Some of my birthday gifts

For my recent birthday I received some gifts from my friends, which always comes as a huge bonus, as I don't really expect anything. Maybe this is because I don't usually give gifts, other than CDs, but thats a whole other story.

Anyway I just wanted to make a blog post here, to let them know that I appreciated their gifts and also since two of the big gifts that I got were gift cards, I wanted to post some pictures of what I got with my gift cards.

First of all, I got the Newsies DVD from Kelsey and Alicia, which they correctly assumed was a favorite of mine since we had just been watching it the week before and I had gotten myself in trouble by singing along with all the songs.



Then from a group of gals that I know (Lorri, Becky, Wendy, Robyn, and Emily) I got two gift cards, one from Best Buy, and one from American Eagle, which they got me because I said that I never buy things from stores with wood floors. Also I was told that I couldn't buy a hoodie at AE. Apparently I have too many of those already. But as my roommate Rob says,"can you really have too many hoodies?" I actually might (I have at least 7 that I can think of off the top of my head).

Anyway, at Best Buy I bought the first two seasons of News Radio on DVD:



And put the remainder of the money towards an adapter that converts a car cigarette lighter power source into something you can plug regular devices into. Mainly because I am heading out to Omaha this weekend with my family and we wanted to be able to watch DVDs on my laptop along the way. (If you've never driven from Utah to Omaha, there's not much to see along the way).

And at American Eagle, I looked around unsuccessfully for quite a while, trying to find something that a) didn't look like it had been on the floor of someone's dorm room for a couple weeks, and b) actually came in a size that would fit me. (Apparently AE's normal clientele don't usually wear XL or XXL). But as I was about to give up and return in a few months to see what they had of new stuff, I found this shirt that was to my liking:



(I don't know why they took the picture of a white shirt against a white background, but oh well).

In addition to the gifts pictured above, I also received an inflatable pool raft, perfect for such high-skill pool manuvers as the superman, reverse superman, and midpool rollover (both front-to-back, and back-to-front) from Anne Schmidt; a new suitcase from my parents, some pajama pants from my parents which I returned and exchanged for two shirts (also with collars and buttons) (I had to chip in a bit to get both shirts, but the value was more than one); and I also got a card and some money from my grandparents. Oh, I can't forget the pretzel treats that my sister-in-law made for me while she was out visiting.

I think that pretty much sums it up, although my mom did say that she was going to find me a Grantsville Cowboys shirt since I had asked for one and she couldn't find one yet.

Thanks to everyone who gave me a gift, even if it was just your presence or thoughts on my birthday.

Chris-miss in September

Can the puns get any worse? I submit that they cannot! But they just keep coming.

In memorandum of Chris moving to Chicago, I just thought I'd write down some stuff that remind me of him. First of all, there's all the technologies that I wouldn't even know about, much less make use of daily without Chris having shown it to me/convinced me it was worth my time:

Flickr
Picasa
RSS
Del.icio.us
Gmail
Firefox
Pushing the camera button in halfway to focus before taking the picture

And the things he says that make me laugh, like:

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Francamente, no me importa
C'mon, C'mon (Not sure what the phonetic spelling on this one should be, so you'll have had to heard it to understand)
Easy, Big fella
You can derelict my malls, capitan
Around the Hoooorn
Jeremy Schaap(sp?), EeeSPN
Rachel Nichols, ESPeNNNN

Other ways he influenced my life include:

Not hating the Yankees completely
Being able to watch golf w/o falling asleep
Happy memories of Tony and Mike on PTI
Proving that church lessons can actually be very well prepared

Other random memories:

Jamba Juices after Institute last year
The neverending bleeding knee, and the time that he used dirt to stop the bleeding
Halo nights with the roomies (Perhaps our most successful roommate activity)
"My roommate wants to know if we've kissed"
OM^2

And of course we can't forget how totally Troy and I dominated him at Settlers of Catan over probably a two month period this summer, culminating in Chris finally getting a couple wins near the end of the free trial period.

Thanks for the memories Chris. Good luck at law school.

Saying goodbye

Funny how pepole come and go in our lives. And how even when in your mind you know that they are leaving, perhaps for good, it doesn't really sink in at the time. At least for me, thats the way it is. I never miss people before they're gone. And even for a while after. Its kind of sad that you have to say goodbye right then, before you can truly appreciate all that you'll miss once they are gone. We should have some kind of delayed farewell system, where a month or two afterwards you can tell people what it is that you miss about them and do it with some real feeling.

PSA (Public Speed Announcement)

I think that 1300 East in Salt Lake City is one of the worst road to drive on, and yet somehow I have convinced myself that its the fastest way for me to get to school and church and back.

My biggest problem with it (now that they repaved the section between 2100 S and 500 S) is that on the section between my house (approx. 4500 S) and 3300 S, people don't even drive the speed limit. Its a 40 mph section, but everyone drives 30 or 35 at best. Unlinke other places I drive, I actually get excited when they put out those trailers that show the speed limit and then have a display that says "Your speed" with a radar gun, because I always hope that people will see it and go, "Oh, wow, its 40 here. I can speed up." Its laughable because everytime I drive past one anywhere, I have to slow down, but on 1300 E, I'm always stuck going 5 or 10 below. Today, there was one position right near to where I live, and as always I was doing 34 in a 40 as I drove by with no slowing down to please the radar gun. So, hopefully, we'll see some increased speeds as a result.

Fa-MUSS

As football season begins tonight, I thought I'd share my own personal fame with anyone out there who happens to read this. About a week ago, a friend of mine emailed me to inform me that he had seen my picture on the side of a campus shuttle up at the U in my jester hat that I wear to the footgall games.

I have yet to confirm this personally, but I did find a flyer advertising the MUSS (the student football fan club) with my face easily recognizable on it.

Since then I have had at least two other independent sources confirm that, yes, my picture was on the side of the campus shuttles.

Here are some pictures I scanned in of the flyer. First of the whole thing:



and second an up close view:



Thats me in the jester hat, above the second 's' in MUSS. It almost seems as though they made sure to fit the text around me. Or maybe thats just my ego kicking in, either way, its kind of fun. :)