bond, james bond

lest you think that all tommy and i think about is dane (okay, you're right, it is), here's something else we've been doing recently: we're on a james bond movie-watching spree. RANDOM FACT ABOUT ME: i'd never seen a james bond movie before watching skyfall over thanksgiving break in the outer banks with alec and sarah. tommy stayed home with dane, but they watched several other ones that wes had brought late at night (while i was sleeping) and we both got just enough of a taste of 007 that we wanted to start watching them. so now we've watched eleven of them (without paying for any of them--thank you durham county library!) and we're planning on watching the rest of them. it's kind of a fun entertainment project for us to work on. we're keeping a list of our favorites in order and then by the end, we'll be able to rate them all.

some thoughts:

-we both think the daniel craig ones are the best. but i just think they're a totally different type of movie--you can't even really compare them to the classic ones.
-other than daniel craig, i like sean connery the best. i'm not a huge roger moore or pierce brosnan fan.
-i had NO IDEA how cheesy and punny the movies were before i started watching them! people made them sound like they were all serious film-type movies, but all the one-liners and cheesy seductions that bond throws out really make me laugh. in the classic bond movies, he seriously seems just like a teenager with a gun sometimes.

text text text

of all the texts i send, maybe half of them are to tommy. possibly two-thirds. my texting inbox is almost full, and i have 277 texts from him sitting in there as i speak (type).

i remember the first time i texted tommy. it was in early, early 2008--right at the beginning of winter semester. sarah and i were switching out of an unsatisfactory religion class and remembered him telling us how excited he was about his professor for d&c, so i sent him a text asking who his professor was.

we'd never gone on a date; we'd never really talked or flirted or anything at this point. it still felt pretty bold to text this cute guy without ever having him text me first, but i felt pretty safe because i really just wanted to get a recommendation on a professor.

and it took him about three hours to respond. which is AGES in texting time! i felt almost foolish responding to his text.

but i asked him another question, maybe about what time his class was, and it took him another three hours to respond.

that's how our texting conversations always went in the beginning--he took FOREVER to get back to me, which is exactly the opposite of how texting is supposed to go.

we figured it all out and sarah and i actually added tommy's same class. and a few weeks later we went on our first date. and the rest is history!

later, after we were actually dating, and he responded to my text messages in a much more timely manner, i found out that he would use a "delayed-response" setting in his phone to send texts. he'd get a text message and respond, but he'd set it so that it wouldn't be sent for two or three hours, so that he didn't seem too eager and so that he did seem really busy (and important).

i'm sorry, but that still cracks me up. what a smooth operator he was (and still is, as a matter of fact).

New Rules for Living

1. If you drive in the fast lane and drive at or below the speed limit, and have a long line of impatient cars stuck waiting behind you, the Giant Magnet of Death will pick up your car and deposit it on the side of the road.
2. If you leave your blinker on for miles without noticing it, your license will be revoked.
3. Pedestrians are allowed to either jaywalk intelligently or cross at the crosswalk while the walk sign is on. Stupid jaywalkers are banned.
4. No persons of any age or social class will be allowed to pay with a check at any place where a debit card may suffice.
5. All baby names will be subjected to the Baby Name Review Board before being assigned to a child. The Baby Name Review Board will be headed by me. All stupid names will be rejected.
6. Email forwards no longer exist.
7. Smoking in ALL public areas is banned.
8. Guns are banned. All people who own guns can move to Texas and secede from the United States.
9. Celebrity magazines that have stories about reality TV celebrities that I've never heard of are banned.
10. Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are banished.
11. Checked bags are once again free of charge, and airplane flights are half-priced forevermore.
12. All people who write anything, ever, will be forced to take basic grammar tests before they are allowed to use a computer. Anyone who cannot tell the difference between you're/your and their/they're/there are banished.
13. All Facebook users who post about political topics will immediately have their accounts deleted forever.
14. People who use British spellings without actually being British are not allowed.
15. Hashtags (except when used in their proper Twitter function ONLY) and emoticons are abolished. (example: :( #becausetheyarestupid).
16. The Mommy Wars are over. So are endless feuds between Democrats and Republicans. All people will be able to talk about these issues intelligently and compassionately.
17. Grocery store wheelchair carts are only allowed to be used by people with legitimate disabilities. People who use them because they are obese must use regular carts.
18. Cowboy hats are banned. So are those stupid little lap dogs that women carry in their purses.
19. All fruits will always be delicious and in season all year round, particularly peaches.
20. Shipping and handling will always be included in the price of the online item being purchased, so that it's not a surprise when you're buying at the end.
21. Apple is not allowed to release any new operating systems for five years.

