Now Hear This...

When Opposites Attract: Home Improvement Edition

2012-01-23T10:38:00.004-07:00

This is how it goes around our house:

Me (looking at upholstered headboards on pinterest): I want one of these sooo bad! Why can’t we ever get anything nice and why is our bedroom so ghetto and awful and life is just so hard!!!

Mike (glancing over my shoulder): I could make that.

The next day:

Mike: I built a headboard out of some spare wood that I had and got some free foam from a carpet guy. Let’s go pick out fabric so we can get this finished.

Me: Whoa aren’t we moving a little fast? Before we pick out fabric I need to sift through all the options and figure out exactly what I want and price match cause upholstery fabric is super expensive and I should probably get some swatches and maybe buy some fabric online and agonize over it and return it and then get some new fabric and go through the process all over again. It could take a while.

Mike: Let’s just go look.

Lo and behold we end up finding fabric for like 3 bucks a yard that day. So then it’s up to me to figure out how to upholster the box spring to match the headboard and I’m thinking that I’ll spend the next couple of weeks attempting it and failing, but then my rockstar of a little sister comes over and pretty much does the whole thing for me because she is the greatest ever and also shares my husband’s strange addiction to DIY projects. We finish by midnight that night using a slight variation of this tutorial (Smash came up with the brilliant idea of sewing the fabric onto a sheet instead of onto the top of the boxspring. Genius).

After a coat of grey paint left over from our living room and some new lamps, a room that I thought was bound to remain a total eyesore for years is actually looking decent in a matter of weeks and all for about 100 bucks (not quite perfect yet, but it’s getting there. Also, this photo makes it look like the headboard is the same color as the wall but in real life it’s darker):

The embarrassing “before” picture. We seriously put zero effort into this room and it ended up being a random mess of old wedding gifts and cheap furniture (Hey Annie, recognize the Al Rounds masterpiece? Oh, the memories):

This whole project was a great reminder of how Mike balances out all my complaining, overthinking, procrastination, and complacency by simply getting crap done. The man’s a keeper.

It’s also an experience I should probably remember when he wants to build yet another outhouse-looking shed in our backyard this summer.

Just a few things I've been loving lately

2012-01-17T13:13:00.001-07:00

1) Judging by my addiction to TV shows on Netflix, it’s a good thing I’ve never been introduced to say, crack cocaine. Or even alcohol for that matter, cause I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be a “one glass of wine with dinner” kind of a gal. More like one of those binge drinkers that stay sober for a few weeks before indulging in a days-long bender.

Case in point: A few weeks ago I started watching Downton Abbey and finished the whole first season in about three days (there were only like 7 episodes, but still). Maybe it’s nerdy to admit to this kind of enthusiasm for a show that’s on PBS Masterpiece Theatre, but it is truly fabulous and is apparently winning all kinds of awards and stuff. The second season is currently airing on PBS so I thought that would bring me back to some kind of normal “one episode a week” routine but I stumbled upon a sketchy website that has the whole second season available to watch online (cause I guess it already aired in England or something?) so I’ve fallen right off the proverbial wagon.
2) I pretty much quit wearing makeup other than basic concealer and mascara after I graduated high school and stopped feeling compelled to buy all the stuff pushed on me by the drag queen-esqe employees at the MAC counter (including lip liner. Bless my heart.) But now that I’m knocked up my skin is freaking out so I needed something to make me look presentable without actually having to wear foundation or something equally intimidating.

My sister told me to try Bare Minerals and so far I can safely say that should they want to hire me to do testimonials for their infomercials I would totally be game. This stuff evens out my skin tone, is super light and wearable, etc. Plus swirling all the powder with the brushes and whatnot makes me feel like a fancy lady.

3) One thing that my pregnant self and my childhood self have in common is an undying love for chocolate Snack Pack pudding. I swear I could eat this stuff by the gallon lately. And I keep telling myself that if I have to eat chocolate pudding I really should just try making it from scratch, but that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon since this monstrosity found its way into my cart at Costco yesterday:
I’m trying to limit myself to one or two of these suckers a day but that’s proving to be quite the challenge since I frequently find myself thinking about how awesome it would be to just scoop the contents of like four of the little containers into a big bowl and just go to town. What can I say? When I dream, I dream big.

On this fine Tuesday morning

2011-12-20T13:15:00.001-07:00

Today Butch is happy because:

We found out that our future kid is most likely a boy (we won't know for sure until the big 20-week ultrasound but at 16 weeks the doctor says he's pretty sure it's a boy in there, so we're going with it.)

He got to eat Nielsen's frozen custard at 11 in the morning, which is what happens when your wife's doctor's office is conveniently located down the street.

I'm happy because:

Baby looks healthy and has flailing little arms and hands that were waving at us during the ultrasound, which melted my heart a bit. Also, although I know most women wouldn't be, I'm pretty jazzed at the prospect of having a boy. The thought of bows and ribbons and the color pink and all that stuff scares me a bit.

My doctor told me that I am good to go skiing during this pregnancy, and that I can go ahead and eat sushi if I feel like it. I almost kissed him on the mouth.

Oh, and I got to indulge in some mid-morning Nielsen's as well.

After all, that baby weight isn't going to gain itself.

Our first Christmas card (be sure to read the fine print)

2011-12-14T12:35:00.001-07:00

Sorry this pic is super blurry. It's actually just a screenshot I stole from the card company's website.

And while we're talking apologies, please don't be offended if you didn't get one of these in the mail. I normally don't even send out Christmas cards since the process ranks a little too high on the holiday hassle meter for me, but this year I found a sweet deal online through a company that mails the cards out for you so I decided to jump on it. The catch was that the promo code expired the day after I found it so I had to frantically scrape together addresses and I'm sure plenty of names got lost in the shuffle. Either that or I just forgot due to pregnancy brain. Is it too early to use that excuse? I hope not cause it's pretty much my trump card these days.

And the tradition continues

2011-12-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

One chilly night in 2008 we decided to go see the Christmas lights at Hogle Zoo with our (relatively) new friends Megan and Travis. The night was promising at first, as the lights were pretty awesome and the weather was appropriately wintery, but somewhere near the reptile house Megan got separated from the group, and due to some cell phone malfunctions it took us a good 45 minutes to find her again, which left poor Megs a bit traumatized.

But out of that unfortunate debacle was born a lovely Christmas tradition. Each year us and the Morrisons (and sometimes invited guests) hit up one of the Christmas sights around the valley that we have never been to before. In 2009 we went to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point, which was totally lame except for the fact that Megan and I were able to serenade the boys with rousing renditions of "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" since we viewed the lights from the comfort of the car. I think they were ready to bludgeon us by the end of the night. Last year we were joined by Morgan and Hansol and braved the crowds at the Festival of Trees, which was cool but oh so packed with people.

This year we decided to keep things more low key, which ended up being a great idea since Trav hurt his back the day before and was all kinds of doped up on muscle relaxers. Our destination of choice was the Winder Dairy Country Store, which is apparently a sort of Christmas Mecca around these parts since they serve up delicious scones during the holiday season and all the houses leading up to the store are decked out with some amazing lights. Here are a few pics of the night, courtesy of Megan's iphone:

Did you know that Mike and I are really good at looking awkward in pictures? Some might say it's a skill, but i think it's more like a gift from God or something.

Megan and Trav do a much better job, even with Red being kind of out of it from his meds:

Hot scones with honey butter. Delish:

We ended the night by watching The Family Stone while Megan and I finished up our holiday wreaths. It was a great start to the Christmas season and a tradition that I hope continues for years to come.

Terriers and Titans

2011-10-20T09:46:00.001-06:00

Just a couple of things going on lately:

First of all, as I mentioned in my last post, we got another dog. He’s a rat terrier and his name is Riggins (Mike chose the name, egged on by my whole family). He is otherwise known as Riggs, Baby Riggs, or Rigg Daddy. Classy, no?

I never thought I would own a small dog since I always thought of them as sissies, but after our friends Megan and Travis bought a rat terrier a couple of years ago we realized that they were legit. And Riggs proved himself by champing his first hike yesterday:

Plus, as Best in Show so eloquently teaches us, God loves a terrier.

As for Lola, I think it’s safe to say that she loves her new pet:
Matt and Mash were so taken with Baby Riggs that they adopted his brother, so now Riggs and Gunther get together often for puppy playdates:

Here are Smash and I holding our brother dogs at the Olympus football game a couple of weeks ago:
Which brings us to our next topic: Titan football. Smeegs surprised us all this year by deciding to break out of his ski bum, lacrosse-player mold to give football a go his senior year. We were all a little nervous that Smeeglet would end up riding the pine all season and we would have to feel bad for him, but lo and behold the kid got himself a starting wide receiver position. Going to his games with the family every Friday night has been one of my favorite things this fall. It would be even better if the Olympus field hadn’t been under construction all season, but unfortunately the city of Holladay is hell-bent on destroying any and all vestiges of my younger years. At least Mr. Felt is still the announcer.

Last week was the Olympus-Skyline game, or, as it is known by us local folk, the “Battle for the Rock.” It also happened to be the region championship and Olympus won in a nail-biter of a game in which Smeegs made a crucial catch in overtime. We got to meet up with him and snag a picture afterwards (sadly we didn’t get one with the in-laws before Smeegs had to get on the bus).
It was by far the best game of the season and brought back memories of the Olympus victory over Skyline during my own senior year. All together now, class of 2004: “we got the rock, we got the rock…” how did the rest of that cheer even go? I remember it sounding pretty awkward.

Why hello October, I've missed you

2011-10-05T09:42:00.003-06:00

One rainy afternoon last April, Butch and I sat in Chipotle taking a break from our Saturday errands and daydreaming about the upcoming summer. It had been a rough year for husband, consisting of lots of early mornings, late nights, homework, and other miscellaneous stresses that meant only one thing: we were both ready for some fun in our lives. As we finished our chips and salsa, we made a list of all that we wanted to do this summer, and, even though we fell a little short of our grand schemes, we still managed to soak up every last ounce of the season’s goodness.

Our summer adventures began and ended in Lake Powell. We took a trip down with my family in early May and ventured down again in September with a random group of family and friends. In between came a vacation to Costa Rica and a major house project, as well as the activities on our Summer must-do list: camping, hiking, lots of weekend trips to the cabin, an RSL game with Megan and Trav, campfires, tennis matches, many a snow cone run with the Ragsdales, an outdoor concert or two, girls camp (Butch came up for a night), boating, fireworks, and plenty of backyard barbecues. In short, ours was a summer of excess. We stayed up way too late, spent too much money, ate too many s’mores, let our house get way too dirty, and put way too many miles on our trusty old subaru. We loved every minute of it.

But like most periods of indulgence, this one came to a crashing halt in September with a new school year for Mike and a cold for me. It was the first time I’d been sick in over a year and a half, so at first I was in denial of the situation and carried on with my normal routine, which resulted in the cold turning into a sinus infection and me spending hours on the couch whimpering that my head was going to explode while the rest of Utah was busy enjoying a beautiful Indian summer.

This is all to say that this year I was even more ready than usual for the arrival of my favorite season, since donning thick wool socks and sipping a cup of hot herbal tea (as is the Preo way when you are sick) doesn’t sound nearly as appealing when it’s 80+ degrees outside.

Luckily I was able to get my first real taste of fall when we ventured up to Bear Lake this weekend. The air was cooler, the skies were brighter, and Logan Canyon was positively aglow in my favorite fall color combo: bright yellow aspens against dark green pines.

(I realize these photos are totally pathetic, but they were the best I could manage while driving).

The atmosphere at the cabin was more slow-paced and autumnal as well, as we spent the weekend sprawled on the couch watching General Conference, taking walks along the lake, and just enjoying the beautiful scenery.

I even channeled my inner Mormon housewife by baking some pumpkin cinnamon rolls and making this wreath out of the extra felt I had left over from our Harry Potter costumes. Special thanks to my sister-in-law for helping me cut out all those circles.
And on our way home on Sunday we stopped to pick up this little guy:

Yep, October’s been good to us so far. I’m excited to see the rest of autumn unfold.

For my fellow FNL fans

2011-09-07T11:12:00.005-06:00

My little brother sent me this photo with the following caption: "best t-shirt I have ever seen."
I wholeheartedly agree, Smeegs.

