=bleh). The next day was a rough one for me, lots of stressors, and my Econ finals approaching were filling me with an unshakeable feeling of impending doom. Adam went on an essentials-only shopping trip, which turned out to be a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, cupcake liners, and chocolate frosting. "Why don't we make some of those cupcakes? It's a day late, but they should still count." Isn't he sweet? I think I'll keep him.

Discovery

I just learned how to post-date a post. Therefore, this post was written on Saturday, and it will not appear until Sunday, which is pretty spiffy.

Recently, my younger, morally-opposed-to-blogging, brother, Steven, berated me for not posting enough. Apparently, the least I can do for my "die-hard fans" like him (his words, not mine), is post more often. The problem is that I don't have anything to write, or I've forgotten what I was going to write by the time I snag a few minutes to pour thoughts onto the computer screen (you didn't think this was anything but a stream-of-consciousness blog, did you?) in a somewhat comprehensible form, or that I think it's too boring to post without pictures too often, etc., etc. My sister, Katie, described me as a sporadic blogger, meaning that I post a lot when I choose to, but in between it's just crickets. So, instead of posting multiple random thoughts at a time, maybe from this point on I will just post-date any posts beyond one that I write at a time, and then you guys will think that I'm all on top of things and doing the daily posting thing (haha, suckers!).

Update on Secrets

Remember this post? I found out what it was that Adam was plotting. My Christmas present! Months early! Now, it seems, the thing that he was scheming about has found its way to the virtually non-existent pile of presents under our tree (that we got yesterday because Katie and Sterling went to California and gave us theirs! HUZZAH!) with my name on it. And I'm still going crazy. En serio. He keeps giving me little hints. Here's what I know about this gift:

• According to Adam, it will be the best present I've ever gotten, with the possible exception of my engagement ring/wedding ring.
• It will make me want to have children (??? (by the way, I do want kids)).
• You can buy it on Ebay (I have never spent much time on Ebay, so I originally thought this was more of a hint than it actually is. Bonnie: "But you can't buy, say, a piano on ebay!" Adam: "Yes you can." Bonnie: "Oh. Dang."
• There are new and old versions of this gift.
• It is not made of titanium, and is breakable.

I just don't know what to make of it. Without the last hint (just today), I thought...a trip to Disneyland? You know, there's the old Disneyland, but then there's California Adventure, which is new. I just... don't know.


*image from stillsearching.wordpress.com

So on top of things

I'm not the most organized person in the world. Seriously. As a result, it's 5 days before Christmas and I have barely started my Christmas shopping. Even Adam's presents aren't all bought (or they haven't arrived. Crossing my fingers!). Slackface am I. If you read this blog and know that I'm supposed to give you a gift in a few days time, just write a quick suggestion in the comments. Wouldn't that be nice?P.S. Remind me to tell you about the 12 days of Christmas.

*image from www.aolcdn.com

Seasonal Sounds

The feeling that Christmas is coming never hits until finals are over. This year, that wasn't until 10:00 am yesterday (read: Having 7am finals on the last two days of the week is a royal pain). But now it's here, and I'm loving it.

Every year, my great-grandma Casper has her Christmas party a few days before the actual holiday, so that all members of her posterity don't have to choose between it and other holiday festivities. Last night, we attended. The party is the same every year. Same menu. Same program. Same people, just older, and possibly with different significant others. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. I still don't know how Grandma Casper and Grandma Barnett (with the help of Grandpa Barnett) manage to make enough food to feed us all. This year, the guest list had 1 great-grandma, 2 grandparents, 5 of their 6 children, 2 spouses, 20 of their 21 grandchildren, 2 spouses, and 1 boyfriend. I don't even want to add all those up. We eat in shifts because there simply is not enough space to fit us all.And then the real fun begins. Grandma Barnett is incredibly well-versed in all things classical music. She taught (and continues to teach) all her grandchildren piano lessons, and encouraged our parents to get us involved in other instrumental activities as well. We have the makings of a family orchestra, although some (or all of us) are not very good, and haven't touched our instruments in years. Instead of acting out the nativity story every year, Grandma has put together a musical program, with readings of scripture by the grandkids. The orchestra sits in the kitchen, competing for space and attention, and the few remaining attendees sit in the living room, listening through the open folding door (what do you call that thing? It's like what covers a baptismal font).