(Inspired by Bill Bryson's "Rules for Living" from I'm a Stranger Here Myself)

like and dislike

LIKE:

i am in love. IN LOVE. with the santa monica farmer's market. it has such good produce there, and it's helping to satisfy my sudden cravings for ALL THE FRESH FRUIT IN THE WORLD. all i want to eat is fruit, all day long. i am chris farley in the french fries skit, only with nectarines.

unfortunately, i just am not a fan of the "fruit" they are selling at albertson's. (yeah, check out that sarcasm i loaded in those punctuation marks. take that, albie's!) i mean, how hard is it to get a good nectarine at the grocery store? VERY HARD, apparently. this is where the farmer's market saves me. i bought about 20 nectarines yesterday, and they are already gone. now i have to wait until next week's farmer's market.

DISLIKE:

does anyone have a BB gun that they might let me borrow? i'm going to use it to shoot the crow-like bird that camps out outside our apartment and squawks like a run-over jack-in-the-box all. day. long. it's not regular crow cawing--it is infinitely worse, punctuated about once a minute with a prolonged squeak. getting the BB gun was even tommy's suggestion.

random good things

i taught my last class of english 101 ever last night. technically, i CANCELED my last class of english 101 ever, because it's supposed to be tomorrow, but i wanted to give them extra time on their final papers. therefore, i'm done teaching AND my students LOVE ME for extending their deadline and canceling class. win win all around.

*****

i went to my second-to-last class of grad school ever last night. while we were walking out the door, one of the girls in the class, who i'd never really talked to before, told me, "i just wanted to tell you that i've thought all semester--you're extremely beautiful!"

wow, what an ego booster right there! i didn't know what to say, other than thanks and returning the compliment. we ended up chatting for a while about being pregnant (she had a baby the third week of the semester and was back at school the next week--wowza).

*****

we went in to renew our apartment contract this morning, and as we were signing the endless pages, we chatted with the two ever-so-friendly employees who we've gotten to know over the last two years of living here. we told them we were moving to santa monica for the summer, and one was practically screaming in excitement because of her undying love for santa monica. we then told them i was graduating, and they were so excited again. and THEN we told them we were having a baby in the fall, and they were both practically jumping for joy and shouting all over the office. it was pretty fantastic--and nice to have random acquaintances so happy for all of our good news.

*****

i took a bath last night and while i stared at my bare stomach, i could actually see the baby kicking and moving my skin, over and over again. i don't care what you say (is it too early?), it REALLY WAS. and it was pretty freaking amazing. baby pele the kicker.

*****

the big wedding is in 9 days. my graduation is in 17 days. we leave to drive across the country in 19 days (and we are planning on hitting up graceland and the grand canyon on our way there).

we are so lucky!

FAKES-ican stack

we had planned to have mexican stack for dinner. a murphy family favorite, going back to the wisdom and crowd-planning skills of grandma murphy. rice on the bottom, chips, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, all sorts of deliciousness. it's a super-easy and super-satisfying dinner.

i got home from school right at 6:00. and tommy was walking out the door for his violin lesson, not to return for another hour and a half.

i convinced him that i didn't have the energy to make the meal all by myself, and promised i would wait for him before starting to make dinner. (i am so nice.)

at 7:30 sharp, he got home.

"hey, dear," he said, walking through the door. "oh, shoot. we should have started the rice a long time ago."

oops. mistake number 1. rice takes about 35 minutes longer than the rest of the meal.

i closed out of my scintillating game of spider solitaire (hey, i'm a busy, important person) and we started making our dinner--tommy belatedly started the rice. i began shredding cheese. tommy browned the hamburger. i chopped the grape tomatoes.

"hmmmm," said tommy. "we don't have any stewed tomatoes to go with the meat."

oops. mistake number 2. grandma murphy-style mexican stack involves a thick, soup-y mix of the meat and tomatoes that goes excellently on your rice. so all we had was some meat, which was fine. but not what we'd planned. we didn't even have an onion to go with the meat because the smell of chopped onion makes me throw up, so it's not worth it to even bother.

tommy pulled out the lettuce. i opened the fridge.

