Domesticity Part II

Fall is my favorite season and always has been. It's sandwiched between a sizzling summer and a cozy Christmas. Between September 22nd and October 31st the world is a pleasant spectrum of all the best earth tones. And I shamelessly obsess over all of the following:

crunchy leaves

Halloween

"The Nightmare Before Christmas"

crisp, but not chilly, breezes

my boots!

turtlenecks

"fall medley" (my Aunt Kathryn's ingenious mixture of candy corn and peanuts. Amazing.)

cranberries/pears/oranges

scarves

pumpkin ______ (fill in the blank with bread/cookies/soup/pie/pancakes/ice cream/yogurt)

I wanted to do something to make our apartment feel Autumn-ish. So I bought some eucalyptus branches (thank you grocery store, it smells so Autumny in here!) and I decided to reenact something I saw on one of the many blogs I stalk.

I learned how to make this during my breaks at work (thank you, internet/printer paper/camera phone)

(which has actually led to an origami obsession. I will have my hands very busy during

General Conference)

and combined it with our eucalyptus branches (and an abandoned-coffee-tin-from-work-turned-into-a-vase) to create

on our entryway table.

Now I just need some pumpkin ______ and I'm set.

Domesticity Part I

We are conoisseurs of food made from scratch. Ingredients that haven't been tampered with too much often come together to make something that is more than the sum of it's parts.

If I may quote Virginia Woolfe, "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." That's my excuse for eating good food, anyway.


We've done Apple Pudding Cake (in the kitchen of my apartment from 2 years ago that felt like it had been built during either of the Roosevelt administrations)


We've tried salsa (in the kitchen of Harry's apartment that was built possibly even before that apartment of mine, but was way cooler. I mean, giant jacuzzi bathtub? What?)


and tried apple pie

and Chocolate-Banana ice cream (apparently, it made us smile with our chins sticking out).

And we cannot forget the age-old Reynolds tradition of homemade pizza

Today was the day for Banana Cream pie

I was going to take a picture of us eating it, but it was so euphoric that I forgot, and it's all a blur to me now.

Stay tuned, because I think Buffalo Hot Wings may be coming soon (we even bought a deep fryer for the occasion).

Big Hass Avocados

Yeah, so my post titles have been a little redundant lately. So what.

Yesterday while at the store buying salsa materials (along with pizza-making supplies and my new favorite brand of ice cream) we came across a giant bushel full of "Big Hass Avocados" for sale. Apparently Hass is some variety of avocado. Who knew? Anyway, that inevitably led to our lunch today consisting of fresh homemade salsa, fresh homemade guacamole (yes, inspired by the Billy Idol song), and nuked tostitos cheese dip. And white corn tortilla chips. Delicious. And actually remarkably good for you (aside maybe from the plastic cheese dip, a new guilty pleasure of ours). I'm going to open a restaurant someday that only offers dips. It's going to be upscale, dimmer-ly lit, and adventurous. Imagine sitting down to hot bean dip, cheese dip, artichoke-spinach dip, french onion dip, dill dip, salsas, bruschetta, clam dip, etc. No silverware--just a variety of dipping devices (baguettes, vegetables, various chips) that you use your hands with. And it will mostly be a pretty healthy meal, too. It'll start as a rumored, word-of-mouth kind of place, with a non-desrcript exterior but really nice interior. Just barely pricy enough to discourage families from coming, it will be more of a date spot. Inevitably, though, the Applebee's-Chili's-Macaroni Grill conglomerate will open a franchised "family-friendly" knock-off called Skinny Dipping and then we'll end up in the courts even though I'm a nice guy and I'll get nothing and then I'll write a book and sell the movie rights though no one will make the film and I'll end up with just passing mention in a Michael Moore film and live out my days in comfortable retirement with my grandkids sweeping up the shop on the weekends. But, hey, that's the course all dreams run.

Bad-A

When I was a kid, my mom used to take me with her to her aerobics class each week. A whole bunch of young to middle-aged women would dance around in the gym



while us kids would play with our tonkas.



Anyway, it was the same CD every week, so I really have this engrained heritage of 80s songs that are on automatic play in my brain every time I work out. The trouble is, they're not exactly the kind of songs that I would ever listen to on my own, so I only know the songs through the filter of a three-year-old mind.

Like today, after Sarah and I ran to the gym, worked out, and ran back, I just couldn't get the "guacamole" song out of my head. The trouble is, I couldn't get enough of it in to my head to explain to Sarah what song was stuck in my head. So I went to www.midomi.com and spent three unsuccessful minutes singing "guacamole, mo mo mo" with no tangible results. Aparantly I sound more like Daft Punk's Technologic. Bummer. Anyway, I finally figured it out.

It's Billy Idol's "Mony Mony." Maybe I would have guess that if Mony was actually a word. So, I had to hear the song again, which meant coming across this little gem of a video:



I think I understand now why those women wore those leotards. I mean, Billy Idol was pretty bad-a.

San Francisco

We're going to San Francisco next weekend with the ward for an all day event. I know it's NEXT weekend. But I can't contain myself. Harry's never been and I've been a handful of times.

Basically every time this thought even passes through my mind, I can't help but remember this priceless Martin Short moment.