Apparently a lady at the Riverton little league football game made this number all by herself, and Smeeglet couldn’t resist asking her for a photo. Just when we thought his after-school job filming kids sports couldn’t get any creepier…

A Makeover

2011-08-31T09:52:00.000-06:00

Before (what our house looked like when we bought it):
In-Between (what it looked like for two years- we had to replace the windows and front door before we moved in):

After (painted the outside, paved the rest of the driveway):

Of all the remodeling projects we (well, mostly Mike) have undertaken since buying our little fixer-upper, painting the exterior has definitely been one of the most grueling. We (again, mostly Mike) spent the better part of the month of June sanding and painting our little hearts out. Butch was a superstar from start to finish as always, but my lifelong fear of ladders got the best of me at times so I devoted myself to important tasks like standing on the front lawn complaining that the shade of taupe we chose looked too warm or stressing over what color to paint the front door. At one point I was mixing paint from various sample cans to try and create the apple green I pictured in my mind. Shiz got crazy. But now that it's finished I'm really happy with the outcome. The photos don't really do it justice (probably because there were shadows everywhere when I took them) but the paint job takes at least twenty years off the place. And I did finally find the perfect color for the door (offbeat green by Sherwin Williams).

In other house updates, I finally found a chair for my living room after looking for one since I wrote this post. I’ve come to the realization that in order to have a decent looking home you need to spend either time or money, and both are constantly in short supply at the Cassity house. Which is why it took me roughly ten months to find this little beauty at the overstock.com warehouse sale:

At first Butch was a little hesitant about this chair but after he saw that it reclined he was sold. Is it pretty lame of me to be blogging about a chair? I’m thinking it probably is. But such are the small accomplishments that make up my life these days.

If anyone is interested, we are selling the old chair. Details here.

You'll also say fewer swear words when you drop it for the millionth time

2011-08-12T09:59:00.006-06:00

Sometimes it pays to have a phone that looks like this:

And not like this:

Like when your phone happens to fall out of your pocket as you’re making your way through the swarm of people at a free Bright Eyes concert. Because your phone is not password-protected, the person who finds it will text random numbers in your contacts to inform them of the situation, and when you call your phone after discovering its disappearance he will kindly offer to meet up with you so you can reclaim it. But just when you start thinking how lucky you are to have found a Good Samaritan in this sea of drugged-out hipsters, he will say “you’re lucky it wasn’t an iphone or something. I probably would have just kept it.” Classy.

So maybe the real hero of this story is Butch. Who, after discovering that the reason my phone wasn’t charging a few months ago was not because it is an old piece of crap but because I had somehow managed to melt chocolate into it, said “this is why we shouldn’t get you nice things.” Wise words, husband.

"It's not even worth going if we miss the previews"

2011-08-08T12:55:00.004-06:00

The title of this post refers to my response when people imply that missing the previews before a movie is not a big deal. The fact of the matter is that I live and die by the previews. More so now that I average about 2.5 trips to the movie theater per year and in spite of the fact that every movie trailer is now posted on YouTube. So when we saw Planet of the Apes with Meg and Trav this weekend, I was super jazzed when the theater showed not two, not three, but at least six previews before the movie started. And I about peed my pants when I saw this one:

Yes, Tim Riggins is officially starring in a movie. I can’t make any sense of what it’s supposed to be about, but the shirt is off and the southern accent is intact. Which is really all that matters.

And while we’re on the subject of movies, Hunger Games keeps looking better and better:

Happy Monday.

The end of a magical era

2011-07-19T10:07:00.003-06:00

When I think about having children someday, the thought of the bedtime story ritual is one that warms my heart. I’m excited to revisit all my childhood favorites with my own kids, which means that as soon as they’re old enough we’ll be reading Harry Potter together (or maybe just following along in the book while Jim Dale reads to us, since he is amazing). And I’m sure that, somewhere along the way, I will tell them all about what it was like to experience Pottermania firsthand.

I will tell them about how I read the first book in the series when I was twelve and deemed it overrated, then had to swallow my words after I finished the second and third and realized what all the fuss was about. I will reminisce about the fighting that took place between my siblings and I over whose turn it was to read the latest hardcover before we wised up and each just bought our own and read them together in the backyard.

I will tell them about how the bookstore I worked at in college had a midnight release party for both the 6th and 7th books, which meant that I not only got to start reading the books a day before the general public (shh…nobody tell Richard), but also that, once the clock struck midnight, I got to hand out copies to scores of eager kids decked out in cloaks and lightning scars that smiled at me like I was santa. Those parties were also a bit hectic and crazy at times, but luckily friends showed up to keep me company:

When the subject of the Harry Potter movies comes up, I’ll be sure to tell my offspring about how, on the night that the very last movie was released, their dad and I went to the Ivory’s party dressed up as Oliver Wood and Katie Bell, Gryffindor’s finest quidditch players.

An obscure costume choice to be sure, but the rules of the Ivory’s HP party are firm: you must RSVP with your character in advance and no duplicates are allowed.

The party itself was elaborate, whimsical, and a great excuse to unleash my inner Potter geek. In short, it was the perfect way to say goodbye to this phenomenon. Thanks for the invite, Abs.

With Smash, Matt, and Smeegs...a.k.a. Bellatrix, Crabbe, and Kreacher (Smeegs even shaved his head for the occasion):
Quidditch:
The feast:

Preo siblings with Abby and Steph (Fred Weasley and Hermione):
Honeydukes Sweet Shop:
The midnight screening of the movie at good old Holladay theater:
Would you like to hear my take on the movie? If not you may kindly exit out of this screen, because here it is:

I liked this movie up until the last half hour or so. I’m usually down when the HP movies deviate from the books a bit, since the movies will never be as great as the books anyway so you might as well change it up, but in this case I thought the changes they made to the plot after Harry meets up with Dumbledore in that parallel universe thingy were pretty freaking lame.

If the filmmakers had left things more or less the way JK wrote them the ending would have been a lot more satisfying and theatrical. Instead we had to hear Neville deliver some cheesed-out speech and see Harry and Voldy spin around in a weird scene that looked like someone made it using the photobooth function on their Macbook. Plus Ginny is awful as usual. When I watch the movies I always find myself wishing that the writers would have just gone for broke and had Harry hook up with Luna instead since they have way more chemistry together. Oh well. At least we still have the puppet pals:

Last but not least: Manuel Antonio

2011-06-24T12:56:00.001-06:00

The last stop on our trip was Manuel Antonio, a city located on the ocean. We splurged this time around and booked rooms at a nice hotel called The Falls. Worth every penny.
Most of our time here was spent just playing and relaxing at the beautiful beaches.

We also saw a ton of the wildlife that Manuel Antonio is famous for. On the drive from Monteverde we pulled over to see these crocodiles hanging out under a bridge:

And this sloth was just chillin in a tree outside of our hotel:
Although I wouldn't consider myself much of an animal person, I went completely ape shiz (pun intended) over the monkeys. I seriously wanted to bring one home with me.

You can hear me spazzing out over them in these videos:

There was a restaurant across from our hotel that was built around an old military plane (for you history buffs, it is the twin of the one involved in the Iran-Contra Crisis). Delicious food and it had an incredible view of the ocean.

And even though we were in a foreign country, we still caught a bit of the NBA playoffs:

Our last day ended up being overcast and a bit stormy, which was kind of a bummer since that is the day Josh rented a surfboard. The boys attempted surfing on the crazy choppy waves, but Heather and I were content to just relax on the beach.

Since our flight left at 6 in the morning, we decided to be adventurous and, instead of booking a hotel for that night in San Jose, just left Manuel Antonio in the early evening. Despite a few stops (we checked out the city of Jaco, and I got my last dose of Costa Rican food in the form of some rice, beans, and amazingly delicious fresh fish), we still rolled into San Jose before midnight. So we killed a few hours at Denny's and then ended up trying to sleep on the floor of the airport. Kind of miserable but all part of the traveling experience, right? The 6-hour flight home was one of those hellish ordeals where you are so tired but can't sleep. I felt like a cranky toddler and by the time we landed I was about ready to pull my hair out.

But the nice part about the flight home sucking is that it makes you forget that you're coming back from a beautiful place where you got to just hang out with your husband and friends all day with no real-life worries to speak of. Instead you just focus on how awesome it's going to be to get home and collapse onto your bed. Of course, that feeling died pretty quickly and now I'm ready for another vacation. India next spring, Butch?

Monteverde

2011-06-23T10:38:00.002-06:00

After two days in La Fortuna we drove up to a city in the mountains called Monteverde. This place is famous for its cloud forest reserve and we saw some pretty breathtaking views on the drive up there.

While in Monteverde we stayed at La Colina Lodge, a place that was part charming bed and breakfast, part sh*thole. The charming parts consisted of the friendly owner Nancy (whose mom lives in St. George- small world or what?), the colorful décor, and the scenery. The not-so-charming aspects included bug infestations (Heather and Josh kept a running count of how many spiders they killed), bathrooms that could have used a serious scrubbing, and the hordes of suspect dogs and cats roaming the place. This little guy's name was Zero and he was the most unfortunate looking of the bunch:

Our first afternoon in Monteverde was spent horseback riding with Sabine, a really nice German lady. She took us riding through the area and let us trot and run with the horses whenever we wanted to (our orientation basically consisted of her saying “have you ridden before? OK, good. Let’s go.”) At the end of the ride she even took us to a dirt road and encouraged us to gallop with the horses. Too bad my horse and I had some communication issues so she only really galloped for about 10 seconds. What a wuss.

While Sabine was taking this picture of us a truck pulled up behind her and she was all “oh don’t worry, he’ll wait.” Well apparently this dude was in quite the hurry cause he tried to go around us and ended up narrowly missing me and hitting my horse in the butt. The horse kind of whinnied and jumped a little bit, and Sabine just shrugged her shoulders and we went on our merry way. Classic.

What's sad is that we don't have a photo of Butch riding his horse. When we got back to the stable Sabine told him that she had given him a stallion to ride and that he'd champed it. I told him that he rode just like the guy on Man from Snowy River. Pretty much the greatest compliment I've ever given.

After a few hours of riding we went and ate dinner at a restaurant built around a tree. Pretty cool concept but the food was only so-so.

We went to the grocery store next door and Josh introduced us to memones, a fruit he ate on his mission in the DR. We all formed a bit of an addiction to it.

And Mike discovered fanta and crackers shrinkwrapped and sold together. A Costa Rican survival kit, perhaps?

The next day we went ziplining through the cloud forest, which was incredible. Mike and I got to ride on a few of the lines together, including the last one that was a kilometer long. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

There was a Tarzan swing at the end of our little zipline adventure, and Butch got a video of me on it (hope you enjoy the close-up of my tush):

This is how they stopped you on the swing:

After the zipline we explored the forest on some hanging bridges. So beautiful and green.

Heather and Josh are good at posing for pictures:
Butch and I, on the other hand...

That night we had a campfire back at the lodge. All the firewood was wet from the previous day's rain but Nancy gave us some magic wax to pour on it so we were good to go:

That is until it started raining again an hour later and we had to go inside and read. I’m actually quite bummed that I didn’t get a picture of our nightly “reading circles.” Since it got dark fairly early we would all congregate on the balcony of whatever place we were staying and just chat and read our books. Butch finally discovered what the Hunger Games hype is all about and I made my way through Bossypants (hilarious), Something Borrowed (not even enjoyable as a guilty pleasure), and half of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra biography before I realized that it required way too much brainpower to read while on vacation. Not that I’ve gotten much further in it since getting home because, as you may recall, I become pretty stupid once summer hits.

Next up: The beach and some adorable monkeys

Costa Rica Travelogue, Part 1

2011-06-22T09:22:00.000-06:00

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a while, partly due to the excuses listed in this post, but mostly because I am bad at this kind of blogging. Namely the kind in which I have to upload lots of pictures and actually describe a sequence of events that took place in my life instead of just rambling about random crap and supplementing it with a google image (now that kind of blogging is what I would consider my specialty).

But lazy, impersonal blogging habits aside, I wanted to write about our trip to Costa Rica because it was pretty rad. Also because I love it when other people post about their travels so I thought why not join in the fun?

Our trip got off to a bit of a shaky start when we took a red eye flight into San Jose and headed over to pick up our car rental at 6 in the morning only to find that Budget's ghetto machines do not accept credit cards without raised numbers (yeah, remember this incident? The new cards arrived in time but apparently raised numbers are a thing of the past). So I had to get a little bit Soviet on the budget folks (much to the embarassment of my fellow travelers) but long story short we got ourselves a car and drove to La Fortuna, a city built around an active volcano. When we arrived in La Fortuna we pulled up to Arenal Backpacker’s Resort, our home for the next two nights and the nicest hostel I have ever seen. It had clean, private rooms and a lavish pool with a swim-up bar.

After lounging by the hostel’s pool for a bit, we went on a little hike (more like a steep walk) to the La Fortuna waterfall and swam in the pools there, all the while admiring the lush jungle. The place seriously looked like the Garden of Eden.