"hey," i said. "we don't have any salsa."

oops. mistake number 3. how can you have mexican stack without any salsa?

it was still pretty delicious, but it wasn't really mexican stack.

and we had to wait a good half-hour after everything else was ready to eat it until the rice was done.

not a great feat of cooking genius, let me tell you.

scrabble masters!

tommy and i have spent every evening of this last week playing scrabble.

i had never played scrabble using the points before. for some reason, i had it in my mind that it would be TOO CONFUSING. it's not--it took tommy one second to explain it to me. actually, i think i just actually looked at the board for the first time and figured it out on my own.

tommy has beaten me every time (except one). it's kind of like when we went through a chess phase--he always wins. no matter how many excellent words i get on all the right spaces (hello, EXAMINERS?), tommy gets more. although the rules say that "a good player will get a score between 300 and 400 points"--and tommy's only gotten in that range once. (i haven't ever.) so i guess neither of us really qualifies as good players. we're working on it.

it's much better than ACTUALLY working, heaven forbid.

tagged

lauren busby tagged me in her blog post doing this, and i am procrastinating grading. love it.

1. post these rules

2. post 11 random things about yourself

3. answer the questions provided by the one who tagged you

4. create 11 new questions for the people you tag

5. tag 11 people

i'm a little bit of a cheater and i'm running out of time, so i'm not going to come up with questions or tag anybody in this post (i'm not a believer in email forwards, etc.) but you can consider yourselves ALL tagged if you want to do this.

random facts about me:

1. i graduate in 35 days from my master's program (like you didn't already know that, ha). i don't think i've ever looked forward to anything more in my life.

2. the most played song on my itunes right now is "raspberry beret" by prince. it's been played 25 times. don't knock it till you've tried it.

(fyi: my itunes goes through this thing where it will delete everything and then i have to re-download the whole library so the play counts go away, so this is just since the most recent download. before that, i think it was "don't stop believin'" by journey or something like that.)

3. i sent an email to all of tommy's and my immediate family yesterday (parents, siblings, and in-laws), and it included 21 people. (not even counting tommy's missionary brother in uruguay.)

4. i think i'm the youngest (adult) person in our ward here, and have been since we moved here almost 2 years ago. i keep hoping someone else moves in who's my age, haha.

5. i get bugged by misplaced apostrophes more than any other grammatical error. IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ITS AND IT'S. especially when my students do it--and we've TALKED about it in class. gahhhhhhhhhhh

6. it's 10:12 right this second as i type. don't worry, i still see it all the time.

7. tommy was the first person i ever kissed. (okay, and only, don't worry.)

8. if i had to choose one food to live off of for the rest of my life on a desert island, it would be bread. i am a carb-o-holic and will probably be obese because of it once it catches up with me.

9. i can't watch a little princess without crying. every time! when she's screaming to her papa to remember her and he DOESN'T and she's about to be taken to jail . . . how could you not? every. time.

10. i have long had a secret crush on enrique iglesias. besides the fact that he's like 40 and still looks like a 25-year-old (how is that possible?), he's pretty dang awesome. mostly because of his catchy music. ditto jude law, besides the fact that he cheated on his wife and pretty much is a sleazeball. (have you SEEN the holiday?)

11. i like my fried eggs runny. the yolk needs to be dripping. apparently you're not supposed to eat them like that when you're pregnant (or ever), so i'm trying to cook them thoroughly, but i don't even know how so sometimes they turn out runny still and i still eat them. sooo delicious. (tommy hates it runny, by the way. we've worked it out.)

questions asked by lauren:

1. if someone was holding a gun to your best friend's head and told you to smoke a cigarette or they would shoot your friend, would you?

yes. i'm sure heavenly father would understand. and i would make sure that crazy person went to jail.

2. soda, pop, or soda pop?

soda. pop is a sound, not a beverage, in my opinion.

3. dream vacation destination?

this changes all the time for me. my vacations usually are jam-packed, not beach destinations (since i grew up near the beach, i never feel too desperate to get back). off the top of my head, i really want to go to machu picchu in peru, and australia, and england, and new england (maine, massachusetts, etc.). not all in the same trip, of course. just eventually.

4. ever bought something off an infomercial? what?

not that i can remember. but i'm always kind of tempted by those crazy 50-in-1 kitchen gadgets.

5. chipotle or cafe rio?

i knew chipotle first, but i can't get over how great the dressing is at cafe rio. iiiiiii can't decide. it feels too disloyal.

6. guilty pleasure movie or tv show?

movie--the holiday (as mentioned before). tv show--the only show we watch at all is the office. so, i guess that.

7. favorite britney spears song?

lucky. i have fond memories of lying on the bed in my best friend's room as a kid, screaming out this song at the top of my lungs, over and over again. oh, britney!

8. do you floss? be honest.

if you'd asked me 2 months ago, the answer would have been no. for pretty much my entire life. but i went to a dentist, and he convinced me that it was a good thing to do. so i've done it about once a week since then. we even bought some fancy little flosser things, which are okay.

