Back to action

Now that classes are over, the wife and I are out of classes for a couple weeks we now have time to do some things that we haven't taken time to do.  We went up to Trafalga to play some put-put golf for a little date night followed by Malawi Pizza.

We were sad to not be able to go on vacation this summer, but this past week after I finished my final projects, we went out to eat pretty much each day this week. Saturday the 17th of August was the Indonesian Independence Day and we celebrated by making some Indo food and then on Sunday went to some friend's house for a party to eat and play games with others that served missions or were from Indonesia. It is interesting how much of a language that you haven't used in awhile comes back so easy.

School will come back too soon, actually Wednesday for Allison and two weeks from tomorrow for me.

Hopefully this fall we will have some more interesting adventures and be exciting.

Peace.

Lovin' the Garden!

Look who was slow on getting the blog post up this week!

Last week was a nice and slow. On Memorial Day we went to the Rec Center and worked out for a while, went grocery shopping, and then came home.

We saw this when leaving the rec center. Made me happy.

Ezra worked on cleaning and selling some of his old toys on eBay, and I read. Later in the evening I ended up making a soufflé which turned out… okay. Clearly I need some practice. It tasted great! But it collapsed spectacularly. I’ll try again in the future. Really, I just wanted to call myself “soufflé girl.” (If you get that reference, you win.)

My Hot Chocolate Soufflés!

The rest of the week was pretty low key and nothing very exciting happened. We registered for the Freedom Run 5k on July 4th. As city employees, we got a pretty amazing discount that I couldn’t pass up. This will be my first race since my marathon a year ago and my second race ever. I’m excited and am easing back in to running pretty quickly.

My garden looks amazing! The peas are shooting up and blooming, my spinach is ready to eat, I just got a cherry tomato plant in the ground this week as well as 5 squash plants (my mom is probably amazed because she knows how much I love squash). Really, I just wanted a spaghetti squash plant but when I went to get one they were out, except for a variety pack. They ended up selling me the variety pack for the price the single spaghetti squash would have been. So now I have not only spaghetti squash, but also two pink banana squash, honey bear squash, and summer squash. I think I’m going to have to learn to cook squash in a way I like.

Pink Banana Squash! One on each end of the bench.

Honey Bear Squash

Summer Squash

Spaghetti Squash!

Some of my peas.

My lovely little cherry tomato plant.

Spinach!

That’s it for this week!

Food experiments and such

I made a random pizza crust out of chicken, flax and an egg, plus some spices for dinner last week and her is the recipe from http://yourlighterside.com/2012/02/easy-pizza-crust/

1 packed cup cooked, minced chicken breast

1 cup packed mozzarella, shredded (we used 1 egg and 1/4 cup flax seed meal instead)

1 Tbsp parsley, dried (I think it was too much, a tsp or 2 would probably be fine, depends on thickness of crust)

1tsp basil

1/2 tsp onion powder (we didn't have any, still turned out good)

1/2 tsp garlic powder

(Replace cheese with the flax and egg)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Process chicken and cheese together. Mixture will resemble a meal/thick, dense crumb consistency.
3. Press chicken/cheese mixture on parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
4. Top with parsley, basil, onion and garlic powder.
5. Bake for 12 minutes.
6. Let cool for five minutes.
7. Top with sauce, cheese, and then toppings.
8. Bake for 6-8 minutes more, or until toppings are melted.
9. Let cool for five minutes.
10. Slice and serve.

Makes an entire 12-14″ pizza.

Allison then made a crust straight from chicken, she used a mallet to flatten it then cook it up.... She took out all her anger from me leaving the office messy while finding things to sell on eBay

Allison and I went to the Rec Center again, I kinda just rock climbed the whole time... and I got a flapper.  It's healed since, but secretly... I really like the look of my hands taped up after climbing, shhh don't tell

This past week I was also asked to do some drawings at the library for a display about the author Brandon Sanderson.  I'm a big fan and really like his writing style.  I don't read much fantasy or sci-fi (I don't READ that much when it come to novels, actually) but I do love sci-fi and fantasy.  I'm more of a visual guy and like my comics and graphic novels... and cartoons.... love me a good animation.

So, these pictures aren't the best to show off my drawings, but I like how the display turned out and even threw in a few original ideas based off the "chalklings" in his book illustrated by Ben McSweeny

I would love to have a shot at adapting one of his books into a comic...

Preferably The Alloy of Law, I love that one

He is coming to the Provo Library June 3rd at 7pm, free tickets may or may not still be available at the Library reference desk, and there is a standby line the night of, just sayin.

While out for a Sunday stroll, we came across this house with a vehicle with an attached snow-plow (not that unusual in Utah).... I started to point it out to Allison, and mid-sentence I stopped myself and changed topic to Ronald McDonald waving from behind the plow.... It was odd, but one of those things that make you happy that you saw it.