We finished off the day by eating dinner in one of the town’s many open-air restaurants (one of my favorite things about CR) and ordering a giant banana split that ended up being mostly whipped cream. We cured our disappointment by getting ice cream cones at a quaint local café called Burger King. You might have heard of it.

The next morning we went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge and hiked up Cerro Chato, one of the little mountains neighboring the volcano that has a crater lake at the top. The hike was pretty intense, even for us Wasatch babies, since it was essentially climbing straight up a mountain with no switchbacks. But the scenery was beautiful and swimming in the lake at the top was pretty awesome (well, at least I thought it was awesome. Josh has since admitted that he found it creepy).

That night we went to Baldi, one of the many resorts built around the volcano’s natural hot springs. We ate at the resort’s buffet, soaked in the many different pools, and went down some crazy fast water slides (I really wish we had some videos of this cause we looked hilarious).

Check back tomorrow if you want to hear about how a horse I was riding got hit by a truck and/or see a picture of a truly hideous dog.

Easy as 1,2,3

2011-06-15T11:53:00.003-06:00

Some friends of mine have been doing these ABC posts, so I thought I'd join in the fun by answering the questions too.

Age: 25
Bed Size: Queen.
Chore I hate: Anything that has to do with my car. Although washing the exterior is not as bad as vacuuming the interior.
Dogs: Currently have one named Lola. She is a chocolate lab and a complete spaz but we love her through it.
Essential start of my day: Hitting snooze on the alarm.
Favorite Color: Green.
Gold or silver: It’s a toss-up.
Height: I claim 5’4”. And will until my dying day.
Instruments I play (or have played): Had a very brief fling with both the piano and violin, but nothing long-term.
Job Title: Technical writer.
Kids: None yet. But I like them in theory.
Live: C-wood Heights, yo.
Mom's Name: Marina
Nickname: Dash, Dashinka, Dashulinka, etc. If you want to get technical Dasha is actually a nickname for my legal name (Daria), but no one calls me that unless they know me from work or are a family member trying to get on my nerves.
Overnight hospital stays: Appendectomy my senior year of high school. Worst Christmas break ever.
Pet Peeve: The term “pet peeve.” It makes me picture bald gerbils or something equally creepy. I would really like to know who came up with it.
Quote from a movie: I can’t think of any particular ones right now but almost everything that Alex says in Everything is Illuminated cracks me up and is often quoted by my Russian family. In fact, I think Butch and I need to start borrowing some of his verbiage when introducing Lola to people (“she is deranged, but so so playful”). See a clip here. Oh, and I love me a good Tom Hanks "there's no crying in baseball!" rant, too.
Right or left handed: Right
Siblings: One of each (older sister, older brother, younger sister, younger brother). They are all pretty rad.
Time I wake up: Varies by the day but always about twenty minutes too late (see letter “E”).
Underwear: Yes.
Vegetables I dislike: I was going to say green beans but then I remembered that I’m OK with them as long as they’re not canned or frozen, so none really.
What makes me run late: Picking out an outfit, doing my hair, feeding Lola, getting distracted by shiny objects… pretty much anything and everything. I have some tardiness issues that need to be addressed.
X-rays I've had done: Teeth and left foot (stress fracture). And if CAT scans count you can also include the appenidx incident.
Yummy food I make: You can see it all here. I posted a shrimp recipe today.
Zoo animal: Hippos.

If you're interested

2011-06-08T11:22:00.003-06:00

We got back from an amazing Costa Rica trip last week, and since then we've been pretty busy dirty dashing, fulfilling Best Man and Bridesmaid duties for the wedding of our good friends, and just catching up on all the stuff that piles up when you leave home for over a week. Hence no blog post about it yet.

But luckily our friend Josh put together a sweet video of the trip that I've posted here for any interested parties. I'll probably write all about it eventually since I'm not the kind of gal to let the pictures do the talking, but for now check out this video (I especially recommend the zipline footage at about 3:30).

P.S.- What's with blogger cropping videos? Anyone know how to fix it? You can get to the full version of this one on youtube by clicking the video title.

Another reason for me to avoid doing anything crafty

2011-05-19T11:14:00.002-06:00

Have you heard about this?

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=153&sid=15422647

Well, apparently husband and I were victims of this little debacle (damn those 40% off coupons that lured me into Michael's) so our debit and credit cards are officially cancelled and we have to wait until Tuesday to get new ones in the mail.

The problem? We leave for Costa Rica on Wednesday and need to use a credit card for hotels and whatnot. So unless the mail decides to be reliable for the first time ever, we're sort of screwed.

I thought we were being all financially savvy and debt-free by only having one credit card to use for emergencies, but after this experience my advice to you is this: be ye not so stupid. Or just avoid craft stores altogether. I always knew they were trouble.

Quarter of a century

2011-05-10T11:06:00.007-06:00

Yesterday I turned the big 2-5. To commemorate this occasion, here is a photo of a much younger me that I found while cleaning out my desk:
Kind of adorable if I do say so myself. Even though I look like a boy and the photo quality makes it seem like I was born in 1933. Apparently camera technology was a bit behind the times in the good old USSR.

This year I spent the majority of my birthday attending a staff meeting and editing random articles. And what a joy that was. But in case you are feeling sorry for me I should probably tell you that my weekend was chock-full of birthday week celebrations and that I’m heading to Lake Powell on Wednesday to soak up some rays on a houseboat. Plus Butch sent these little beauties to brighten up my cubicle:

I also celebrated my 25 years on this planet by consuming as much raw fish as humanly possible. I had lox and bagel for breakfast in the morning (thanks, Helen!), met up with my sisters and baby Anna at Happy Sumo for lunch, and when Butch asked where I wanted to go to dinner, my answer was Takashi. My sushi philosophy is that there can never be too much of a good thing. But don't worry, I diversified my diet a bit when we met up with friends at Leatherby's and I inhaled the better part of a black and tan. Gotta give my aging bones some calcium. Side note: I realize that this post would be better with pictures but for some reason few things make me more self concious than taking pictures in restaurants. Is that weird? Although in hindsight I don’t think taking pictures would have drawn any more attention to our group than the Leatherby’s staff singing happy birthday to me while kneeling around the table in one of the more awkward restaurant birthday rituals I’ve ever seen.

We finished off the night by watching the Memphis/OKC game, which nearly ended my life prematurely with its anxiety inducing triple overtime. Here’s hoping Memphis can pull off a win next time.

Oh, and Kevin O’Connor? If you’re reading this I have a birthday request for you. I would like Shane Battier sporting a Jazz uniform by this time next year please.

Thank you in advance.

But I still don't think Prince William is good looking.

2011-04-28T09:49:00.010-06:00

OK, I’ll admit it. I think this Royal Wedding stuff is pretty awesome. Probably because I’m totally fascintated by the mixture of fairy tale elements (princesses, castles, etc.) and modern life that exists in today’s monarchies. I mean, the royal family of England doesn’t serve any real polititcal purpose anymore, yet tomorrow is a national holiday because of this shindig and, from what I understand, public funds are being used to pay the bills. I shudder to think what kind of riots would break out in the U.S. if, say, the Obamas decided to renew their vows and made a big to-do of it.

This wedding has also made my habit of reading trashy magazines at the grocery store slightly more classy, since instead of documenting the train-wreck lives of the Kardashians or Jersey Shore castmates, their pages of are now filled with sparkling tiaras, royal pedigree charts, and old photos of Princess Di. In fact, just yesterday I was looking through a fancy“collector’s edition” of Us Weekly devoted exclusively to the wedding while a Rite Aid cashier stared at me with judging eyes (he does not take kindly to my “browse through the magazines for ten minutes then only buy a gallon of milk” routine) .

Oh and have you seen this blog? My friend Marie linked it on her blog and I think it’s hysterical. True, some of the jokes are pretty lame but there are some gems like these:

According to the aforementioned magazine, Kate Middleton is actually a pretty nice, down-to-earth type person, but I figure since she A) is marrying a prince and thereby crushing the hopes of many British girls, B) will never have to worry about finances a day in her life, and C) has an absolutely ridiculous body that most women can only dream of, we’re allowed to have a few laughs at her expense.

This is how you roll when your names are Dasha and Masha

2011-04-25T10:25:00.003-06:00

Below is a photo of Smash and I in one of the many coordinating outfits we sported in our younger years:

Judging from our expressions in this photo we were super jazzed about them.

Twenty some odd years later we showed up to Easter dinner looking like this:
Identical sweaters: check.
Grey shirts: check.
Dark jeans: check.
Grey TOMS(not pictured): check.

If you click on the picture and look closely you can see that we're even wearing the same shade of nail polish. And we've upped the ante on our childhood selves by adding matching hairstyles to the equation (which would have been impossible in the heyday of Smash's blonde 'fro).

The best part is that this was totally unplanned. Well, unless you count the planning that took place on my parents' part when they gave my younger sister and I rhyming names and essentially treated us like identical twins our whole lives. Apparently old habits die hard.

We we we so excited

2011-03-28T14:51:00.008-06:00

If I were a legit blogger this post would be a detailed account of the spring break road trip Butch and I took with Smash and Matt last weekend. I would tell you all about the Ivory’s lavish house that we stayed at in St. George (thanks, Abby!), which had a kitchen straight out of my dreams and king size beds that made sleeping a joy.

I would post pictures of us eating at In-N-Out and Bear Paw Café, swimming in the pool and hot tub, and relaxing on the couch watching March Madness. I would tell you about the Bellagio casino actually having a table devoted to War, that most basic of all card games, and that one of the highlights of this mini vacation was watching my husband play it with two hilarious Eastern European men that kept giving him chips and chanting “Ace! Ace!” every time the dealer dealt a hand.

I would probably also tell you the story of how the Mulcocks learned the hard way never to play blackjack in Mesquite at 3 in the morning but we’ve agreed to pretend like that never happened. So instead what I’m going to do is post the youtube video that provided endless entertainment on this trip. You’ve probably already seen this so-awful-it’s-awesome video (it has a bajillion views and has been getting quite a bit of media attention lately) but if you haven’t, and you don’t mind having a few laughs at a misguided teen’s expense, then you’re in for a treat:

Conan’s version is pretty hilarious too:

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of youtube, you gotta love this take on a classic poster:

(click here if you don’t get it).

Weighing in on current events

2011-03-17T13:23:00.004-06:00

I found out via a link my friend Nichole posted on facebook today that Jennifer Lawrence has been cast for the role of Katniss in the Hunger Games movies. My first reaction wasn’t positive, since this is the photo that ran with the article:

And last time I checked Katniss wasn’t really the blonde, pretty type. But then I read that Jennifer was nominated for an Oscar this year for Winter’s Bone, so I looked up that trailer:

And judging by what I saw, homegirl is gonna rock it. I’m not going to watch Winter’s Bone in its entirety because it seems like the sort of thing that would give me nightmares until the end of time, but it looks like this actress uglies up quite nicely and plays a tough, gritty part with real depth. I think her Katniss will be a complex, emotional character whereas in less capable hands the role could easily turn into the stereotypical “I’m a girl but I'm so hard core you can't even handle it” type of thing.

True, Jennifer Lawrence is kind of old but casting thirty-year-olds to play teenagers is par for the course in Hollywood so 20 isn’t that big of a stretch. Plus I think that if they had actual fourteen-year-olds playing characters that kill each other I for one would leave the theater slightly traumatized (or maybe that’s just because kids that age look like babies to me these days). Mostly I’m just glad that they picked someone with real acting chops to play Katniss rather than Disney Channel’s latest and greatest tween star.

And while we’re on the subject, wasn’t Mockingjay pretty freaking terrible?

More pages I've been turning

2011-03-16T10:30:00.006-06:00

A few months ago I joined goodreads. I created an account, asked a bunch of people to be my friends, wrote a review of one book, and then never visited the site again. Looks like my tolerance for social networking is maxxed out at a facebook account and this little ole blog. But I still love to talk about books, so here are some unsolicited reviews of what I’ve read lately:

This is the book that I reviewed on Goodreads, so I actually read it quite a while ago but it’s worth mentioning here because I absolutely loved it. I first got acquainted with Kazuo Ishiguro when I read Remains of the Day and there’s just something about his writing that kills me. It’s so distinctively aloof and cool and it worked particularly well in telling this story of three characters raised to be organ donors in a fictional 1990s England. I hear they made a movie of it recently but Keira McNast Knightly is in it so I refuse to go there (She was also in the film version of Atonement, which makes me think she is hell-bent on tainting my favorite books).