9. favorite app?

we are lame-o non-smartphone users, so i don't have any apps! (that's an interesting fact in and of itself, i guess.)

10. dream career? i mean, if you could do anything for the rest of your life, what would you do? and don't be practical about making money or how much schooling you'd need. what would you love to do?

easy. i love handling, organizing, and using books. my dream job would be either be a) librarian--perfect combo of teaching other people (i love teaching) and books, or b) book store owner/worker. i could just shelve books all day long and be totally happy about it.

11. what's currently on your shopping wish list?

right now, a camera and camcorder. not clothes, but i'm really wanting to get a nice-ish one of both before baby comes. it's my graduation present to myself! any suggestions from people who know stuff about them are welcome.

i know i'm just SO INTERESTING that everyone read through this whole post. man, it's hard to think of random facts about yourself. okay, now i'll actually get to the stack of grading that's waiting for me.

TGIF

oh fridays, how i love you! what a great day today has been--i taught class, graded eight papers, went to lunch at a fantastic greek restaurant with tommy (thank you groupon now coupon!), went to kroger and costco, made chocolate chip cookie oreo brownie bars (yes, seriously, oh my gosh), and am now planning on reading some fun stuff and eventually going to visit tommy where he's camping out at duke to get his season tickets again.

is it just me, or does anyone else get excited about having errands to do? they make me feel like i'm a regular human being, not just a student-robot like i usually am. and they're a diversion from the regular homework that i'm always doing. i couldn't wait to go to the grocery store today. we got a chip in our windshield and i'm actually looking forward to finding someone to fill it.

okay, yes, i have a sad life. i'll admit it.

speaking of which, the other day, tommy and i were having our usual conversation about how we're so boring and don't have any hobbies. and he said that i do have a hobby: this blog.

even more proof of my sad life. THIS IS MY HOBBY? thanks, hubby. although, even worse, i guess he's right.

anyways, hasta la vista, baby.

also

i've been having weird, bad dreams lately. last night i dreamed that i got in a vicious catfight with:

i was punching and slapping her and screaming at her for lying to the american public. (seriously--what a politically active my subconscious must be!) she was cheap though--she kept biting me. rude.

what a weird night. i woke up feeling like i needed to clean myself off.

NCAA

i just filled out a bracket for the first time. what a momentous occasion. i bet my three minutes of time spent on filling out that bracket will beat many people's hours of deliberating and debating. sadly enough.

all i can say is, i only gave byu two rounds of winning. you KNOW they're not going to go any farther than that (if they even get that far).

(and don't worry, all you busbys out there, i think unlv will win at least one game.)

what would you do with $40,668?

i mean, i would probably buy justin bieber's hair.

no, really, i cannot think of A SINGLE THING i would rather spend $40,668 on.

but wait--it wasn't even ALL of his hair. it was just a piece of it. what are you going to do with that? you can't even make it into a collar or a watch-band or anything.

i would have held out for the whole head of hair.

time to go to the grocery store

this is what our fridge looks like right now.

(this is actually how it looks most of the time.)

(milk, water, cheese, butter, eggs, tomato sauce, soup in a tupperware.)

it's kind of funny when i think about the full fridges at home that we're used to.

unfortunately, we probably aren't going to make it to the store before monday. good thing for canned goods.

also, tommy and i reading the old testament this year (one of those new year's resolutions in action), and reading the story of the exodus makes us sing songs from prince of egypt. "miracles" is my favorite.

at least we're past joseph and the technicolor dreamcoat (not that we ever stop singing joseph).

new year's resolution: FAIL

well, it's been five weeks since the start of the new year (give or take) and i've already failed dramatically at my traditional eat-healthy-this-year resolution.

i resolved to (try to) eat only one dessert a week. (stupid idea, i know.)

it's impossible. really.

the first few weeks i tried to get by by just eating multiple packs of fruit snacks a day. those don't count as sweets, not in my book, but they kind of helped keep the edge off. that worked pretty well for a limited amount of time.

but i've baked three batches of cookies in the last three weeks. no matter what my high and mighty goals are, requests for desserts just come flowing in from all sides (i swear, it's because we're mormon) and tommy and i are left with the remnants of eighty delicious chocolate-chocolate chip cookies to work our way through.

and man, they are good.

