Jack Donaghy: The Quiz Score: 87% (13 out of 15)

I' m ashamed, but this was sort of hard. The had good false choices.

Aw, you guys are all so nice! Thank you for all the compliments, solicited and not. I'm a lot better at styling now and it's grown out just slightly how I like it.

Back to school, Mental Health to be exact. What a breeze. The teacher might be a nut but the material should be fairly simple, so I can work with her. My Roles class should be very helpful for resume building and getting a job. The cool thing about my schedule is they shifted T-Th classes to the afternoons, so I have the mornings to continue going to the gym.

As promised, here I am getting my ears pierced at The Retina Center. This might be the most sterile ear piercing ever performed.

We spent a good deal of time getting the placement right. Because of my gimpy left ear it was tricky to determine what looked the most centered and symmetrical. Then Mom and Dad took out an array of needles to determine what the best gauge would be. We started with the easy right ear, numbing it with ice.

The needle easily went through. The red is the iodine, not blood. Unfortunately the needle was too perfect of a match with the stud, and we needed something larger to work the stud through. After a second poke and a lot of wiggling the stud around my ear hurt. The ice had worn off and re-icing only stung it more.

So here I am getting a happy anesthetic shot for the other ear. Here's the larger needle in the left ear. Pain-free this time.

Mom jumped in to assess and make sure the stud was straight. Ta da! Pierced ears. We did a final check in the mirror and determined they were just about perfect.

One week ago I went to a new stylist and she chopped off most of my hair. The only comment I have had is from Brian, who said, "Whoa, did you cut off a bunch of hair?" Aside from that I have had no feedback.

Now, I'm not so vain that I need everyone to ooh and aah. But usually you can expect a few nice words after a new style. Which leads me to believe that my new hair-do must be SO horrible that everyone is pretending it didn't happen.

Okay, okay. Probably no one has said anything because it was snowy the day after so I had bad hat hair, then I got sick and didn't do my hair or even lip gloss for four days. But that is over! So the next time you see me I could use some reassurance.

This has changed my life:


Dubbed the "Clever Cat" litter box, it's a top-entry poophouse for your cat.

Molly never grasped the concept of putting her bum inside the litter box. She prefers hanging her tail over the edge while sitting in the box, presumably thinking that all four feet are inside the box and that's good enough. After having her for a couple weeks I bought a box top to create three walls, but she still managed to dribble out the door flap occasionally. So I come in every couple weeks to clean up the spilled pee. (Yes, I put a mat underneath but still. Gross.)

Years later I find this box. FOUR walls! She adapted right away and we have been mess free for a week. I don't know that the fancy top mat with hole is necessary. Once I set it up I realized I could have bought a large rubbermaid tub and it probably would have worked just as well. But the idea of catching her with her head poking out makes me laugh. Sort of like this rest stop we used to visit in Wyoming or Utah on our family roadtrips. The stalls were short so you could see your neighbors' heads while peeing, like this:

How come I'm finally wide awake now that it's time to go to bed? I skipped trivia because of this and now I hardly feet sick? So not fair.

Saturday is all-appetizers cooking club and I have no idea what to make. Someone should point me to some links.

I love going home to my parents' house in Grand Junction for the holidays. There's good company and food, comfort and support, and time sort of stands still. With a week and a half left of school vacation I forced myself home New Year's Eve, a blessedly uneventful drive. A Saturday night itchy throat turned into a full blown head cold Sunday morning. Today I'm feeling on the mend with the help of chicken soup, sprite, and a mountain of moist tissue balls. Ick. Last night around 3:20 AM when I got up to get a warm washcloth for my head I decided that today would be my computer-working day. I would upload photos, blog, look for a good note-taking iphone app, upload music and movies, and update my resume. Here are some select photos, the rest will be on flickr shortly. Some were taken from Ben's flickr photostream.

The snowy view from my the back balcony. Those criss-crossing tracks are from the deer. They swoop in at night and nibble in the garden like it's a salad bar.
There was a lot of this. And waffles.

