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?