Red Hot Chili Peppers

Today at work I colored pictures. That’s right, I get paid a lot more money to color pictures then I did to train at Ukrop’s, that’s a little sad to me. We are having a Chili Cook-Off at work and I am in charge of making the box for the ballots to go in to. I know that it’s not a big deal and people won’t pay much attention to whether or not it’s good, but they’d notice if I left the box bare! So I decided to draw two peppers, a winner and a loser, and they will go on the box. I have a few more days to finish it up, so hopefully it will look like I imagine it will, but who knows. Usually I imagine something turning out well and my lack of artistic abilities prevents it from looking as good when it’s finished. In the meantime I have scanned the winner and loser for your visual enjoyment. Please note that the big area on top that appears to be black is actually green. When I finish the box I’ll take a picture because I know you guys will be waiting to see the finished product.

Skyscapes

So I was reading the Dilbert Blog, a daily occurrence if Scott Adams can keep pumping them out. Today he talked about skyscapes (http://www.skyscapes.biz/) which I think are pretty darn cool, though also, pretty impractical. I don’t know of many companies who would spend the extra money to have these light fixtures put in just to sooth their employees. Just looking at the pictures that could be overhead in your cubicle I felt relaxed, and a little bit dizzy. It would be nice to have a sky window without really having a sky window, you wouldn’t have to worry about looking up one day to find that bird has bombed it, or to see that it is dark and gloomy outside, because you would have picked the slightly cloudy spring afternoon to set the mood in your cubicle.

Or perhaps you’re in the park and there are hot air balloons coasting above your head.


You could also be laying under a tree for a mid afternoon nap, rather than answering the phone or writing a report.
Of course, the only real reason that Scott Adams brought these up in his blog is that the Dilbert characters have their own skyscapes. You can get one of the characters to be looking down at you whenever you look up. Only problem is, I don’t see how relaxing they could really be when they look like they are falling out (or into) of a Twilight Zone episode.


No, if my company let me have one I would go with the clouds, and then I would never get any work done.

Sound Assurance

I’ve decided that the best way to get my friend’s attention is to text message her. She has programmed her phone to quack whenever she gets a text message(you know who you are). This may seem a slightly trivial fact until I tack on that the quacking persists until she hits a button to make it stop. She’s tried before to endure the quacking, if only to see how long it goes, or how long she could bare it. I feel pretty certain that she informed me that she lasted over 20 minutes once. A phone call will stop once you hang up or leave a message, unless it’s like my old phone that would beep every 10 minutes to inform me I missed a call, thus landing it under a pillow and a bunch of blankets when I left it at home once with my roommate who wouldn’t just hit the button. But this quacking is the greatest thing ever, if I text her she is sure to get annoyed enough to read it no matter what activity she was doing. It’s just reassuring to know that I can be heard.
In other news I am shocked by the death of Heath Ledger. I was going to write about him today, but I read Claire’s blog and she pretty much said whatever I would have, so if you want go check out her entry today. I just think that he was a talented actor and I am truly sorry to hear of his passing.

But what about the ROUS'?

So I decided to heighten my intelligence yesterday by brushing up on my current events. Unfortunately I forgot that current events bore me and that’s why I have been out of the loop for the past couple of years. After skimming through Hollywood gossip like I really cared I came across an article about a 2,000 pound rodent that lived 2 to 4 million years ago in South America.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22684589/?GT1=10755

I found the article interesting for the most part but couldn’t help but imagine an ROUS when they were describing the little fiend. They scurry across the floor of the woodland; they’d probably take a nasty bite out of a dead pirate’s arm while he was trying to defend a princess. Who would have thought that when the Princess Bride declared that there were Rodents of Unusual Size within the forest that they may have actually existed in real life over 2 million years ago! My two favorite parts of the article however don’t necessarily revolve around facts of the ROUS’. The first part is found under the heading, “Found a Decade Ago” and then is preceded immediately by the statement, “The fossil was found in 1987…” I may not be a math whiz, but I’m pretty certain that 1987 was more than a decade ago. My other favorite part was when the paleontologist was explaining why these rodents are now extinct, you see, back when North and South America were two completely separate entities the rodents lived in peace but when North and South were bridged together other animals came in eventually leading to the rodents dieing out. I just think that it is interesting that the paleontologist could tell this without really being there to know for sure, and when you think about it, a lot of things that we “know” about millions of years ago are just the guesses of paleontologists, we’ve just accepted what they said for some reason or another. So there you have it, my attempt to stay informed has led me to just random tidbits of information that lead me nowhere, but I hoped you enjoyed it just as much as I did.

Here it goes

I have decided to combine my enjoyment of blogging with my desire to keep in touch. I have learned throughout my very short life so far that sometimes in this family someone can be left out of the loop. Admit it, at one point or another everyone else knew something and you didn’t. So with this blog I get to write what’s going on and make sure that my entire sibling posse had the opportunity to hear what is happening in my life. Whether or not you read it is up to you, but this way I can make sure that it’s available.
In my defense you guys have to admit there are a lot of you, and sometimes I wonder who I told what and who hasn’t a clue about what’s going on.
This past Monday I finally turned 25 years old, the age I have been waiting for since July, when I started to pay for my own car insurance (yes, it took me that long to start paying it myself). Now I have a special, 25 year old reduced rate, it’s exciting. I had a really good birthday, it was my first birthday where I had a full time job, and the first one where I wasn’t given the day off. I walked into the office on Monday morning to find that someone had decked my cubicle out with birthday paraphernalia and there were people standing outside of it admiring it. I was embarrassed to say the least, as it turns out my boss did the job and she wouldn’t let me take it down. Then we had breakfast, Julie (the woman who pretty much trained me) brought in my favorite kind of bagels, I know, shocker, I like bagels. They are the cinnamon crunch bagels from Panera for those of you who are nearby Panera bread you should go and try one, they’re fantastic! Then I thought I would get to work, I was told I had to leave up the decorations so while working people kept stopping by wishing me happy birthday, or they would ask if it was my birthday and I would either respond with, “How did you know?” or “no, it isn’t.” I didn’t get anyone on that until the last guy stopped by and said he couldn’t help but notice that today might be my birthday, I said, “Actually, it’s not, weird huh?” and for a moment he had a confused look on his face and then he realized I was kidding. A couple of girls from work took me out for lunch, and we brought boss-lady along, I like when she comes out to lunch because then if it goes over I don’t feel guilty about a long lunch because she’s right there with me. In the afternoon they got together in one of the conference rooms and we all had cake (Ukrop’s cake of course). I’ve only ever worked on my birthday one other time, and that was in Idaho at the deli, when they gave me a new car (a toy one) because that summer mine had gotten totaled and I had been walking to work in the slush. Not that I’m bitter.
This week has been really busy for me actually. As most of you know (hopefully all but who knows right?) I’m in the Relief Society Presidency at church; this week was our 2008 kick off meeting. So Thursday night we had The Wedding Feast (from the parable of the ten virgins), so most of my free time was devoted to helping to plan that (I’m not the Enrichment counselor, this wasn’t my thing, I was just helping). I made Yukne (SP?) and everyone really seemed to like it, and since Kathryn was surprised maybe I should say that I really enjoyed the Yukne as well.
Not much else has been going on, I really just wanted to get this thing started. I will also try and post pictures up (once I get my computer working again) so you guys can see me, I know that’s what you’d really like to do, but also see pictures of my kid, Chubbers, and other things that I might deem worthy to grace your eyes.

Holiday Work Party January 5, 2008

Trying to look shorter so Jeff could feel better about his own height.
How many bridemaids can say they wore their dress three times?