Not that much new has happened in the past week, but we have been busy.  Allison is racing through books like no other before she starts classes up again in a few weeks and I am mid-way through my Digital Illustration class.  We will be having a small art show in the HFAC on BYU campus sometime this summer... I think it will be my third that I have been in on campus. I'll keep you posted as it gets closer.

Exciting Week

Ezra finished classes this week and totally rocked his finals! On Friday (the first day of finals) he went to take his New Testament final. Our agreement was that if he got an A, we could rent a movie with one of our Red
Box promo codes. 95%!! Woohoo! So we got Life of Pi and watched that. It was one of the most visually beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. It’s definitely one that we’ll add to our collection when we get the chance.

I’ve still got classes until midway through May. Then I get a short break before I start my summer class. Final projects/research papers have started for me so I’ve been busy getting that done. I’ve randomly had a handful of people ask me this past week what I actually do/learn in library school. What’s the point? So this week you get a double blog post. For information about what I’m learning in library school, go to this post.

I finally got the first part of my garden planted this past Monday. It seems like every time I’ve planned on planting either it’s snowed or we’ve had to take a trip up to Salt Lake City. I planted something like eight pea seeds and ten spinach seeds. I’m hoping that as the peas come up they’ll shade the spinach since I got it planted so late. We’ll see how it goes.

Wednesday there was an “epic announcement” from Provo’s Mayor, John Curtis. Provo, Utah will be the third city nationwide to get Google Fiber! If you don’t know what that is, it’s super fast internet through fiber optic cables. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this! Basic broadband with 5mbs will be free for at least the first seven years with a onetime installation fee of $30 (I sound like an ad). They’re planning on starting to put it in homes before the end of the current year. I’m sooo happy we’re still living in Provo!

As Ezra mentioned last week, we’ve started using MyFitnessPal (I’m about to sound like an ad again). There is a phone app that we use, but it’s also available online. I hate calorie counting. I hate it hate it hate it, but this app makes it super easy. You give the app some information about yourself and your goals, and then it gives you a daily calorie budget. Food you eat takes calories out of the budget, and exercise is like a deposit, putting calories back into your budget. Yes, this is calorie counting, but the app makes it super easy. For packaged foods you just scan the barcode and tell the app how many servings you had, and then it adjusts your budget for you. For homemade foods you enter in the ingredients, tell the app how many servings are in the final product, and it does all of the math for you. Oh, did I mention that it also calculates nutritional information? Yeah, it’s a pretty awesome app and it’s made us a lot more aware of what we eat.

What my summary looked like at the end of the day on Thursday.

The only thing I've entered so far today is my breakfast.

My nutritional information summary at the end of the day Friday.

It’s also given us motivation to work out a bit more often. There is a trail right next to our house that we’ve been hiking on, and the other day we took a walk through our neighborhood, just so we could burn a few extra calories so that we could have a bit of extra chocolate.

We were excited to pass an intersection of streets with the names of our home states.

To end this past week, we finally got a calling in our new church ward! We will be Primary teachers, teaching the four-year-olds at church. In our church, Primary is where children go after Sacrament Meeting. They have gospel lessons and activities appropriate to their age group. I’ve never attended Primary because I joined the LDS church when I was eighteen, and Ezra’s family wasn’t very active in the church when he was younger, so Primary will be new to both of us. We’re really excited and have already started planning out how we will present next week’s lesson. It’s going to be great!

late late incredibly late

Sorry about that...

It has been a busy week (or two) with much drawing taken place.

I am posting for both weeks as penance for not having posted on time last week.

We went to the final taping of the second season of Studio C at BYU's TV studio on campus, hilarious by the way.

 Here is a picture of the line waiting to get in, we get there over 2 hours before it starts to be able to get good seats.  And yes, the line does indeed go up the stairs and twisting all over the place. Each time we go we arrive earlier and earlier and yet we are almost always in the same spot in line.

We received this cheesecake key lime pie for Pi Day/St. Patrick's Day from Bob and Cindy Anne, it was delicious!!  It was so good that we ate it rather quickly, but we enjoyed in immensely.

 Allison and I both have been doing great in our classes by getting As.  It will be nice when summer comes and I can focus more on my art.  I still feel like I need to improve so much, but at the same time I feel like I am learning twice as much as the previous day, everyday.

Even though spring is here, we still get snow... but it was mostly gone by the end of the day even though it was still snowing into the afternoon.  That is Utah weather for you, we will probably still be getting snow here and there until May. 