When I told people I was reading this book, their reactions were more or less the same. My boss said “so is it going to make us all want to be vegetarians?” and a friend told me that she didn’t want to read it because she wasn’t ready to change her eating habits. So I’m guessing you probably already know what’s in this book: an account of how modern factory farming mistreats animals, destroys the environment, and puts all kind of scary things into our bodies. But the way Jonathan Safran Foer tells this story—through a mix of memoir, interviews, and good old-fashioned investigative reporting—makes this a particularly interesting read. His approach to this issue is also more philosophical than most (sometimes pretentiously so).

That said, this book did not compel me to be a vegetarian. Foer makes it seem like it’s impossible to be a true “selective omnivore” but I’ve found that you can eat meat without buying into the factory system. You can purchase your meat from a local farm like this one, and stores/restuarants like Whole Foods and Chipotle are becoming more committed to providing ethically raised meat to their customers. So there are definitely options out there if you are like me and not opposed to eating meat on principle but don’t agree with what the meat industry has become.

This is one of the most unique books I’ve read in a long time. Although it’s labeled as a novel, The Imperfectionists reads more like a series of intertwined short stories told from the perspective of various staffers at an international newspaper in Rome. Some chapters are humorous and some are sad, but all are masterfully crafted. I first heard about this book on NPR, and the commentator said that it was one of the best-reviewed books of the year. After reading it I can’t say I’m surprised.

With the likes of Lauren Conrad (LC if you know her from Laguna Beach) claiming to be an author these days, picking up a book by a celebrity can be a risky venture. But aside from a slight tell-all feel in describing what went down on the Ally McBeal set, Portia de Rossi’s account of life with an eating disorder reads more or less like a gritty memoir by a legit author or journalist. It’s a really interesting look at how a behavior our society praises (exercising, eating right) can develop into something ugly in its extreme form.

My older sister recommended this book to me when I was looking for a light, guilty pleasure-type read. It’s about a teenage girl whose sister dies and she copes with this loss by writing some truly crappy poetry and hooking up with both the dead sister’s boyfriend and a fellow band geek. Classy stuff. I read this book in much the same way that I read Twilight, meaning that I had to periodically slam the book shut in order to shake off the awkwardness of the passage I had just read. Young adult literature and I have quite the tortured relationship.

So, in keeping with the whole blog-as-goodreads-account thing, I would love to hear some recommendations on what to read next. My life is kind of sad right now because all the books I want to read have waiting lists a mile long at the library. Truly a nerd’s worst nightmare.

Forget the Irish. Today it's all about the luck of the Russians

2011-02-22T14:55:00.007-07:00

I have been having quite the stroke of good fortune over the past 48 hours. It all started with my gem of a husband insisting that I go skiing yesterday even though he couldn't come on account of his knee being injured. So I went skiing and it ended up being one of the most magical days in the history of the greatest snow on earth (described in detail by my sister here).

After I came home Butch and I went to run errands together and neither one of us got bored, irritated, or impatient even though we had to stop at both Michael's (which Butch hates) and Sam's Club (which I hate). For two people who dislike shopping as much as we do it was quite the miracle.

Then we went to dinner with the Cassitys and the two options everyone got to vote on were Famous Dave's and Morelia and in my head I was thinking "please not Famous Dave's" even though what I said was "I'm good with whatever Butch wants" because I know of the fondness he has for Famous Dave's and I am a fantastic wife like that. And guess which one everyone picked? I'll give you a clue: I ate a chile relleno with rice and beans for dinner and there were no bottles of barbecue sauce in sight.

Then through a course of events that is too boring to get into right now I ended up going to bed at 9:00 last night. Which I haven't done in years and oh was it ever a dream come true for a grandma like myself. It's amazing what going into work feels like when you've slept for a solid ten hours hours. Too bad I know I won't experience it too often.

So could all these events be coincidence, or maybe just a result of a sunny outlook on life? I would totally think that if it weren't for what I picked up on my stroll past the office candy dish today:

DOUBLE PINKS!!!!!!!!! Which makes it official. I am on a legit lucky streak and need to get myself to Idaho to buy a lottery ticket stat. Unless of course I just jinxed myself by writing this blog post. Which is fine by me cause I'd much rather spend tonight eating curry and watching Waiting for Superman than driving up to Idaho (although the true test of this lucky streak will be if Butch agrees to watch that movie with me. I'll keep you posted).

In a related note, can someone tell me why Starburst doesn't wise up in the manner of Mentos and start making packages of all pinks? I mean, if they did any kind of market research they would know that's what people want. And instead they keep messing with us by throwing in all the nasty yellows and oranges. If it didn't make me look like a loon with too much time on my hands I would probably write them a strongly worded letter.

February the 14th

2011-02-14T14:14:00.002-07:00

Remember that post where I wrote about how much more awesome Valentine's Day is if celebrated in an elementary school fashion? Well, apparently my co-workers got the memo cause when I walked into work this morning this is what I saw (please ignore the hand lotion and other various messes cluttering my desk):

Just now co-worker Frank walked by and presented me with a Sponge Bob valentine and a Reese's peanut butter cup. I love Valentines Day. And don't you worry, I also did my part in spreading Valentines cheer in the office by handing out these treats:

Also making me happy this Valentines Day is the fact that I actually sort of decorated for my favorite holiday this year:

It may not seem like much to you crafty types but I thought it was quite domestic of me.

Now moving on to what is making me unhappy on this lovely holiday. It is the fact that Mike's professors are apparently Valentines Day scrooges so he has a test tonight and a paper due tomorrow. Which means that we will be spending most of the day apart, and I kind of like to have my husband around on holidays devoted to love.

But I'm going to make the most of this situation by using the alone time to cook a nice dinner while listening to the old jazz music that I love but isn't really Butch's cup of tea. So Billie Holiday and I will spend the evening together lamenting the absence of men in our lives. I don't know why but I almost think sad love songs have more of a romance to them than the happy ones, and no one does sad music better than Billie. Her voice is like the musical equivalent of dark chocolate in that even her happiest songs have a bit of melancholy longing to them. Perfect for Valentine's Day.

Not diggin Billie? Maybe Andre 3000 is more your jam (this song gets stuck in my head without fail every Valentine's Day. Hence the title of this post):

Happy Valentines Day! Hope yours is filled with love. And candy.

Say it ain't so

2011-02-10T14:48:00.002-07:00

Of course we knew Jerry wasn't going to be around forever, but I never thought it would end like this:

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=304&sid=14327951

I'm gonna miss that cranky old man.

Just some whining and Peter Pan syndrome going on over here

2011-02-02T14:37:00.004-07:00

Sometimes I feel like the guy in this song:

Although I would be an ungrateful idiot if I didn’t recognize that, for an English major, I’ve done pretty well for myself. I have a full-time job with benefits that actually requires me to use the skills I learned in college (although no one has asked about my thoughts on Derrida or Foucault yet, thank goodness), the company I work for is awesome, and I make enough money to avoid the “living on government cheese” stereotype.

But there are still times when I get anxious about the future and this week has been one of those times. As of last week I’ve been at my job for three years and have this feeling that it’s time to move forward somehow but so far none of the options I’ve explored have panned out and it’s frustrating. More frustrating, though, is the fact that I can’t pinpoint exactly what direction it is that I want to move in.

I’ve been toying with the notion of going back to school for a Masters in rhetoric and compositon but am having a hard time getting excited about that idea. And if I’m not excited about it now, I’m sure as hell not going to be excited about it when I have to scrounge up letters of recommendation, take the GRE (again-ugh), and juggle the craziness that is full-time work and school, so what’s the point in even applying?

But I could just be thinking that way because I still have a bad taste in my mouth from my prior grad school experience, which consisted of two semesters spent trying to convince myself that I wanted to be a public school teacher while repressing the little voice in my head that kept telling otherwise. Quitting that program was one of the most liberating things I’ve ever done, yet I’m still kind of angry about the waste of time and money and can’t bring myself to repeat that experience.

I guess the underlying frustration here is that, career-wise, I have next to no idea of what I want to do with my life. All the ideas I had going into college–law school, journalism, teaching—ended up being things I was not passionate about. People always tell you to “follow your dreams” and crap like that, but what they don’t tell you is that sometimes the hard part is figuring out what that dream is. I’m not a lazy person, but I don’t like to work hard for the sake of working hard. I like to feel like I’m accomplishing something or working towards a goal, so going to grad school just for the sake of keeping busy or because I always thought I would is not too appealing. Especially since going back to school will probably leave me saddled with student loans, something that I have avoided up to this point in my life.

I really just need to figure things out one way or another though because this funk I’m in is making me do crazy things. Like the other night when I was at the grocery store and a huge bag of Marshmallow Mateys found its way into my cart. It’s like my subconscious was saying “Hey, you know how being an adult kind of sucks sometimes? Might as well take advantage of the perks by buying the sugary cereal you were denied as a kid.” So I did. And then ate two bowls for dinner. Which I can do because I’m a grownup, dammit.

Succesfully avoiding the post-Christmas blues

2011-01-06T12:14:00.005-07:00

The first week of January is usually a rough one for me. I get used to the holidays and all the good times that go along with them, so when real life gets back into full swing I lose my mind a little. However, I'm happy to report that this year's transition has gone better than most, thanks largely to the following:

1) Jazz game with our good friends Hansol and Morgan.
An outing to Crown Burger and the good old ESA was exactly what I needed after my first Monday back at work. Thanks for hooking us up with tickets, Hansol. We like you.

2) A new Netflix addiction.
It's taken us over a year to get through three seasons of 30 Rock, but I'm happy to announce that husband and I now have a new show to watch together:

Yep, we love us some FNL. Something about the mixture of sports and dramatic plotlines has got us hooked to the point where we've watched at least one episode every night this week, eager to find out what kind of shenanigans those Texans have gotten themselves into this time. Mostly I just like it when the players screw up and the coach gives them a "You've gotta (insert reprimand here), son!" speech. It's strangely exhilirating.

Add a bowl of Farrs peppermint stick ice cream topped with crushed oreos to the equation, and this nightly ritual is becoming something I look forward to with the kind of anticipation usually reserved for Christmas morning.

3) "Out with the old, in with the new." (Furniture, that is).
Mike and I have had hand-me-down furniture in our living room ever since we got married. It was nice furniture and we were happy to have it, but it wasn't really my style. We've been wanting to replace it for a while but haven't been able to justify the expense of new furniture. Then last week a New Year's miracle occurred in the form of a KSL listing for the couch, oversized chair, and ottoman pictured below for a measly $100. Done and done.

Now I just need to get some fun throw pillows and figure out what to do with that red plaid armchair that is the last remnant of the old furniture. I'm toying with the notion of re-upholstering it with a more modern fabric instead of getting a new one but have no idea where to get it done and I've heard that it can get pretty pricey. Anyone have any advice on the matter? I wish I could just do it myself like some crafty folk out there, but I am hopelessly handicapped in the sewing department. My junior high home ec teacher Mrs. Bridge even told me so.

Internet, meet John

2010-12-29T13:52:00.004-07:00

Thanks to the Christmas gift Smeegs got Butch this year, a corner of our basement now looks like this:
My husband is currently debating over whether a Karl Malone or D-Will fathead would best complete his shrine. Heaven help me.

I'm guessing this present was a large factor in Butch declaring this year's Christmas the best one of the four we have spent together. I would have to agree with his assesment, but not so much because of John as the fact that we got to spend lots of time hanging out with family, hitting the slopes, and, in my case, eating about ten pounds of baked brie. Hope your holidays were equally magical.

Christmas came early this year

2010-12-20T12:47:00.004-07:00

When we bought our house the upstairs bathroom looked like this:

Pretty disgusting, eh? So Megan and I ripped everything out:
And Butch and his awesome Dad and brother rebuilt it to look like this:

Most of you are probably thinking "is that a shower cap hanging on the shelf?" Yes, yes it is. Don't judge me.

You're also probably thinking "Dang, that's some bright freaking paint." Exactly. When we were choosing paint for the bathroom the color I settled on was demurely named "English Apple" and appeared to be a lovely true green. Then we applied the paint to the walls and the result was quite different. To be honest I actually don't mind the way it looks in these photos all that much, but if you've been over to our house at night you probably remember that the bathroom walls gave off an eerie glow that resembled a nuclear plant or something. Not really the look I was going for.

I've been wanting to repaint the bathroom for some time now, but with all the other house projects we've had going on it was kind of low on the priority list. Plus I was not looking forward to taping off all the nooks and crannies and whatnot. I had mentioned to Mike that I wanted to repaint the bathroom as a Christmas project and even went so far as to pick out a swatch and sample can at Home Depot but didn't think we could really manage it during the Holiday break.