After a day in GJ we drove up to Salt Lake to visit family. Grandma made a feast for our arrival. The next day we had a heavy winter storm. I read a book and knit the day away. Ogden offered a nice knitting shop where I got some gorgeous yarn. We had to stop at the Arctic Circle for fries with fry sauce on the way home. By night the roads were clear enough to see the Temple Square lights. They have the best tree lights. No one else knows how to wrap a tree so well. At the end of the night we met Andy and Jen at a french bistro where I had a wonderful beet and goat cheese salad. I'm going to try to recreate it at home this week.






The biggest surprise came from Ben. He presented me with a box of sparkly earrings and a card that read "I changed my mind." I've been thinking about getting my ears pierced for months and the only thing holding me back was Ben's insistance that he liked the fact that I didn't have pierced ears. With his go-ahead I had my ears done at the Retina Center. More pictures to come in a later post.

Grandma came down a few days after Christmas on her way to St. George. She helped me figure out how to use my cheese making kit that was under the tree. (Note the lovely anthro apron from Amanda, that has it's own apron! Oh, the cuteness!)

I tried to make the scones from Cooks Illustrated twice. This second version with blackberries and candied orange peel would have been perfect if I'd pulled them out of the oven a bit sooner.

I was able to get together with old friends to catch up.

Ben's birthday is 1/1, easy for me to remember. We had a lovely brunch with his parents and saw Benjamin Button (loved it). We finished the evening with pizza and ice cream cake. Pretty low key but nice. I got him a cool camera strap and a book on bizarre WWII inventions, since he's kind of a WWII nut.

Resolutions are everywhere and I feel I should declare mine publicly so I stick to them. I only have one real resolution and it's been the same for several years = lose weight and get back in shape. Seriously y'all, I appreciate your comments that I don't look fat and I don't need to lose weight, but you don't know that I just have good genes to carry weight well. Sitting in lectures for hours every day gave me a comfortable, squishy butt. I weighed in this morning at my highest ever. To put it in perspective:

Last year this time weight (minus) pre-marriage college weight = 10 pound gain over 7 years
Current weight (minus) last year this time weight = 15 pound gain over 1 year

I know I won't be able to get down to my ideal 125 pound high school wt, but to be back in that early marriage era range is realistic and healthy. How will I do this? I looked at dance classes and can only afford one a week, and they're all in the evening. No good. I looked at gyms after talking to Kristin (who is gorgeous and svelte lately). The gyms here would be fairly expensive: 200+ initiation fees plus $30 a month. Plus they seem kind of icky with their sales pitches and guilt trips. Miranda (also doing resolutions) reminded me that the Wheat Ridge rec center is just up the street and offers all the same amenities. For 82.50 I get a 20-visit punch card: less than $5 per visit!

We quickly hatched a plan to get our butts there two times a week, even when I have classes. We went for the first time this morning and I feel GREAT! I was so much more comfortable working out with a buddy. Also half the people at the gym were oldsters instead of the tiny 19 year olds at Regis's gym, where I was constantly intimidated during the workout. These flabby people are totally non-threatening. Well, except for the grizzly geriatric who did sit-ups in front of us while reclining UPSIDE DOWN and with a GIANT WEIGHT on his chest. Yikes. He could totally kill me if he wanted to.

So! The only diet change I plan to do is to go back to more vegetarian meals, less dairy, less white carbs, etc. Oh, and cut down portion sizes. All the regular stuff.

Other goals I've made that aren't really resolutions but you could call them that:

• Get a sweet nursing job by July and start raking in the cash to our savings account
• Put up shelves in the basement storage room and clean it by Sunday
• Watch old movies with Brian more often
• Make a hat out of the yarn I spun
• Go to our family cabin with Ben and friends
• Get a new cat litter box
• Post Christmas vacation pictures before it gets embarrassingly late
• Sew tablecloths for Young Women

Hooray for fresh starts!

Merry Christmas all! I am squandering my days eating lots of dairy products on refined carbs, knitting up a storm, drooling at the yarn store, watching How I Met Your Mother with Amanda, and watching 30 Rock with the whole fam. I haven't tracked down a firewire, so no new pictures yet. Above are pictures from my phone of what it's like to have your ears pierced at The Retina Center. Also here are the "family portraits" that we took before Christmas to give to our folks.