Highlights of this year's Christmas program:

• Rachel (the youngest grandchild) singing "plug my ears" at the top of her lungs while performing said act through the first few numbers.
• Clark echoing Steven's scripture reading through his trombone.
• My aunt Kathleen attempting to keep the tempo up using a banana baton.
• Clark, during his turn at the piano, choosing his own speed and leaving the orchestra in the dust, as well as laughing too hard to play.
• My Dad describing his version of hell: making you play in the family orchestra.
• Clark reading his scripture in some sort of accent, prounouncing mother as "mahtheh" and myrh as "Muh."

And a good time was had by all.
*image from neatorama.cachefly.net

Back off, girls!

Adam sang in church today and was AWESOME. I'm not even biased, I promise. It was so good, in fact, that all the men in our ward are having to work a little harder to keep their wives interested. Just kidding, but after church, a woman in our ward told us that during his performance, the guy from the couple next to them had leaned over to her husband and said, "Joe, you better step it up. All the women in the ward are going to be leaving their husbands for him. Heck, I'm thinking of leaving my wife for him."

Conversation following Katie's trip to my bathroom

Katie: "Bonnie, you have fancy shampoo.
Bonnie: I beg to differ. Adam has fancy shampoo.
Adam: Lies, we got that for our wedding.
Bonnie: Not that shampoo, the shampoo I found in one of your boxes. You take good care of your hair.
Adam: Oh, that? I probably stole that from my mom or something.
Bonnie: Really?
Adam: Maybe.
Katie: It's one hundred percent vegan.

I laughed. Maybe you had to be there.

Note to self

Starting a 10 page paper at midnight and finishing it 10 minutes before your class starts at noon is not a desirable way to live your life.

Bleary-eyed does not even begin to describe me right now.

Date Night

One of the great things about marriage is that you get to spend a lot of time together. For example, for our Friday night date, we went up to the Utah Symphony's performance of Mozart's Requiem. Adam's got a thing for Requiems. In an interesting juxtaposition, we came home and finished out our evening mopping up tainted water in our bathroom due to an unfortunate toilet overflow. Family. Isn't it about time?

How much do you value your life?

Adam says that if he had to choose between dying of starvation and cannibalizing, he would cannibalize. I find this horrifying. However, if he had to choose between dying of starvation and eating me (his wife), it would be a slightly more difficult to decide.

Discuss.

You may not like him, but try out this photo-essay.

Wow.

Okay, my blog-spurt is over. Maybe I'll post more tomorrow.

Keep clicking "Show More Images."

I was made for a life of leisure

I had a fabulous Thanksgiving break.

My recipe for perfect vacations:
Forget about school and work.
Just have fun.
Eat three scrumptious Thanksgiving dinners.

There are drawbacks to this perfection, namely arriving back in the real world with an annoying bump, made the more jarring by the extra pounds you gained from all the stuffing.

Based on the eats, Adam and I decided that certain recipes are necessary for our health and happiness (or maybe just the happiness):
My grandma's stuffing
My great-grandma's cranberry sauce
The infamous orange rolls (that take over your kitchen in a gigantic sticky gooiness)
Josie's key-lime pie
Brined turkey
Linda's experimental stuffing

I slacked and didn't take any pictures, not even of the fun Thanksgiving day with guitar hero at our cabin, but other people did. Maybe I'll post them. No promises.

Just call that break my two-week Thanksgiving vacation. I wish.

Bizarre dream Sunday morning:

Cruise ship.
In an economics class on the cruise ship.
Really large class in some type of indoor auditorium.
Someone's putting nuts in my hair.
I put the nuts on the floor and pigeons attack me to get at the nuts.
I hate pigeons.
Addendum: I hate pigeons when they're touching me.
Try to escape crazed pigeons by running up steps.
Apparently there's a restaurant in the class.
But no one goes.
They're too busy a) putting nuts in my hair or b) fighting off crazed pigeons.
I try to climb down off back (stern?) of the cruise ship and discover...
It's in space.
If I fall, I'll just keep falling.
Instead, I grab a zipline.
Zipline is hecka long.
It takes me inside the ship, to the set of a movie.
The family that they're filming asks if I'm all right and takes the nuts out of my hair.
The end.















Interpretations, anyone?

*Pigeon picture from here.