But then I came home from an annual "girls weekend" in Park City with Mike's mom and sisters on Saturday morning to find this sign posted on the bathroom door:

If you don't watch Arrested Development you're not going to get that particular joke, but the point is that I walked into the bathroom to see a Merry Christmas banner and the walls transformed into a lovely shade of robin's egg blue ("Zen" by Behr):

Turns out Butch and his friend Hansol had stayed up until 5 in the morning on Friday creating this Christmas miracle. As cliched as this sounds, I truly think this is the most thoughtful and unexpected gift I've ever received. My husband is awesome.

We continued our early Christmas celebration by heading up to Alta to test out the new ski gear we bought this season. Mike's parents were kind enough to give us money for new ski boots (me) and new skis (Butch) for Christmas and we wanted to try them out before our full ski day at Snowbird next week. So up to Alta we went, accompanied by Smash, Matt, and Smeaglett.

If anything could have made me love Butch more that day, it would be watching him ski. This is only his second season on skis after boarding for most of his life, but homeboy is already dropping cliffs and taking crazy tree runs with the rest of us. I hope our kids inherit his athleticism cause they sure aren't going to get it from me.

Of course we had to make a run to Molca Salsa afterward. Nothing tastes better after skiing than greasy Mexican food.
It's funny how, back in my high school and college days when I had a season pass and a schedule that allowed me to ski at my leisure, I totally took the experience for granted and only got truly thrilled about skiing on the most powderlicious of days. Now something as simple as an hour and a half of skiing (for free!) makes me feel positively giddy. I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season!

Apparently all I want to write about is sports

2010-12-07T17:23:00.006-07:00

Last night I was talking to Smash and she reminded me that the Patriots were playing the Jets on Monday Night Football. Of course I was out running errands all night so I couldn’t watch the game, and when Butch got home I told him that I really need to renew my former Patriots enthusiasm. To which he responded (in a lovely sarcastic tone) “oh, cause they’re 9 and 2 now?” And right then and there I was reminded of why I kind of hate being a Patriots fan in the first place.

See, my family lived in Boston when I was a kid and we more or less maintained loyalty to that region’s sports teams (or, more accurately, we cheered for whatever teams my jock older brother rooted for, and he remained loyal so the rest of us did too). I can’t stand watching baseball but I hate the Yankees on principle, cheer for the Celtics as soon as the Jazz make their exit from the NBA playoffs, and, when it comes to the NFL, the Pats are my team.

However, as mentioned above, I haven’t really been too invested in them for the past couple of years. This is mostly because I married someone whose loyalties lie more with the NBA than the NFL, and, with the Jazz schedule being as packed as it is, my weekly sports-watching quota is usually met long before the Sunday football games air. But it’s also because being a Patriots fan has kind of sucked ever since they beat the Rams in the Superbowl and went on to dominate the NFL for the next couple of years. During that era I dreaded telling anyone I was a Patriots fan, as I could see the word “bandwagon” forming on their lips before I could even finish a sentence. Superbowl parties also became bittersweet, as my siblings and I were usually the only ones cheering for New England while everyone else was pulling for the underdog. It was indeed lonely at the top.

Then came the Patriots’ inevitable fall from grace, with the whole Belichick cheating scandal, the disastrous Superbowl of ’07 (even my Benedict Arnold of a husband cheered for the Giants), and the tabloid spectacle created by Tom Brady ditching his Baby Mama for Giselle “my body is ridiculously hot” Bundchen. Hoo boy. Rough times indeed.

But the Pats have pulled through it and, after owning the Jets’ trash last night, are 10-2 and looking like the football team that I know and love. So by returning from my NFL-watching hiatus it looks like I might once again find myself cheering for the “bandwagon” team that everybody wants to see lose; the team that has nowhere to go but downhill. As much as I hate to make this comparison, it kind of makes me feel like a Lakers fan (except not really, cause the Lakers suck). But hey, it could be worse. I could be a Cincinnati Bengals fan. Am I right, Phil?

One thing’s for sure. I would have an easier time cheering for my beloved Patriots if the quarterback didn’t resemble a mulleted, post-pubescent Justin Beiber. Tom Brady, please cut your freaking hair. I don’t care if you’re balding, you look like an idiot.

I consider it a late birthday gift.

2010-11-10T09:39:00.008-07:00

Halftime Score
Miami Heat: 51
Utah Jazz: 32

Final Score
Heat: 114
Jazz: 116

What could account for such a miracle, you ask? Oh, just my boy Paul Millsap scoring 46 freaking points. Nine of which came from back-to-back-to-back three pointers. Holy shiz. My head is still spinning from the magic of it all.

So Paul, you are officially forgiven for ruining my birthday party by playing like crap against the Lakers. Let's be friends again:

And Jazz? Please have more games like the one last night. They make me a happy girl.

3

2010-11-07T14:04:00.003-07:00

November 7, 1874: The Republican Party was first symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly magazine.

November 7, 1917: Lenin's forces overthrow Alexander's Kerensky's government in Russia's Bolshevik Revolution.

November 7, 1929: Museum of Modern Art opens (NYC).

November 7, 1931: Chinese People's Republic proclaimed by Mao Tse Tung (Looks like it's a good day for the Communists).

November 7, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins a fourth term in office.

November 7, 2007: This date may never be remembered for anything in history books, but it was on this gorgeous fall day that I made the best decision of my life:

Three years later I still can't believe I'm married to the cute boy whose smile made me weak at the knees. Even though we spend 90% of our time goofing off and teasing each other, I am fully aware of how lucky I am to be married to someone who I not only love, but admire so much. In my dad's speech at our wedding dinner, he said that Mike impressed him with both his strength and humility. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Mike is one of those amazing people for whom no challenge is too great, yet he is the least egotistical person I have ever met. He is currently juggling full-time work and school, plus a demanding church calling (this means he usually leaves the house sometime around 6 a.m. and comes home around 9 p.m. on weekdays), yet the phrase I hear from him most often is "Is there anything I can do for you?"

I could go on and on about the things I love about my husband--his optimism, his sense of humor, his kindness--but in the interest of keeping this post from being completely cheesed-out I'll restrain myself. It does need to be mentioned, however, that Mike might just have ESP. When I suggested splurging on tickets to the blackout game for our anniversary (thinking he'd jump at the chance), Butch said that he didn't think it was a good idea to stick all our proverbial eggs in the Utes' basket. So instead of watching that train wreck in person we got to view it from the comfort of a couch. For free.

So thanks, husband, for making these three years of marriage amazing, keeping us from Rice-Eccles stadium on one of its darkest days, and maintaining your excellent dental hygiene habits. I'm still a sucker for those pearly whites:

Love you, Butch. Happy 'versary.

A very Half-y Halloween

2010-11-03T10:03:00.008-06:00

Did the awfulness of that pun make you cringe or what? Or maybe if you took Mr. Felt’s class at Olympus High it just made you feel nostalgic. Anywho, the point of this awkward title is that I ran my first half marathon on the day before Halloween. I have always been hesitant about doing this because I prefer to view running as a simple form of exercise rather than a sport in itself, so I didn’t really know if I’d like the experience of running competitively.

I’m happy to report that I ended up really enjoying the race. It was a beautiful course with perfect weather, and because people were all festive in their costumes and whatnot, the atmosphere was decidedly laid back. Here are some photos:

My friend and running partner Marianne. We spent many a Saturday trucking around the Salt Lake valley together:

My costume. I put white duct tape on my running clothes to transform myself into a skeleton. Sadly, only one lone femur survived the 13.1 miles. It’s a shame that you can’t see the beautiful kneecaps or shinbones that Smash created. They were lovely.
Butch was a supportive husband and cheered me on at the finish line. This face means that he’s proud of me:

The rest of our Halloween weekend was filled with festive activities like making caramel apples, watching scary X-Files episodes (thank you, Netflix Instant Streaming), seeing the Utes beat Air Force, and just hanging out with friends and family. Thanks to my little sister’s facebook page, I even have photos to prove it:

Is baby Anna not the cutest gnome you've ever seen?

Since we’re talking about Halloween, I have to post some pictures of the Cassity’s annual pumpkin carving night last weekend. My in-laws are pretty much master pumpkin carvers and every year we all get together to show off our skills. My pumpkin usually ends up being the “special” one of the bunch, since I don’t use stencils anymore after this mishap, but that’s OK cause everyone is nice to me about it anyway. Here are this year’s pumpkins:

And my special little owl:
Hope everyone had a happy Halloween!

Guess what my skis are.

2010-10-19T10:48:00.004-06:00

If you've spent any time on the internet lately, chances are you have already seen this video. But I had to go ahead and post it just in case there are any stragglers, since this video is too good not to share. Its charming quirkiness totally reminds me of the Russian cartoons I watched as a kid:

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

A cinematic stroll down memory lane

2010-09-15T11:42:00.004-06:00

The Cassitys have got me feeling shamelessly nostalgic. A few nights ago Mike and I were over at his parents’ house and Mike’s older brother Ben announced that one of their favorite childhood movies is now available on DVD. This made the siblings fondly reminisce about all the random movies they loved when they were kids, which in turn led to me recalling my own childhood favorites.

It seems like, to a certain extent, people of the same generation share a similar cinematic background (I think everyone close to my age has seen every animated Disney movie ever made), but then there are those movies that are specific to one’s own childhood and wouldn’t be easily recognized if you mentioned them in a crowd of people. You know, the old black-and-white movies you watched at your Grandma’s house or the campy ‘80s flick your five-year-old self selected at the video store. Things like Labyrinth or Scamper the Penguin.

Because these kind of movies stayed firmly rooted in the realm of my childhood (unlike the more mainstream stuff, which remained a constant via babysitting or other experiences with children), they are usually the ones that evoke that warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia when I encounter them later in life or-even better-happen to talk to someone else that has seen them. Here are a few movies that have that effect on me:

The Last Unicorn

I must have checked this movie out from the library at least 1,000 times as a child. I freaking loved it. And then I forgot all about it until years later when my little sister and I found a copy at some cabin we were staying at and popped it in the VCR for old times sake. You know that feeling you get when you visit a place you went as a child and it looks totally different than how you remembered it? Well, that was pretty much the feeling Smash and I got while watching this. We kept looking at each other like “did we really watch this as kids? Cause it is seriously messed up.” Apparently in our younger years we were too hyper to pay attention to anything except the pretty unicorn and somehow blocked out all the crazy going on in this ‘70s cartoon. I would be willing to bet that it was made under the influence of some serious hallucinogenic drugs.

The awesome thing is that the Cassity kids also loved this show, so for Easter one year my mother-in-law gave us the special edition DVD in our Easter baskets. Now Mike and I can witness the awkwardness of the “bosom tree” scene together:

Newsies
I swear you have to be either Mormon or from Utah to know about this movie. I only say this because when I’ve mentioned it to anyone that does not fall into either of these categories I am met with a blank stare. And that stare turns into a look of pure confusion when I start describing it: “ya know, that musical about newsboys going on strike in New York way back in the day? And Christian Bale is in it and he sings and dances but you’re supposed to think he’s hard core cause everyone calls him Cowboy? And the red-haired lady from Grumpy Old Men is in it too and for some reason Teddy Roosevelt is involved in their shenanigans? ” If they’re still clueless at that point I start belting out “Santa Fe” and things get really awkward for everyone.

Newsies may not be Disney’s crowning achievement, but it was a downright phenomenon around these parts when I was growing up. Word on the street was that a kid from Olympus High was in it and that might have accounted for all the enthusiasm. I still don’t know if there was any truth to that rumor, but what I do know is that my older sister Elena was a teenager at that time and had the soundtrack recorded on a cassette tape that I listened to over and over. My friend Ashley and I even spent a good chunk of time trying to choreograph dances to the different songs. I’m sure they were awesome. But not as awesome as this bit of internet genius:

Faerie Tale Theater
Ah, another gem that I discovered at the Salt Lake County Library. Faerie Tale Theater is a series from the ‘80s in which the movie stars of that era recreated classic fairy tales on what I’m guessing was a budget of about 50 dollars. This show probably originally aired on PBS or something, but by the time I was a kid each episode was available on vhs. I’m pretty sure I watched all of them, some multiple times. I still remember being traumatized when I saw The Little Mermaid and was first introduced to the non-Disney ending of that story. Sad times.