(i don't even REALLY regret it.)

oh, well. it's a good thing it's a weekly goal--we can always try again next week. at least i'm keeping up on my goal of exercising every day to counteract it.

let me leave you with this lovely: a song tommy and i bought on itunes yesterday and that i've been singing in my head and ballerina-ing to all day. seriously. listen to it. seriously.

chivalry

last night i woke up at 4:05 and was wide awake. just sitting there, letting my mind buzz around and get over the very stressful near-nightmare that had woken me up. (it involved a shoot-out with some mafia-looking men and hiding in a barn, trying to protect bethany from them and waiting for them to find us.)

and i decided this:

i'm okay if chivalry is dead.

i don't want men to get my door for me everywhere i go. believe it or not, i am capable of doing it myself, and so are all the other able-bodied women out there. unless i'm carrying a huge stack of books or a very jell-y jello salad, i don't mind getting the door and i don't think a man is rude if he opens the door for himself and walks through first. not that i'm ungrateful when someone DOES open the door for me . . . it's just not necessary, you see?

one time we were with a couple that felt differently. the man would open the door for the girl when she got in the car (which is all well and good . . . tommy does the same for me) but then she would wait in the car while he walked all the way around the car to open the door for her when they were getting out. and that just seems a bit excessive to me. do people really do that?

the one date i ever went on with someone who wanted to do that, i got out of the car (not knowing his chivalrous intentions) and he made me GET BACK INTO THE CAR so he could open my door for me.

seriously.

so i'm okay if chivalry is . . . decrepit and aged. it's nice to have it sometimes, but an excess of it is just as annoying as none at all.

(i don't know why i thought so much about this at 4 am.)

but i eventually fell back to sleep.

a realization

i realized something the other day. it is hugely exciting, let me tell YOU:

i've been wearing the same three pairs of exercise shorts for the last 8-12 years.

seriously. one of them has a stain on them from an activity days activity that i went to when i was 10 or 11 years old. we were doing puff paints on something and i got some purple paint on my shorts--and it's still there today. and i still wear them. the other two are from no later than middle school.

and the best part is: all three of them were free originally. i got all of them from various soccer teams.

and on that same note, i haven't bought a new sports bra since my senior year of high school. and i've exercised 3-6 days a week pretty regularly for the last 5 years too.

two things about this:

1. how the heck do i fit into shorts that i wore half my life ago? (a testament to elastic waistbands, i suppose)

2. i REALLY should buy some new exercise clothes.

okay, back to writing that final paper.

yeah.

sometimes i make to-do lists to act like i'm being productive, and then i actually put things that i've already completed on the list to act like i'm being even more productive.

i just did it. really.

but then, doesn't everyone do that? i hope so.

she wake me up daily [don't need no starbucks]

i want to blog but i have nothing really interesting to write about. or maybe i have too much?

things i am excited for right now:
-ward trunk or treat on friday (and seeing all our lovely sunbeams dressed up)
-thanksgiving with mi familia coming to visit us! woop woop!
-having one semester down and only three more to go
-going to utah over christmas: seeing tommy's family, meeting leif and joel (our identical twin baby nephews), going to melissa's wedding, seeing my grandparents, visiting cougar friends, and hopefully (for tommy) skiing.
-going to california over new years: seeing my family, going to my home ward, new years with myres cousins (especially a newly returned elder b. myres), and hopefully (for me) having a bonfire on the beach.

wouldn't you be so excited too? we're going to get to go skiing and walking along the beach in the same christmas break. don't be too jealous.

in other news, tommy and i are planning to watch gone with the wind this week. did you know it's 4 hours long? i had no idea. i borrowed it from the durham county library--my absolute favorite place because it has thousands of books on tape AND excellent movies. so far we've watched emma, sense and sensibility, hello dolly, and anne of green gables. and now that i look at that list i feel bad for poor tommy having to sit through all those totally awful girl movies. don't tell him i told you that he's now seen hello dolly.

also, the nc state fair was last weekend! i'll put up more pics later but just look at this one and be jealous that you didn't have any fried oreos last week.


and on another note, anyone who can tell me where the quote in my post title comes from wins a fantastic prize (cathy and devin are barred from participating).

yesterday

i locked myself out of our apartment.

twice.

the first time i had to go up to tommy's office on campus and borrow his key to get back in.

the second time i had to go up to tommy's office and tell him i locked my keys AND his key in the apartment, and then we came back and broke in using the old shimmy-shimmy credit card trick.

i felt like a champ. I AM A COLLEGE GRADUATE!

(current) pet peeve

when girls insist on walking around with a backpack AND a purse.


this happens so much more often than you would think. WHY not just put all of your stuff into ONE BAG? so much easier and more logical. gah.