Bad Blogger Bonnie

It's been roughly two weeks since my last post. Blogging is an odd thing for me, where something happens, and I think, "I should blog about that," and then I forget what it was, but know it was awesome, so I don't blog, thinking I'll remember and then something else happens, and the same thing happens with that, so that's 2 awesome posts the internet is not graced with and so the cycle continues and I'm stuck in a vortex of not blogging. How's that for a run-on sentence. I'm leaving it. Just to bug you. Moving on.

Things that have happened that I considered blogging about but haven't gotten around to or forgot why they were so awesome to start with.

• Two really gorgeous photo essays I found
• The funeral of a bird. Can I play "Funeral March of a Marionette" even though Skitters/Kapeesch was no such thing?
• Freshman dorm reunion
• Finishing research papers. HUZZAH!
• Cannibalism and child-snatching
  
• Teresa tagged me. I know. I'll get there.
• I've got the makings of a really awesome ice cream post, but it's a daunting task.

But it's late. So these will wait. Right?

By the by...

Congratulations to President Obama!Did you see his acceptance speech? Now, that is what I call inspiring.

Sunday is a special day

This morning (yesterday, technically), late for church as usual, I asked Adam to help put together my bag of church essentials.

What I asked him to include:
Scriptures
Keys
Chapstick

What ended up in the bag:
My Bible (Oh, we're studying the Book of Mormon in Sunday School? Wheps)
Keys
A rape whistle Adam mistook for chapstick.

Well done, love. But thank you for helping out.

During sacrament meeting, after discovering my lack of preparedness for church, the ward primary program was announced. Whispers swept through the congregation. Now seriously, who doesn't love to watch itty-bitty, tone-deaf kidlums try to sing primary songs? The whole meeting was hilarious, in an "oh, how sweet!" kind of way. The funniness was increased by the fact that our primary only consists of 3 kids or so, and only one actually knew the words (or sang them). She liked the microphone quite a bit, and when one of her leaders tried to make it so we could hear one of the other kids, she'd nudge them out of the way until that microphone was all hers again. Oh, kids. Cute.

Love of Reading

I happen to love essays. Not essays I write, or essays for class, but essays that incredibly gifted writers infuse with their wit, sarcasm, and insight. Collections of essays are particularly nice. For example: Virginia Woolf's The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life, or Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. Once, when hanging out at my in-laws house, my husband suggested I read a bit from Gone to New York: Adventures in the City, and I quite enjoyed it. Today, the author visited BYU. Unfortunately, I slept in and missed most of the reading, but caught the end (the Complaints and Lamentations part). So funny. I suspect it would be more funny if I were actually a parent. Anyway, I'm going to have to keep my eye on the authors the English department invites for readings, because that's cool.

Interesting...

The very first blog I ever followed at all was the Freakonomics blog. I feel like the quality of this standard has gone down since then (too many authors, not enough spark), but I still read pretty often. I thought this post was a good one--confirmed what I always suspected.

Forgive the stupid expression on my face

I'm totally DROOLING over this blog. Oh my goodness.

Treat with a trick

Happy Halloween! Tonight I plan on trying out an intriguing purchase I made a couple weeks back. Orange hot chocolate. I haven't opened it yet, so I have no idea if it's actually orange, but that's the claim. Sounds interesante.

You learn something new everyday

Did I tell you about my discovery? I can cook! All my life I've been laboring under the delusion that the long list of my talents (ha ha) does not include the art of creating beautiful and delicious food. And then, all in one week, I made pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, pizza, southwestern chicken and rice, and chicken broccoli. All by myself. And all of the above were edible. I was proud.

You better be good, you better watch out

Halloween's in just a week, and in honor of the occasion, I give you...

...My Husband. Possible mental images at this point include the following: Ringwraiths, Death Eaters, The Grim Reaper, Dementors, the Angel of Death, one of those statue street performers, Darth Maul, etc. Go see the opera. Seriously.

Thoughts on Effort

"If we do only what is required of us we are slaves. The moment we do more, we are free." - Cicero

Interesting guy, that Cicero. He has a point. Maybe I should stop being a slacker in life.

Stranger than...

It's almost Halloween, so I'm allowed to post two creepy things in a row, right? Right. Now that that's established, I can tell you that I dream of having these mirrors.Seriously, how cool is that?