A few years ago I was at Costco and saw a boxed DVD set of this series for sale. Of course I bought it and have since re-watched most of the episodes. Frankly, I don’t know how I watched this when I was younger cause it can be pretty dang boring. Except I still love The Princess and the Pea. And James Earl Jones as the genie in Aladdin still scares the crap out of me and I still think that whoever thought up the concept for Faerie Tale Theater's take on Sleeping Beauty was out of their freaking mind.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m going to admit that my favorite movie when I was a child is one that has probably been seen by very few people in the U.S. See, back when my family lived in Boston we spent some time on a Hare Krishna commune of sorts in Pennsylvania (and you thought your family vacations were weird), where the only source of indoor entertainment was a TV showing one movie. The movie was called Sita’s Wedding, a Bollywood production loosely based on The Ramayana. The whole thing is in Hindi so of course I didn’t understand a word of it, nor could I read the English subtitles, but for some reason both Smash and I loved it. In fact, the good people at the commune sent us home with our very own copy when they saw just how much we liked it. That tape definitely got a lot of use over the next few years. I think I can trace my lifelong fascination with India back to all the hours Smash and I spent watching this movie, then dressing up in makeshift saris with red lipstick dots on our foreheads trying to recreate our favorite scenes.

For a long time I deluded myself into thinking that my family were the only people to have ever seen or heard of Sita's Wedding, but lo and behold the whole thing is posted on YouTube. It is unfortunately missing the English subtitles found on my parents’ copy, but let me save you the suspense by telling you that the lyrics to most of the songs are things like “Lord Vishnu’s countenance radiates with the glory of a thousand suns” or something to that effect. The scene below is probably one of the most boring in the whole movie but Mash and I loved the part where they start chucking the flowers around. For the record, I still think that this movie is quite gorgeous. That’s probably the Indophile in me talking but watching it seriously makes me wish I could wear a sari and pile on the jewels without looking like a complete loon.

Man, this turned into quite the lengthy post. I think my tendency towards wordiness has gotten a bit out of hand the past couple of days, since even a simple post on my recipe blog turned into a novel. Bear with me, friends. Maybe one day I’ll learn how to keep it short and sweet.

A conversation we will have in ten years

2010-09-08T11:28:00.002-06:00

“Hey Butch, remember that time we went camping for Labor Day weekend and Lola peed all over everything in our tent at 5 in the morning about twenty minutes after you let her out to ‘do her business’?”

“Why yes I do. Remember how right after it happened you started bawling hysterically and hurling a few choice 4-letter words in her direction?”

“I wasn’t bawling hysterically, I just got a little upset because instead of waking up to the sun streaming in our faces all peaceful-like we had to drag all the wet stuff out of our tent in the bitter cold and wander around like bums waiting for the sun to rise so we wouldn’t wake everyone up. All because our dog is a life ruiner. And as for the four-letter words, Lola really was a little sh*t.”

“She sure was. She was also kind of dumb. I’m so glad we dropped her off at the pound on the way home.”

OK, just kidding on that last part. Butch would never say anything like that about his precious Lola and our spazoid of a dog is still very much a part of the family. Although I did entertain some bad thoughts about her in the bleak morning hours after we left our urine-soaked tent. Luckily they were obliterated by a delicious camp breakfast of pancakes, sweet potato hashbrowns, and bacon. Why is it that food always tastes better in the mountains?

Aside from that little setback, the rest of our campout was fabulous. Beautiful scenery, good company, and gorgeous weather. Thank you, Hanson family, for inviting us. If only we could have stayed longer…

All our stuff laid out to dry. We try to keep it as ghetto as possible while in the great outdoors.
The two Mikes: Butch and Hansol.
Mike sporting his only shoes and socks that didn't get wet. He looks like a German tourist.
Freezing my butt off by the fire.
Beautiful view out the car window.
View from our campsite.

Lola and Jake fighting over a stick. We keep her around for entertaining moments like these.

Guilt and Bare Feet

2010-08-25T10:41:00.003-06:00

Introducing my latest guilty pleasures:

This is probably one of the worst cereals you could possibly eat. It’s filled with corn syrup, sugar, and all kinds of random crap. Too bad Mike and I both love it so when we found it on sale last week we went crazy and bought four boxes. Yikes. Luckily it’s too sweet to eat for breakfast, but every day when I get home from work the box calls to me from the cupboard like so much chocolate and peanut butter-flavored crack cocaine. I usually end up eating a bowl while curled up on the couch watching this:

I have no idea when this TV show came into being or what channel it was originally on but for some reason when I found it streaming on Netflix I was intrigued and watched the first episode. Then the second. And the third, fourth, and so on. It’s safe to assume that I’m hooked. Pushing Daisies is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on TV–it’s quirky, charming, and has the visual appeal of a Tim Burton movie. Plus Kristen Chenoweth is in it and the whole shebang is narrated by the actor that also narrates the Harry Potter audiobooks. If you're looking to fill the void that LOST left in your TV life then this show probably won't be your cup of tea, but if you're in the mood to think of the world as a simple, colorful place I would recommend giving Pushing Daisies a try.

OK, so now that I’ve fessed up to eating junky cereal and watching mindless TV, I’m going to try and redeem myself by sending a health-related question out into the blogosphere: what have you heard about these shoes? After getting my first running-related injury this spring (a stress fracture in my foot), I’ve been really intrigued by the concept of barefoot running (listening to this interview also made me curious). Supposedly all these high-tech running shoes are making our feet weak sauce and actually causing some of the injuries that many runners get, so running barefoot is the way to go. I can understand this concept in theory but what I’m interested in is the practical side of things. Have any of you run in vibrams for 5+ miles or know anyone who has? Are these shoes really as awesome as people claim or have you heard of some drawbacks? Any and all information on this subject would be welcome. In the meantime, I’m going to go pour myself another bowl of Reese’s puffs.

M & M

2010-08-19T11:46:00.009-06:00

Last week on a beautiful August day, my little sister Masha married Matt Mulcock. I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my little sister, who also happens to be one of my best friends and favorite people, is now someone's wife. Seems like just yesterday we were fighting over our one cabbage patch doll and speaking to each other in gibberish Japanese.

That said, it thrills me to no end to see Smash as happy as she is when she's with Matt. He treats her like gold and complements her personality perfectly. Matt also gets bonus points for picking up on the family dynamic so well. Case in point: at the wedding dinner Mash and I were talking about something random and apparently Matt needed to have a word with my sister so he stood right by us for probably five minutes waiting for a break in the conversation. Of course that break never came, so finally Mike had to come over and bring Matt's presence to our attention. I felt pretty rude but Matt's reaction was classic: He turned to Mike and said "I know there's no interrupting these two." Oh Matt. Apparently you too are aware of the phenomenon that Butch refers to as "the sister zone." Sorry dude.

Of course I forgot my camera that day, but here are a few photos I stole from facebook pages:

Smash and I at the wedding dinner:
And at the temple. Isn't she a gorgeous bride?

Butch and I.

The Preo sisters. I love these two more than words can say. Family at the reception. Mom's face is classic.

Dema and Alex

Baby Anna in her yellow dress. It doesn't get any cuter than this:

The Little King raiding the candy dishes.

Bridesmaids (and a little bit of baby Anna). I look pretty dang stubby and pale standing next to supermodels Hannah and Erin. Bad choice.

Smash with the G parents. Who are still kickin at 90.
Brothers and sisters. Apparently I am the only one in "picture mode" and Dema just said something interesting.

Well, it looks like Wedding Season is finally winding down. Our fridge is a little less cluttered with announcements and the calendar space once crowded with showers, receptions, etc. is looking blessedly free. I love weddings as much as the next person, but going to a ton of them in a row leaves me completely exhausted. And admitting that makes me feel like I am 24 going on 80. Or maybe just socially handicapped.

The Pages I've Been Turning

2010-08-03T09:34:00.009-06:00

I love to read year-round, but when summer hits my appetite for books becomes absolutely insatiable. This is probably because I still associate summer with my younger years, when its blessed arrival meant freedom from responsibility and ample time to spend lounging by the pool absorbed in a good read. No such luck this year, but between Bear Lake weekends and the afternoon reading breaks a few of my co-workers and I have instituted, I’ve been able to finish a few books.

Here’s the breakdown of what I’ve read lately:

Sarah's Key is one of those books that had promise because of the interesting subject matter (French involvement in the holocaust), but it wasn’t my cup of tea. The writing style reminded me of instructions they give you in junior high English classes, I could guess most of the plot twists from about twenty pages away, and the whole thing felt a little forced and melodramatic. It was also very sad. But not in a beautiful way.

Oh. My. Land. Jonathan Safran Foer is incredible. That’s all there is to say. But I will say more anyway. Namely that I loved this book from start to finish and I wish I could have the experience of reading it again for the first time.

The plot centers around a nine-year-old boy whose father dies in 9-11 and this novel is narrated mainly from his point of view. His voice reminded me a lot of the boy in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, so if you enjoyed that then Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is definitely worth picking up. Easily one of the best books I’ve read in years.

I think this is one of those books best read in one sitting when you have a few hours to do nothing but soak up some good old-fashioned storytelling and descriptions of the Norwegian countryside. It’s very slow and quite vague, but the writing does have a definite beauty to it. Maybe I just had a hard time with Out Stealing Horses because I was forced to read it in small chunks, and, after the postmodern busyness of Extremely Loud, it was difficult to focus on a book as nuanced as this one. I guess you could say I appreciated it but didn’t really enjoy it all that much. Maybe I’ll give it another try when I have ample spare time on my hands.

Chuck Klosterman’s essays are kind of like an inside joke; funny if you get what he’s talking about and completely lame if you don’t. Unless you are a bona fide expert on pop culture, chances are you’ll find yourself scratching your head more than a couple of times. But when you do understand Klosterman’s subject matter, like when I read his essay on Saved by the Bell, he is pretty clever. Albeit in an overthought, cynical way best enjoyed in small doses. Also, Chuck can be pretty crass at times. Just putting that out there as a warning of sorts.

Ah, the token summer bestseller. I read this book for the same reason that I read The Help, DaVinci Code , Twilight (ugh), and countless other titles: because everyone else was doing it. Like those other books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not going to win a Pulitzer Prize any time soon, but it was entertaining in a trashy, quasi disturbing way. I don’t recommend reading it when you are all by yourself at night, though. If you’re anything like me you will be convinced that every creak of the floorboards is a serial killer hell-bent on breaking into your house and smuggling you away to Sweden.

Everything is Illuminated is up next on my summer reading agenda, but after that my list of library holds is a barren wasteland. So tell me friends, what have you read and loved lately?

Stars and Stripes Forever

2010-07-07T12:52:00.004-06:00

This year we celebrated America's birthday by going up to the Bear Lake cabin with Mike's fam and our friends Megan and Travis (we missed you, Ben and Camille).

It was a little chilly, but that didn't stop us from sporting our classy patriotic swimwear (aren't my tan lines attractive?)

It was too cold to go out on the lake, but we entertained ourselves by playing volley in the shallow water:

And playing some golf:

I lost not one, not two, but at least five balls in the water that day. I struggle like you wouldn't believe.

Megan's birthday is on the 4th, so of course we celebrated.

I made her a festive red, white, and blue cake for the occasion:
Other highlights of our trip included:
-Lighting our own fireworks on the beach and watching the show created around the lake by everyone else doing the same thing.
-Raspberry shakes at LaBeau's. I swear they put crack in those things. So good.
-Owning everyone's trash in a game of Trivial Pursuit. That victory almost made me feel better about my sorry golf game. Almost.

-Sleeping in, eating delicious food, and engaging in all the other lazy activities that a weekend at the cabin entails. I love that place.

The only downside of the weekend was this:

"Heartbreaker" is the only term I can think of to describe this game. I spent most of Friday afternoon sulking over the fact that Ghana came this close to becoming the first African team to reach the semis and freaking choked. I should really stop watching sports. Or at least just stop getting so emotionally invested.

A quote

2010-06-25T09:06:00.005-06:00

I may not understand a thing this man had to say about physics, but I'm diggin his perspective on other matters:

(Photo taken at last weekend's chalk art festival)

For my college graduation my uncle sent me his favorite biography of Einstein. In the inscription he wrote "hope you become the Einstein of your chosen field." At the time I thought it was a tender sentiment but now I just feel guilty for not doing anything to live up to it. Unless wasting time on the internet could be considered a "chosen field."

A Solstice Anniversary (Kinda)

2010-06-23T12:48:00.011-06:00

Mike and I have never been big on commemorating the milestones of our relationship. Meaning there aren't really dates on the calendar that we point to and say "oh, on this day such-and-such happened." We pretty much celebrate our weddding anniversary and call it good. But on Sunday night I was looking through an old journal and noticed that the entry dated June 22, 2007 began with "Last night Mike and I went on our first real date..."

When I realized that the next day was June 21st I was all "hey Butch, tomorrow is the third anniversary of our first date!" and he was all "that is neat" so we decided to celebrate the occasion by trying to recreate that first date, which consisted of some night fishing and a campfire up Millcreek canyon.

Here we are on June 21, 2007:

(We unknowingly wore matching outfits, which we thought was funny so we took a picture.)

