"we" are graduating!

this is a huge pet peeve of mine: when wives say "we're going to med/dental/grad/etc. school right now" and really they mean "my husband is going to med/dental/grad etc. school right now." are YOU going to receive a degree at the end of this process? if not, i'm sorry to tell you, but "we" are not going to school. learn more about the proper use of personal pronouns.

but after this semester, i understand a teeny bit more why people say that. (it's still a pet peeve, though, and i won't ever say it.) hands down, without a doubt, i would not be graduating this semester if it weren't for tommy's significant help and support.

without tommy this semester, i would have suffered one of several ignominious fates:

-withered away from lack of nourishment after eating only saltines and toast every day

-been swallowed by the piles of refuse, dirty clothes, and dust mites that are still threatening to take over the apartment

-crumbled beneath the pressure of schoolwork and dropped out with a few scarce weeks to go in my program.

he has made nearly every meal, washed nearly every dish, done every chore, and basically DID EVERYTHING while i was too sick and tired to do anything but do school stuff and whine about it. even after i started feeling better, he has still taken significantly more of the chore-load, letting me focus on my papers and grading. he's been unrelentingly upbeat and positive, saying "you can do it!" every time i start to make that whiny noise of "i don't think i can (fill in the blank)." even though he's had a busy semester himself, taking several classes, consulting on the side, and tackling his prelim, he has gone way over the top in taking care of me when i really needed it.

not that i'm surprised, but i am seriously grateful. i can honestly say that he deserves a large bit of credit for this master's degree that i (we) will be receiving on may 12.

but he already has one of his own, so i think i'll keep this one for myself.

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.

faveREDs

was anyone else aware of this?

i went down to check out the vending machines in my building the other day (despite ALL THE FOOD i had i was starving) and saw these.

i was skeptical, interested, wondering, "what do they mean with this "fave-RED label?"

when you open it up, it looks like this:

the magic! the beauty! it's a sign that all of my wildest dreams are coming true! THEY FINALLY REALIZED THAT NOBODY LIKES THE YELLOWS AND ORANGES! I ACTUALLY WANT TO BUY STARBURSTS! AHHHHHHHHHHH!

how do i even contain myself? (luckily, i never carry enough cash, so i have only bought two since i made this fantastic discovery.)

yes, i'm easily pleased. whatevs. you know you feel the same way!

fooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

about two days into the whole morning sickness thing, i figured out that the way to stave off the nausea (haha, AS IF THAT WERE POSSIBLE) is to always be eating and never let myself get hungry. this is difficult, because i'm usually spending full days in my cubicle at school. so i've had to get used to bringing loads of food with me, which means i have to carry whole grocery sacks that i eat throughout the day.

B.P. (before pregnancy), my lunch would consist of:

-sandwich

-banana

today, i brought the following food to campus:

-sandwich

-banana

-applesauce

-can of peaches (too lazy to put it into a tupperware)

-chocolate pudding

-leftover chicken from dinner last night

-bag of goldfish

-yogurt

to be fair, i am going to be here until 9 p.m. tonight.

but still. it's kind of ridiculous.

santa monica

once upon a time (four years ago, to be exact), tommy did a summer internship in newport beach, california, at hewitt associates.

my dad works for hewitt associates. my dad interviewed tommy for the internship. he hired him, so tommy must have been okay. (this is the best part of the story.)

anyway, that same summer, i went to spain on a study abroad for two months. but i came back for july and august, and tommy (my new boyfriend) and i spent two months having fun in so cal, so cool.

one day, we drove up to santa monica and went to the pier. we thought it would be fun, romantic, and a good thing to cross off our to-do list of "fun things to do in southern california." i didn't think we'd go back, frankly--we have piers in orange county too, so no need to trek up to l.a.


turns out, we WILL be going back--many times. because tommy got ANOTHER internship in southern california--this time at the rand corporation in santa monica this summer. and we are moving there, two days after i graduate from my master's. for three months.

we are really excited. we found a decent apartment that's two miles away from tommy's work and the beach and the aforementioned pier, we're already planning the books on cd we're going to listen to on our cross-country drive, and we'll be just an hour away from my family all summer long.

should i mention that our bffs, devin and cathy busby (plus kylie and emmy, of course), will also be there? IN SANTA MONICA, the same exact town as us? because we can't seem to help but follow them EVERYWHERE WE GO. once we heard they were going there, we knew it was the right choice.


i am so ready. SO ready. i am planning on finding all types of fun and engrossing projects to keep me occupied all summer. it may even involve me borrowing my mom's sewing machine (heaven help us!) and tommy's computer (probably not for the same project).

six weeks! i can't wait!

baby pictures

my mom sent us a few home videos from when i was a baby, and we watched them late into the night last night and all morning before conference. i was really, really cute. and it was fun to see my parents acting goo-goo over baby me.

and of course it made me think about what our baby's going to look like. can you guess which pictures are of tommy and which are of me? IT'S SO HARD TO TELL!

weirdly enough, tommy was the one with the curls when we were babies. i didn't actually get mine till i went through puberty. but i did have the thickest, blackest head of hair right out of the womb. oh, genetics. we'll see what our baby is going to get!