Morbid but fascinating

Similar to my fascination for cemeteries, I love these photos. I just wish I knew more about them.
I found them at this blog, who found them from flicker user Lemoox.

What do you think?

Love the quirky

I loved my sister's post about the pocket light-bulb, and have been on the look out ever since to find some fun gadget to post about. I found one, although it's more quirky than anything else. It's called the electronic bubble wrap keychain and when you hit one of the buttons it makes a little pop, just like the actual thing. My favorite feature might be that every hundredth time, it emits, not a bubble popping sound, but a random noise like a bark or a boing.

Observations on a Monday morning

One unfortunate side-effect of Zippy's flat tire is that I get to walk to work. Even if it happens to be 5:30 am. Fun, eh? Early mornings do funny things to me, and here were some thoughts going through my head as I braved the chill and the early hour:

• I passed 3 girls running and could've sworn one of them was a friend . But then I realized that she lives in PG now and there's absolutely no way she'd be up at 5:30 running. Silly me.
  
• I passed the freshman dorms and was horrified to hear voices from the lighted window of one of their kitchens. Why a couple freshman boys would choose to be up at the unholy hour of 5:30 is beyond me (isn't there some type of Mormon weekend-hangover?).
  
• Two cars were parked right outside my building, where no cars had a right to be. They were running, and their lights were on. It looked suspicious/sinister. I was scared they were going to run me down. And then a person followed me into the building (without a key). I'm sure they were up to no good. If any mischief occurs today, I know who's responsible.
• My fashion suffers in the wee hours of the morn, especially when our laundry situation is particularly desperate. I'm wearing black socks and brown shoes. Dang it.
• The custodians were vacuuming when I was trying to record my first voice tracks. It was picking up on the mic. Don't they know that if they wait until 5:30, they've missed their chance? Come on dudes, you're throwing off my groove.
• As mentioned previously, my mind does some funny things in the morning, like convincing me that I missed a midterm last week. I was a tad panicked for a few minutes.
  
• I could've sworn that Peter VandeGraff (how DO you spell his name?) was playing the Lord of the Rings soundtrack this morning when I walked into the studio.
• The BBC news gets a little gruesome sometimes. I don't need to know about the gay British man who killed his lover and then cooked and ate him. Thanks, though.
• There's going to be a meteor shower tomorrow morning in the hours before dawn! I'll actually be up (and walking to work) at that point in my life.
• The first piece I played in my shift was Pavane by Gabriel Faure. I love that piece.
  

*images from frugalyankee.com, farm3.static.flickr.com, cowart.info.

Shameless husband promotion

Don't like opera? You should give it a chance. Like this week at BYU. That husband of mine does a tremendously good job. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll get scared out of your skin, and you will revel in the beauty that is Mozart's music. The opera: Don Giovanni. It's about a bad guy who gets punished for his deeds. Good family values. Adam plays Leporello, Don Giovanni's servant/sidekick. Really, he's the comic relief. But, if you want to see him in that part you have to go on Friday, October 24th. You could also see him in the part of Il Commendatore, a.k.a. the old guy who dies in a duel and then comes back as a statue and drags Giovanni down to hell. That could be fun too, right? That's on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, the 21st, 23rd, and 25th. Both parts are really great, but Leporello is the big one (90 minutes of Italian singing, how does he do it?!). There weren't any really good pictures of Adam online, but here's a look at some of the cast members. Adam's over in the corner wearing the glasses.

P.S. Tuesday is technically a dress rehearsal, so tickets are half-off. Sweet.

In other news, check this out. I thought it was fun.

*Image from byunews.byu.edu, by Mark A. Philbrick

How could I have forgotten to blog about marching band?

I am a nerd. No questions asked. When wallowing in my nerd-dom, I sometimes like to do tremendously nerdy things like go to marching band shows. On a cold night, you go to a football stadium and watch high schoolers walk (some call it marching) around the field playing music. Fun, eh? No, really, it is! And, I apologize in advance for the bad quality of these photos. We were high up! It was dark! My camera doesn't zoom well! It sometimes decides to focus on things other than the foreground! Give me a break.