(My first time gutting a fish. Apparently I really enjoyed it.)

And here we are on June 21, 2010:

We couldn't go fishing this time around on account of this spastic animal:
So we settled for a hike instead:
Who would’ve thought that three years after our fishing expedition Mike and I would still be traipsing around Millcreek together? It’s only fitting that our first date occured on the first official day of summer, seeing as ours was a standard summer fling that just happened to turn into something so much better than either one of us expected. Life is amazing. Especially when you get to spend it in the beautiful mountains with your favorite person.

2010-06-16T10:04:00.002-06:00

Since writing my previous post, I've come across some more World Cup advertising treasures. Most of you probably don't care, but we've already established that I happen to love this kind of crap so I'm posting it anyway.

The Wavin' Flag video makes me want an African squad to win the tournament so badly. I even get a little choked up when watching it (seriously, what is wrong with me?) The coca-cola one is pure happiness, and the Nike commercial would be ten times more awesome if Kobe Bryant weren't in it. Ew.

Enjoy:

Waka Waka

2010-06-08T10:25:00.005-06:00

Like most Americans, I’m not a huge professional soccer enthusiast. Besides a few REAL games and the summer I was in Europe during the Euro Cup, I've never really watched it at all. I’d say I have the same beef with the sport as most redneck males: the lack of scoring, arbitrary time keeping, games ending in a tie, etc. Plus my soccer playing days ended about the time parents stopped handing out Squeezits at the end of a game so I really don’t know enough about soccer strategy to recognize the skill involved.

Given this information you would probably assume that I have no interest in this summer’s World Cup. And you would be right until you take into account that I’m a sports marketer’s dream. As established in previous posts (here and here), I’m not in it for the sport itself so much as the spectacle and backstory involved. If you can get me sentimental enough before the actual sporting event, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be glued to the TV for the whole thing. I think FIFA had people like me in mind when they produced this little gem:

Cheesy, quasi-inspiring lyrics? Check.
Close-ups of the athletes' various emotional faces? Check.
Footage of the sport's highlights? Check.
Clips of happy, cheering fans? Check.

This video ups the ante by including the happy dancing that makes the World Cup look like one big street carnival. Plus the song itself is so dang catchy. I dare you not to feel some degree of happiness while listening to it.

So all right World Cup, I’m in. You better be awesome.

P.S.- for a funny commentary on sometime soccer fans like myself, read this.

Extreme DIY

2010-06-02T09:57:00.003-06:00

For most people, springtime is synonymous with blooming tulips, warmer temperatures, and hayfever. I’m beginning to realize that, at the Cassity house, spring awakens a desire to push the limits of our time, money, and sanity. Last spring we were stripping wallpaper, tearing down walls, installing appliances, and performing the various other miscellaneous tasks involved in transforming an old smelly house into something fit for living creatures. All this while I was working full-time and Mike was smack-dab in the middle of studying for finals.*

This year, spring at our place looked a little like this:

Granted, this year’s project of landscaping our backyard was not quite as big of an undertaking as THE REMODEL, but much of it felt the same: Home Depot appearing on our bank statement a bajillion times, Butch impressing me time and time again with his mad skills, and awesome friends and family showing up to help us carry out our hairbrained schemes.
Here’s the project in a nutshell:

Before (I do miss all the trees, but they had to be ripped out. We will be planting more soon):

After (new retaining wall, sprinkler system, and grass- ignore the temporary fence in the first photo):

I never thought something as simple as a functioning sprinkler system and grass could make me so happy, but after we laid the sod I had to strongly resist the urge to kiss it. Goodbye, mud pit/jungle of a yard, hello badminton parties, backyard picnics, and our very own garden.

Next up: New siding for the outside of the house. Gotta love fixer-uppers...

*I keep meaning to do a “before and after” post about our home renovation since I love looking at crap like that on blogs, but do any of you even care anymore?

Lola and the lawn gnome

2010-05-24T10:09:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I think our dog might be mildly retarded:

I had a birthday. And wrote a really long, sentimental post about it.

2010-05-14T15:32:00.002-06:00

When you're a Jazz fan and a playoff game falls on the eve of your birthday, and the age you are turning coincides with the jersey number of your favorite player, then you just have to throw a party. And so it was that we decided to round up the Jazz game crew last weekend for a Paul Millsap-themed birthday extravaganza.

We payed tribute to Paul through sugary treats:

And some ghetto decorations:

The party would have been perfect had the Jazz not lost in a true heartbreaker of a game and left us all slightly depressed. Such is life I suppose. I used my disappointment to convince my friends to sit in formation on the couch for a group photo. I believe my exact words were "if the Jazz can't pull off a win I'm at least getting a good picture out of this night, dammit."
So here we all are (except Logan):
Pretty much everyone in this photo was a regular fixture in our basement during the playoff games. It was good times- Smeegs routinely showing up in a wifebeater and slippers toting a big gulp, Scott doing his Jerry Sloane impression and introducing us all to the deliciousness of cowboy grub cookies, Sara not even pretending to care about the game while the rest of us freaked out and screamed at the TV. I'm going to miss those weekends.

It's crazy to realize that we've been watching Jazz games with most of these peeps for the better part of three years. In fact, one of the first times I met Mike was at a playoff party at Scott's house. If memory serves I called one of the refs a douchebag and Mike gave me a strange look. At the time I thought he was quietly judging me for my choice of language, but come to find out he actually agreed with that analysis and it might have had something to do with him asking me out a week later. And I think my first encounter with the Morrisons was when Mike and I were newly married and ended up watching a Jazz game in their apartment with mutual friends. I was starving and Megan offered me some of her Cafe Rio, which made me love her instantly. Two and a half years later, they are some of our closest friends. Funny how cheering together for a sports team can do that.

Anyways... I shared my actual birthday with all the mothers of the world, so Sunday was spent going to church, then heading to the Cassitys for a delicious salmon dinner and spending the remainder of the night with the members of my family who weren't out of town (Dad was in Seattle on business, the Leppards ditched us for Lake Powell). In an antidote to the sports-filled mania of the night before, we spent the evening in a decidedly sophisticated manner: eating chocolate-covered strawberries and an assortment of cheese and crackers on the patio, then using the combined clout of Mother's Day and my birthday to convince the boys to watch a black and white Audrey Hepburn movie (Roman Holiday and they actually liked it). It was fabulous.

Thank you to all the family and friends that made my birthday weekend memorable. I think 24 is going to be a great year.

Overrated, Part Two

2010-04-20T11:07:00.001-06:00

Remember this post? Since I wrote it I have thought of some more stuff that everyone loves for reasons that I don't understand. And I thought that I would share that list with all of you:

OK, so Jack’s tunes aren’t cringe worthy or anything (unless you count Bubbly Toes and that one where he gets all sappy about newscasters), but to me they’re just kind of blah. Every time I listen to his music I’m thinking “dude, I get it. You’re from Hawaii and you want everyone to mellow out. Can you sing about something a little more interesting now?” I guess what I’m trying to say is this: if guitar-strumming troubadours were ice cream flavors, Jack Johnson would be vanilla and Mason Jennings, Matt Costa, and Brett Dennen would be the chocolate, strawberry, and praline pecan of the bunch. And I have always claimed that life is too short to eat plain vanilla ice cream.

Pat’s Barbecue
I really want to like this place, mostly because I have heard it talked up by no less than Guy Fieri, but the meal I ate there was decidedly sub-par. The ribs were tough and chewy, the baked beans tasted of pure vinegar, and even the coleslaw was off. It was a weekday night so maybe Pat’s was not playing their A-game, but I think I will stick with Joe Morley’s next time the carnivore in me demands some attention.

Sex and the City

This show is pretty and all, but I have a really hard time understanding why so many women are obsessed with it, seeing as all the characters drive me absolutely crazy. If the modern single woman is indeed as one-dimensional, shallow, and self-indulgent as these four, then I say give me the homely spinsters of yesteryear. I would recommend watching it on mute so you can still see all the fun clothes and New York hot spots but avoid listening to the drivel that spills out of everyone’s mouths.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s move on to the stuff that really is as cool as people claim it is:

TOMS shoes

Since my style can usually be described as anywhere between “casual” and “homeless chic” (I wore birkenstocks in my engagement pictures), these shoes are a godsend: comfortable, stylish, and essentially slippers elevated to shoe status. There is a reason that everyone and their dog is wearing them these days. Plus for every pair of shoes you buy, TOMS donates a pair to a child in need. All the more reason to add these and these to my collection.

Food, Inc.
You’ve probably heard about this movie from at least five people you know and read about it on many a blog. And if you still haven’t seen it you really should. This documentary, although a bit melodramatic at times, is a really comprehensive look at the food industry in America. In a sense, it completes the project that films like Supersize Me and books like Fast Food Nation started. Even if it doesn’t convince you to eat less meat or buy organic, I think it’s still empowering to know where your food comes from. And for those of you that have seen this and are interested in learning more, I would recommend reading Michael Pollan’s books. His In Defense of Food is what got me interested in this topic in the first place.

Glee
Sometimes the cheesiness of this show makes me want to bury my face in the couch cushions, yet I can’t help but love it. The awesome musical numbers, coupled with over-the-top characters and crazy plotlines, make for quite the feel-good hour of television. And can we all just agree that Sue Sylvester is one of the greatest TV characters ever created? See below if you need convincing:

I rest my case.

A long post that is plagiarized

2010-04-15T08:55:00.002-06:00

I wish I could give credit where credit is due, but unfortunately I received this in an email forward that didn't say who wrote it. I think it's pretty funny, though.
Enjoy:

Random Thoughts from People Our Age

1. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
2. More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.
3. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
4. Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.
5. That's enough, Nickelback.
6. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
7. Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?
8. Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.
9. There is a great need for sarcasm font.
10. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what was going on when I first saw it.
11. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.
12. How are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
13. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
14. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
15. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
16. Was learning cursive really necessary?
17. Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".
18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
19. Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.
20. My brother's Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, "Cuz we beat you, and you hate us." Classy, bro.
21. Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart.”
22. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?
23. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent an idiot from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
24. Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"
25. What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?
26. While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.
27. MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
28. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
29. I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.
30. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
31. I would like to officially coin the phrase 'catching the swine flu' to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: "Dave caught the swine flu last night."
32. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
33. Bad decisions make good stories.
34. Whenever I'm Facebook-stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!
35. Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier and sluttier every year?
36. If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.
37. Why is it that during an icebreaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....
38. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
39. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.
40. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
41. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
42. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.
43. I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'
44. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dang it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?
45. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
46. When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she hasn't already told me that I have learned from some light internet stalking.
47. I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
48. Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles...
49. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.
50. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
51. It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.
52. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
53. Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.
54. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey- but I'd bet everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...
55. My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How do I respond to that?
56. It really ticks me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.
57. I wonder if cops ever get ticked off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.
58. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
59. The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fatty before dinner.

ramble ramble ramble

2010-04-09T10:42:00.005-06:00

Not really in the mood to put together a coherent blog post today, but it’s Friday in cubicleland and I’m bored so here we go:

I’ve realized that I miss poetry. After graduating from college I stopped reading it but last night I looked into my old Norton Anthology and found some Langston Hughes and my heart ached a little with the beauty of it all. And then I thought of one of my favorite poems, introduced to me by my sophomore English teacher, and got goosebumps just remembering the last two lines. I think I’m going to start reading a poem a night. It’s good for the soul.

Remember how I was all excited for One Shining Moment? Well, this year Jennifer Hudson sang it. Worst three minutes of my life.

Birthing stories fascinate me to no end. The gorier and more detailed the better. In fact, I even started stalking a friend of a friend’s blog after I saw that she is training to be a midwife and tells these stories routinely. Creepy I know. And I netflixed The Business of Being Born and watched the whole thing even though it showed Ricki Lake’s boobs and other sights that pushed my desire to have children back another five years. I’m beginning to think I have some serious issues.

My husband doesn’t think that Heidi Klum is “all that pretty.”

I’m going to start searching the house for that crack pipe he is obviously smoking.

Every couple of days I get Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas” stuck in my head, even though I don’t really know the words and have only heard it a handful of times. This is one of the great mysteries of my life.

Improv Everywhere makes me feel happy:

I’ve been straightening my hair lately and a co-worker recently informed me that my new hairstyle makes me look like Cher. Huh.

Well, that’s all I got. Hope everyone is having a fabulous Friday!

Oh happy day

2010-03-24T08:37:00.001-06:00

Prior to yesterday, the last time I won something in a contest was in the fourth grade when I correctly guessed the number of generic brand animal crackers in a bucket and got to keep it. Since then my life has been a tragic cycle of entering my name in every drawing and giveaway I come across only to end up disappointed.