A lot seems to happen each day, but everything is so minor that it isn't that memorable, to put in a weekly blog, but on campus a couple days ago I did overhear a girl talking on the phone and she said "...and... is it still looking like it's edible"  I can only imagine the other side of the conversation.  For things like that I miss being on campus more often.

Happy Halloween!

The last week has been a pretty fun one for us. On Monday we made Spudnuts and we still have a few in the freezer that we get into on occasion. I had a friend stop by to drop off a book while we were making them so Ezra and I got to share with her.

Spudnuts!

Running from the Silence.

My Pumpkin head.

On Halloween we had a huge bowl full of candy for trick-or-treaters but we only had one person knock on our door. I was so disappointed, yet so grateful for that one person. I wish I’d given the little zombie girl more candy. So we’ve been working on getting rid of that. Ezra was a Ninja Turtle at work, and I was on the run from the Silence in the library (Doctor Who thing if you’re confused). In the evening Ezra was a pumpkin head. We played Bookopoly again to keep my mind off of the lack of trick-or-treaters, which worked. By the time we finished I knew there would be no one knocking on our door so we turned off the porch light.

In other news, Ezra finally sold his snowboard! A few years ago he got it from a roommate who was getting rid of stuff and he’s never used it. I finally convinced him to put it on Craig’s List so it wouldn’t take up space in our house. It finally happened. He sold it Thursday evening so we went out to lunch on Friday to Tucano’s! New favorite restaurant? I think so. Alas it’s a little on the spendy side so we only go if we have coupons.

That’s all that’s really been happening in our lives. Not sure if next week will be any more exciting. We’re looking forward to the election being over so that we’re not bombarded with politics everywhere we go. Of course, I’m sure people are going to be angry either way so hopefully that dies down soon too. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Bookopoly and Pumpkin Chili

While we were on vacation this past August, we picked up a mock-Monopoly game called Bookopoly, and you guessed it... It is indeed literary themed.  Since Allison and I both work at the Library, our lives seem to not drift too far from books.  We played twice this weekend while enjoying her Pumpkin Chili she makes around this time of the year.  Both times she wasted me, I barely even stood a chance, I never could get even one monopoly. That's oke, I'm not bitter, not at all.  She makes some really good chili.

On another note, I shaved off my CHINchilla (this is what we decided to call my chin beard [I was growing it to resemble Adult Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender as he appears in The Legend of Korra, but never was able to get a costume made in time for Halloween] it got pretty scruffy) but not before I got a bunch of pictures, of varying quality.  Now I am going to be documenting my regrowth of hair. I am kinda scared it will grow in odd and once it starts to grow out a bit it will stand on end for some time and look like a very sparse thinning afro, we shall see. 

25th Birthday of the Wifey

Allison had a Birthday again this year, go figure.  Not wanting to have to sleep on the couch, not that she ever goes through with the threats, but just to be safe.  I decided to get her something.  I did small things during the week leading up to her birthday, A drawing, dinner, cleaning the bathroom, you know, the typical things one gives on a birthday.  The main presents were a TARDIS beach towel and a TARDIS teapot, and yes, it is larger on the inside.

Allison's mom also sent a cake mix for us to make.  And this is what came of it. Poo frosting. But once you get past the look of things, and taste it, it is good to behold.

Now my wifey and I are both quarter-Centurions

Photo-a-day Project 2012

So I've been doing a photo-a-day project on facebook, and I thought I'd post the photos that I have so far, along with their captions for those who aren't on facebook. I know a lot of the pictures are kind of grainy, I've just been using the camera on my phone since that's the camera most readily available.

1 January 2012

This is on display in the HFAC. It was part of Ezra's final project in his illustration class. It's a big honor to have your piece chosen to go on display, and his was!

When Ezra showed it to his class someone commented that it reminded him of the move Mr. and Mrs. Smith... Ezra informed him that "Smith" was in fact our name.

2 January 2012

We've been cleaning up the living room and trying to find places for all of our books. I've been asking Ezra repeatedly if we could use the fireplace, and today he said we could. So, we lit a fire! We have lots of old decrepit books that would be going to the dump, so we decided to use some of them as kindling (phone books work great!).

3 January 2012

Two new book cases!!! We needed them so bad. Finally our floor isn't covered with piles of books. :-)

4 January 2012

Tried a new recipe tonight for dinner. It was an orange chicken type thing. We had salad with salsa on the side. It was good, the two didn't really go together, but it was food, and we got our serving of veggies. :-)

5 January 2012

Roasting marshmallows by the fire. :-)

6 January 2012

We had some random boards that we wanted to use as firewood... we couldn't break them, so we tried a lot of different methods of cutting them. We never made it through and it took Ezra forever to get even this far.

7 January 2012

Kinda dark, but this is a regular occurrence right before bed, Ezra's doing stuff on his phone as our kids (the stuffed animals) wait to be put away for the night.