To summarize:

• My younger sister's school swept the awards for their division. HUZZAH (and, P.S., why does Laura always have to be cooler than me?)! And I forgot to take pictures. DANG! But those lines were straight, those toes were high, those flanks were sharp, those flags were in sync, those crescendos were effective, and everyone there was in awe. The pictures here are of a different school with the same colors - same dif, right?
• Some schools choose themes for their shows. One school: Braveheart. So awesome, is all I have to say. Besides the fact that one of the colorguard pretended to die and was carried off the field by a male member of the colorguard, who then charged back onto the field with his wooden sword to avenge her wrongs.
• Another school's theme: The Island. The colorguard were dressed like savages. And acted like it. Lord of the Flies, anyone?
• I believe that it is illegal, in the state of Utah, to march with a bassoon. Tragedy of my life. However, some schools find ways to get around that (yes, this picture was taken through the lens of some binoculars. I've got mad skillz).
• I saw a baritone bite the dust...grass. I felt vindicated. Those things are HEAVY and your center of mass is not where it normally is.
• All of my siblings were there and it was a blast.

See? Quite fun.

*the bands pictured are not necessarily the ones mentioned.

Oh, the Trauma!

I'm never driving again. The lack of power steering is one thing, but when your car starts making noises similar to those a cow would produce if he were trapped under your vehicle, things have gone too far. Why me? The car always behaves perfectly when Adam takes it for a spin, even if it's missing a rather crucial piece of its anatomy (ask Adam what the most important step to changing the oil is). All I wanted was to head out to see my lovely friend Lu before she heads out to serve a mission for our church (by the way, she's going to be a positively wonderful missionary). And our car, lovingly christened Zippy, was not up to the challenge. I felt like Madeleine's Miss Clavel, thinking, "Something is not right," as I drove through a light and the rumbling/grinding/shaking/bumping started.In this wonderful age of cell phones, Adam was just a call away, ready to soothe my fears and laugh at my cow analogy. After many predictions of a more dire nature, we discovered that a flat tire (unrelated to any bovines) was the simple cause of my woes. Adam got it changed pretty quickly (cause he's handy like that) and all is well. Other than the fact that we can't drive until we get a new tire. And I'm never driving again.

*images from milchkleid.de and lockportslugline.files.wordpress.com.

Owllike life

I used to think I was an insomniac. New conclusion: Bonnie is nocturnal. Night is simply put, a much better time to be awake. Or perhaps I'm just trying to convince myself that it was a good idea to sleep from 2-7 today. PM. Either way, the job required me to be up, alert, and perky-sounding at 5 this morning, so I slept all afternoon. It felt good. Owls aren't so bad.

Anglophilia

My new favorite blog:

londondailyphoto.blogspot.com

Lovely London.

Lotsa Love

I love:

• going to work in my slippers.
• coming home from work while it's still early morning (still in my slippers).
• arriving at a toasty warm apartment (free heat, HUZZAH!).
• fresh-baked banana bread for breakfast.
• curling up in bed with a good book and reading/sleeping my morning away.

I wish:

• My husband could have been there to curl up in bed with me.

At least they had fun, right?

Warning: It is far too early for anyone named me to be awake. Please forgive potential incoherence.

I discovered a pet peeve yesterday. Let me set the scene. Nearly empty parking lot. A lone black car sitting innocently in its stall, the back still proclaiming proudly, "Just Married." Bon and her sibs strolling towards said car, unaware that the gamble of parking in 30 minute parking for 40 minutes had ended badly. They stop and stare at a malicious parking attendant walking away from the little Nissan. Yes, the university police felt the need to ticket a car occupying a spot with very little interest to other beings on the planet. No one else needed that space. The demand was low, the supply was high. Economics dictates that the price of my spot was low. Very low. Lower than the price of my parking ticket. Drat you university police for ignoring common sense. If the entire parking lot is empty, why bother being such sticklers? Those extra ten minutes didn't inconvenience anyone. To sum up: My new pet peeve is parking attendants who seem to have lost the ability to look at a situation logically.

No, seriously, I wasn't that bugged, but...hey. It's the principle of the thing. Righteous indignance (a redundant phrase, by the by, and grammatically incorrect) was called for.

I may have exaggerated just a tiny bit. There were a few other cars parked in that particular lot, evidenced by the fact that when I was pulling out, I got the Nissan wedged between the two, in a way that I couldn't escape without an approximately 11-point turn. Curse you my lack of power steering and weak little arms. I'm such an awesome driver. My siblings got a laugh out of that one - at least they had fun, right?