And yes, I plan to reenact this on the Golden Gate Bridge. Knee shorts, red sweater, and all.

If This is the Last You Hear From Us

If this is the last you hear from us, Mac, you can have my room.

You know you're not sleeping at night when...

1) Every morning around 3:30 am, you realize, "Hey. I'm awake. And I've been awake for a while. How did that happen?"

2) You keep a flashlight, book, and your reading glasses on the bedside table in case said event occurs.

3) Any time you sit on your sofa around the hour of 7 pm, thirty minutes later you're asleep. And when lying in bed after waking up on said couch, it takes a good hour to fall asleep again.

4) You can't remember the last time you slept through the night. Or at least, you can't remember what it felt like.

5) You stooped to searching in your husband's medicine bag for Nyquil.

6) You ask yourself, "So, what would it take to get a prescription for Ambien?"

7) You find yourself getting emotional when watching "Lost."

8) You find yourself getting emotional when trying to pick between 2 temp jobs that take place during the same week.

9) You find yourself trying not to get emotional on the phone with the lady at the temp agency.

10) You consider doing the unthinkable, and actually drinking warm milk, straight up, to make you sleepy at night. I mean, you read it in a book once. It could be legit. And you're desperate.

New Towel Phenomenon

I am what some people might call a "garage physicist". I like to make observations on the world around me, and attempt to classify those occurrences which have before never been described.

Take, for instance, the New Towel Phenomenon:

We were recently gifted with some lovely, large, fluffy towels. I like to dry off with them, rub my face into them, and may or may not even occasionally sigh with satisfaction as I do so. These are great towels.

But you know what? A strange thing accompanies new towels. Fuzz. Everywhere.

No one ever warned me. I grew up virtually undistinguishable from these kids,



which means that I haven't sampled a whole lot of brand new towels in my life. It turns out that a new towel, by some inherent virtue of its fluffiness, sheds everywhere, on everything. I find fuzz on the counters and in the sink. Fuzz on my pillows, my sheets. Fuzz on me (which point we will come back to later).

Why, exactly, do new towels shed like this? Did these towels get run through a fuzzifier? Is a factory worker somewhere assigned the lot of grabbing handfuls of fuzz and rubbing them into the towels? And, further, am I being charged for tis extra, non-permanent, transient, surface fuzz? Is it a scheme to up the thread count?

Furthermore, what can be done about New Towel Syndrome? That's what happens to the body of the actual person using the new towels. For example, our new towels



(which we love) have this effect
have this effect:



My chest doesn't naturally look like that.

Our red towels



(which we also love) similarly cause this problem:



So, naturally, I'm feeling some concern. What if this condition persists? What if it intensifies?:



Note that by these advanced stages, this symptom is actually better classified as the Nude Towel Phenomenon. Notice how the upper pectoral area of this subject actually looks like a towel, when in fact the subject is indeed clothed only by Mother Nature's (best?) intentions.

Ultimately, so far, I guess it's a side-effect that I can live with, especially considering how fluffy those towels are. But if you see me next month and I look like this



just smile and lie to me.

One of those memories you forgot you remembered.

I am officially in training for the Salt Lake City Half Marathon, coming to a Salt Lake near you in April 2010. Yes, I'm starting now. Yes, I really have that long of a long way to go.

This morning on my usual route, for some reason I couldn't shake the memory of my Northwood High Cross Country days. A combination of awkward teenage years, hot and dusty trails, and a healthy fear of the rage of the all powerful Coach.

And I couldn't stop picturing Coach Rossi/Ohrn/Gates yelling all those Cross Countryish things from the sidelines.

"Ten quick steps!"

"Dynamite! THINK DYNAMITE!"

"Let your legs go! JUST LET THEM GO!"

"You can catch her, Sarah, I saw her! She's DYING up there! GO GET HER!"
"Keep your eyes up and REEL HER IN!"

"BANG THE DRUM! BANG THE DRUM!"

I even recall one of Brie Gassin's coaches saying (direct quote): "Run like the track is giving birth to you." Wow.

Maybe it's the fact that it's fall now, and the Cross Country season is raging. As are the motivational yelling phrases, I'm sure, on that little track field at Northwood High. And the weird thing is, I kind of miss it.

You know...

People shouldn't have their names on blogs that they don't ever write on.

Best job ever

On Monday morning at 7:15 am, I received a phone call from the temp agency I just interviewed with, and it went something like this:

Agency Man: Hey Sarah, would you be interested in working this week? Starting this morning?

Sarah: (trying to sound coherent) Buh, yeah!

Agency Man: Okay great. Well, they need you this morning. Pretty much immediately.

Sarah: Uh, okay.

And with that I got the address, scrambled to get ready and headed out the door, prepared to adapt to whatever phone greeting they wanted me to use/whether they liked their copies collated/ how to deal with their fax machine/ usual temp stuff.

I got there. There wasn't anything for me to do. So for 5 days (44 working hours), I read

for the first time ever. It was on Google Books and it was delightful! One I can picture myself reading again one day. And when that was done, I even dabbled in

for the first time. It's good... but I think this one's calling my name

Now I just need to find someone to pay me while I sit and read it.