8 January 2012

We don't have a table in our house, let alone a desk. This is Ezra's work space, the living room floor. Ezra likes to spread out, but he's good about getting it all put away before bed. :-)

9 January 2012

We have a crazy neighbor that always gets angry about where I put my garbage can. Here is proof that I am NOT in his driveway, or even in his way. My car is blocked, not his. He says he's going to report me to the city. I called the city and they said this is fine.

10 January 2012

Ezra likes ninjas... we have a stuffed ninja Mickey Mouse. Ezra thought it would be funny to give him a sword. Ninja Mickey protects us from crazy neighbors by guarding our window.

11 January 2012

I always win the dinner battle, but sometimes there are casualties... like my poor wooden spoon that is now chipped. Sad day!

12 January 2012

I walked into the kitchen and saw Ezra standing on the counter... he was trying to figure out perspectives for a drawing he wanted to do.

13 January 2012

Since our lives really are kind of boring, I thought I'd introduce you to some members of our family. Today, I'd like you to meet Thelonious, or Thelo for short. I had a roommate that named all of her plants, and when I got Thelo I sort of picked up the habit. He's the first plant I got while in Utah.

14 January 2012

Meet Bat! He's one of our aloe vera plants. Ezra named him. Bat had some arms that curved around the side of his pot that Ezra though made it look like bat wings.

15 January 2012

This is our second aloe vera plant, Owl! I felt like since Ezra gave the other the name Bat, I wanted this one to have a similar, night creature name, so I call her Owl.

16 January 2012

Hello Peter Parker! He's our first spider plant, and Ezra thought he should be called Peter Parker since he's a spider.

17 January 2012

This is the newest addition to our plant family, Doc Ock. He's still just a baby, but Peter Parker had a start growing from him so I decided to put it in water and grow another spider plant (I love them so). I thought another Spiderman character would be a fitting name, so He's our little Doc Ock.

18 January 2012

So The Woman in Black came in for me. A group of us in circulation have a little book club and this was the next book we wanted to read, since the movie is coming out (and the movie has Daniel Radcliff). I'm excited to have a scary book to read. I don't typically choose something like this for myself.

Update: 26 January 2012 Good book! I finished reading it today. Chilling, thrilling, and just some good scariness. Nothing graphic or violent, just creepy make you want to look behind you and hide under the covers.

19 January 2012

I was really missing gardening so I made a little container garden on one of my book selves. I don't know how the plants will do, but my fingers are crossed!

20 January 2012

So I went on a long run today, and about half way through the miles I was supposed to be doing I gave up because I was hurting like crazy. I knew my shoes were getting bad, but it took me a while to concede. I got off the treadmill and walked over to 26.2 and bought myself a new pair of running shoes. Here they are!

21 January 2012

Cringe! Okay, I know it's gross, but I didn't have a better picture for today. This is one of the many reasons I needed new running shoes. Right between my big toe and the smaller toe, the callouses had built up a lot. Great, lots of padding, right? Well, it's fine until your feet dry out and the callous splits... right down to the really soft tissue. It's been hurting so bad! I can hardly walk and when I do it's with a limp. I've been using liquid bandaid in the crack to try to encourage it to heal. Fingers crossed!

22 January 2012

On Sunday's I love to take time and cook something fun. Banana bread has been my favorite recently. So I thought today I'd get a picture of my collection of cookbooks, dilapidated discards from the library and otherwise.

23 January 2012

My plants are already sprouting! I've got some peas and flowers that have popped out of their dirt.

24 January 2012

I had to clean out my locker in circulation. I found this in the pile of papers I pulled out. It was from Halloween, when circulation became "Library High."

25 January 2012

First day as a reference librarian! Really my badge and name tag hasn't changed, but I was just so excited to be moved over to reference! Really though, I do miss circ. I like knowing what I'm doing and at the moment, I don't all the time. But I suppose that's how it is with any new job.

26 January 2012

I fear you may get lots of plant updates for my photos. I love my little babies, they make me so happy! Anyway, the plants that have already sprouted are thriving, and some dill started sprouting overnight!

27 January 2012

Ezra doesn't yet know that I grabbed another one of his drawings to post... hehehe. Anyway, he was setting this one up because he wanted to draw our feet with us in our wedding clothes. So we were sitting on the couch, he set up his camera on a timer, and I was bored. I got out my kindle and was reading a book while all of this was going on, ha ha. He liked the picture so much that he drew the whole thing. :-)

28 January 2012

Ezra's first experience painting. He's having a lot of fun making a mess in the living room. It's supposed to be me, walking up our steps after working out.

29 January 2012

Not man on wire, but bunny on glasses! Hopson was walking around Ezra's head.