*image from safetycoatings.com

Hallowentine's Day

Seeing plump orange gourds of varying shapes and sizes at Macey's today reminded me of October's awesomeness. Approximately one year ago, I spent my hours at work either (a) talking with this cute guy who was totally safe because he had a missionary, or (b) over analyzing the actions of said cute guy because let's face it, I was hooked. Pumpkins relate, I promise. Cute guy asked me out a couple times in October and by Halloween, we had decided to embrace what was hitting us over the heads with a large stick and are now happily married. So...Halloween is a really great day (regardless of the fact that All Hallow's Eve definitely has some death associations). So much so, that I have to smile when I see pumpkins. Just a few days after our Halloween date, we carved pumpkins. I must say that our pumpkins spank your pumpkins, unless you typically carve in various modern art styles. I was Cubism. He was Minimalism.
We plan to make this a tradition. Any ideas for the theme of this year's pumpkins?

By the way, the top painting is by Picasso, The Guitar Player, followed by Piet Mondrian's Composition No. 10.

*images from aftonapple.com, abstractart.20m.com and wikipedia.org

So'western Chicken'n'rice

You know how childhood meals hold a special place in your heart, but often aren't actually that good? You make them later and wonder what on earth you were thinking as a child? Southwestern Chicken and Rice is not one of those meals. My mom used to make huge batches of this which we'd gobble down (my brother would fill an entire dinner plate just with swc&r and shovel it down his gullet, which became a tradition that my younger brother tried to emulate. I don't recall whether this attempt was successful). If we had enough leftover, I would subsist on swc&r and swc&r alone for days on end. Ahh, bliss.

Ever since my sister and I started our dinner group, we've been longing to make it again. We had to know if the greatness was just in our child heads. Today we discovered that it was not.

Southwestern Chicken and Rice
4 boneless, skinless Chicken breasts, cut in chunks
2 cups water
1 cup salsa
1 pkg Taco Seasoning Mix
2 cups uncooked Minute rice
1 cup black beans, drained
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Bring chicken, water, salsa, and taco seasoning mix to boil. Stir in rice and beans. Sprinkle with cheese. Cover. Simmer for 5 minutes. Serve with sour cream (or not).

The sour cream is totally bogus. Never have we eaten this with sour cream. I suspect it's just for looks because the image of this mess in your pot will not be appearing in any cooking mags anytime soon.

Oooh, and totally easy, by the way. It only took me 15 minutes or so. No wonder Mom fed us this so much.

Still Dancin'

My great-grandmother turned 95 this week......and can still dance the Charleston.

The money says it all

I've been learning about some stuff. Like Economics. Considering that that's what I'm studying. Interesting junk, that Economics. Like the following: studies have shown that increasing a person's income does not increase self-reported happiness. The exception is if the person started in extreme poverty. And now for the grand question: Given this information, what are we doing here?
The 'we' used above could refer to many groups.
a. The entire human race, at least those already living at a comfortable level (above poverty). Often, the point of our lives seems to be to get more money, so we can be happier. But if we won't...what's the point?
b. My fellow economists and I who spend our lives trying to figure out how to make people richer, and how to maximize 'utility' (which is not, under any circumstances, happiness).
c. Just me, trying to earn a little cash, plugging along, searching for happiness, which money doesn't bring. Great

So...what now? I want to help people get to the initial happiness level. Conquer world poverty. Can I do that as an economist? I guess I'll see.

*image from kellypettit.wordpress.com

Extreme Doodling

I know that of the 6 or so of you who actually look at this blog now and then, 4 already know of the amazingness that is jacksonpollock.org . If not, take a look (Hint: Clicking could be fun).

Stop and smell the roses

On my list of loves is learning new skills. My sister (wait, there are no posts on that blog? Maybe someone should fix that), with her mad cake-decorating skillz, taught me how to make gorgeous roses out of fondant in anticipation of our great-grandmother's 95th birthday bash. It turns out that these little suckers are the result of quite the long process. You make the fondant, color the fondant, roll out the fondant, use cookie cutters to cut out a basic flower shape (3 of them, in fact), and then the fun begins.
























Not that we're proud or anything, but we were pleased with the results. The cupcakes reminded me of cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com .

*Blogger is driving me bonkers - is there any way to make this column wider?