Today I am happy to report that my non-winning curse has officially been lifted. Thanks to the slave to save blog (go check it out for great deals and giveaways!), I am now the proud owner of this Misikko flat iron:

Here’s hoping it can transform all this:

into something resembling normal hair.

It's more than a contest, it's more than a raaaaaaaace

2010-03-18T09:13:00.004-06:00

Well kids, March Madness is upon us once again. I haven’t filled out a bracket and am not rooting for any particular team, yet I’m still looking forward to the final game for a very simple/slightly embarrassing reason: One Shining Moment.

You see, I’m a total sucker for the sentimental aspect of sports-like those VISA commercials that aired during the Olympics or documentaries about African marathon runners-and nothing capitalizes on my love of athletic sappiness more than the One Shining Moment tribute at the end of every NCAA basketball tournament . Something about the cheesy song combined with the footage of teammates hugging each other makes my heart melt a little, and makes me suffer through the coach’s interviews and all the other boring stuff that comes after the game is over.

For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about, here is last year’s One Shining Moment montage:

If I ruled the world, every sporting event from Wimbledon to the Superbowl would end with a highlight film set to a Luther Vandross song. And Cadbury eggs would be sold year-round.

*Thank you to those of you who responded to the query about running shoes in my last post. I did some looking online and found a website called runningwarehouse.com that has free 2-day shipping, plus the shoes I wanted were fifteen bucks less than the retail price. So if you need a new pair of shoes and know what you’re looking for, I would recommend checking it out.

Best.Tuesday.Ever.

2010-03-02T08:47:00.002-07:00

Why is this Tuesday already significantly better than every Tuesday and Thursday of the past 8 weeks? Well, because at 6:15 this morning I was NOT doing any of the following:

sprints
wall sits
stair jumping
lunges
squats
push-ups
jump roping
crunches, planks, or other forms of abdominal torture
lifting weights and/or other heavy objects

Instead I was sleeping quite soundly, just like the good old days before I signed up for a two-month exercise class appropriately named “Boot Camp.” Don’t even ask me how I convinced myself that waking up at 5:30 two days a week to engage in physical activity was a good plan, especially when my idea of exercise during the cold winter months typically looks a little something like this:

Somehow I made it through those 8 weeks, but as of today I am officially done waking up when it’s still dark and sweating my guts out in a stuffy gym. Hurray for the weather finally being warm enough to get my endorphin rush outside in the fresh air, just as nature intended.

In a related note, does anyone know of a place to get a good deal on running shoes? My beloved mizunos are worn out so I need a new pair but really don’t want to shell out a hundred bucks.

So...

2010-02-24T11:04:00.005-07:00

Did anyone else find ice dancing to be a surprisingly entertaining Olympic event? At first I thought it was the winter games equivalent of rhythmic gymnastics, but after watching the finals on Monday night I was hooked. It’s like ballet on ice with crazy costumes and I heart it. Watching women’s figure skating last night, despite all the triple jumps and whatnot, was kind of dull in comparison. Does anyone else feel the same way or am I taking crazy pills?

Oh, and how cute were these two?

In my fantasy world they love each other and get married and have adorable Canadian babies.

How to have a great weekend

2010-02-16T13:26:00.006-07:00

1) Throw an old school valentine-themed birthday party for your best friend. Invite the kind of people who, when you suggest bringing valentines boxes and valentines to hand out, show up with creations like these (as well as valentines featuring everything from the Jonas Brothers to Toy Story):

Be sure to incorporate your friend's love of ponies:

And pinatas:

2) Spend a rainy Saturday lounging around the house, then go on a “dinner and a movie” date for the first time in ages. Finally see Avatar and surprise yourself by enjoying it despite the 3 hour length and the whole "Dances with Wolves in outer space" plotline.

3) Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a breakfast of heart-shaped whole wheat pancakes in the morning and some of these beauties for dessert at night:

Rejoice in the genius of the “no gifts” policy you implemented this year (even though Mike kind of cheated by getting you flowers).

3) Thank your lucky stars that you have the day off on Monday, because skiing at Alta sure beats sitting in front of a computer. Especially if you get to watch your husband continue to rediscover his love of skiing after boarding for so many years. Make sure to stop by this place for a shrimp burrito on your way home.

4)Take advantage of any excess downtime by watching this:

And a few episodes of this show:
Preferably while sitting on a comfy couch wrapped in blankets.

Hope everyone had a fabulous President's Day weekend! Don't you wish all weekends lasted for 3 days?

They just don't make 'em like they used to...

2010-02-08T13:46:00.003-07:00

Have I told you how much I love Valentine's Day? Why yes, I believe I explained my love for this holiday here and here. If you need further convincing that Valentine's Day is indeed worthwhile, kindly check out these vintage Valentines. Some are cute, some are ridiculously creepy, but I find them all awesome:

If I could get my mitts on this one, I would definitely give it to Mike:

Or maybe this one:

Adorable:

Gotta love the simplicity of this message:

This valentine was actually sent to me last year, and is my favorite piece of Valentine's Day decor. No better day than Valentine's to celebrate my heritage:

Now moving on to the creepy valentines. This has got to be my very favorite of the bunch. Behold, the valentine sent as a warning:

Because every love story begins with good hygiene:

Yikes.

They say that lasting relationships are all about trust:

It seems like this girl is looking into a mirror and a giant cat is staring back at her. If someone has an alternate explanation as to what in the devil is going on here, I would love to hear it:

Apparently dogs don't have feelings:

I can just picture Jeffrey Dahmer handing this one out to classmates as a child:

The girl in the yellow scarf better watch out, because judging from that boy's excited expression, he's only got one thing on his mind:

And finally, the Valentine that makes me want to become a vegetarian:

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Hey Lebron,

2010-01-15T09:07:00.004-07:00

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it:

Man, do I love a good buzzer beater. Especially when it comes by way of a rookie and results in a Jazz victory over the Cavs. I love you, Sundiata Gaines. And Mike too, for making me stay up late to watch this game. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Another one bites the dust

2010-01-13T11:36:00.003-07:00

Back when my blog was just a “notes” section on my facebook profile, I wrote this post about my inability to deal with the transformation of the Holladay neighborhood in which I grew up. Well friends, today I have yet another tragedy to report. On January 31, Eat-A-Burger will be closing its doors. Forever.

This means no more teriyaki chicken sandwiches piled high with veggies. No more spicy fries served with the world’s best fry sauce. No more diet coke accented with a fresh lime. No more meals brought out on a tray with complimentary Andes mints. No more mocking the skankiness of the notoriously easy-on-the-eyes employees. No more picking songs on the jukebox while sitting on a ‘50s-era barstool and admiring the photos of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley adorning the walls.

Honestly, it’s bad enough that most culinary vestiges of my junior high days have closed (Little Caesars, TGI Fridays, the world’s first Barbacoa), but this news comes as quite the blow. Not only because it means that Holladay is losing one of its most distinctive local establishments, but because I have a hunch that my older sister might become quite a miserable person to deal with once she is deprived of her beloved teriyaki chicken sandwiches. I will survive this loss somehow, but Helen? Pray for her.

Overrated

2010-01-05T09:46:00.004-07:00

You know that feeling when everyone else is in on a secret or joke and you aren’t? And it kind of sucks? Well, sometimes I feel that way about trends/pop culture/whatever random thing everyone is loving at the moment. It’s not that I hate these things, I would just like to know why everyone loves them with such a fiery passion:

Zooey Deschanel
Although I like her clothes and style, Zooey has never really blown me away as an actress (except in 500 days of Summer, but was that role really all that challenging?), and her singing voice either sounds like a cheap imitation of Patsy Cline or a canary being strangled. So I really don’t understand why everyone is ready to crown her Queen of the Indie Scene, especially in light of the fact that she participated in the suckfest that was Yes Man.

Cupcakes
At the rate they’re popping up, there are soon going to be more cupcake shops than gas stations in Salt Lake. Maybe it’s because I am not overly fond of rich buttercream frosting, but I’ve never been impressed with a cupcake from any of these establishments (Mini’s, So Cupcake, etc.). Plus I don’t see the point in paying three bucks for something that you can make (and often with better results, I might add) at home. If I’m looking to splurge at a bakery, chances are I’m buying an éclair or one of those chocolate hedgehogs from Gourmandise.

Owl City
I think the reason that I’m not on board with this latest musical sensation (listen here) is that it’s such a shameless Postal Service rip-off. And I never liked Postal Service that much to begin with. I also find it confusing when solo artists go by something other than their given name. It feels weird referring to Badly Drawn Boy or Iron and Wine as a “him” and not a “them.” Something about it just ain’t right.

Now just in case you are thinking that I am a crotchety old hag determined to rag on everything that is beloved by the general population, here is my list of popular things that deserve all the hype:

Taylor Swift
Dude. I don’t even like country music, but I love T Swift oh so very much. Just watching this brings joy to my soul:

Frozen Yogurt
Used to be that I could only get my frozen yogurt fix at Maverik, and even then it was just a plain cone. But now, thanks to the recent demand for the stuff, I have my choice of Yogurt Stop-like establishments that provide all the sugary goodness I could possibly want, or, if I’m feeling healthy and saddled with an excess amount of money, I can stop into Red Mango or Spoon Me for a “real” frozen yogurt and fruit concoction. God bless capitalism.

The Hunger Games
I am usually pretty wary of novels written for the adolescent set, especially if they happen to be the books that Everyone Is Talking About (a certain vampire series comes to mind), but Hunger Games actually lived up to the hype. It was entertaining, well written, and everything a good light read should be. I highly recommend it.

Festival of Lights

2009-12-14T14:12:00.005-07:00

In many ways, my mom’s side of the family is stereotypically Jewish. They all hold advanced academic degrees, my mom loves a good bargain more than anything in this world, and my grandma cannot look at my thin husband without practically weeping, then nagging me for not feeding him enough.

When it comes to Judaism, however, they are all relatively clueless. Because my grandparents and mother all grew up in the Soviet Union, you have to go back about a hundred years to find religious Jews on our family tree. Think Fiddler on the Roof.

But even though my grandparents are decidedly non-practicing and my parents’ family worships at an LDS church rather than a synagogue, we somehow feel the need to get in touch with our roots by celebrating Hanukkah every few years. This year my mom called me to see if Mike and I would be available on Sunday night, then followed that question up with a conversation that went something like this:

Mom: So what are we supposed to eat for dinner? I know you’re supposed to have latkes, but what else?
Me (after typing “traditional Hanukkah foods” into google): It says that most people have beef brisket.
Mom (who is a vegetarian): What? Biscuits?
Me: No, mom. BRISKET. It’s a cut of beef.
Mom: Oh. Well what should we have to drink? Aren’t we supposed to have grape juice or something? And isn’t one of the kids supposed to tell a story?
Me: You’re thinking of Passover.
Mom: Oh that’s right…

Despite the confusion regarding Jewish customs, my parents did end up hosting a Hanukkah feast last night. My mom even busted out the family menorah and dreidel, which proved to be kind of unnecessary since by the time dinner was over and we had listened to a condensed version of the Hanukkah story and heard my grandparents recall memories of Hanukkah celebrations in Israel, the gathering had dissolved into the kind of chaos typical of Preobrazhensky functions and all pretense of ritual was abandoned. I guess that’s just what happens when you have two languages and four generations (ranging from 6 months to 92 years old) present at one very crowded table.

Food-wise, we did have the aformentioned brisket and latkes for dinner. We also had these:
Yes, those are jello jigglers. Cut in the shape of a dreidel and Star of David (I found the cookie cutters at my parents’ house and couldn’t resist). This creation might strike some as slightly tacky, but is there anything more appropriate for a bunch of Mormon Jews to serve for dessert on a Jewish holiday? I think not.

And speaking of Mormons, who knew that Utah’s own conservative senator is a wannabe Jew? Strange.

Things-I-Love Thursday

2009-12-03T11:29:00.006-07:00

During our freshman year of college my best friend Sara and I both worked at a jewelry stand in the Cottonwood Mall (may it rest in peace). This job was hellish on so many levels, but what really drove both Sara and I to the brink of insanity was the Christmas music the mall chose to play during the holiday season.

Man alive was it bad. One song that mall management seemed particularly fond of playing literally had no lyrics besides “Rock and Roll Christmas, Christmas Rock and Roll…” Over and over and over again. Another classic was a rendition of “Santa Baby” sung by a dude, with terms like “sable” and “decorations from Tiffany” replaced with more masculine items such as shotguns or guitars. To me it conjured up images of a wifebeater-clad man drunkenly singing karaoke on Christmas Eve. Not exactly festive.

There was one bright spot in the midst of this musical Christmas graveyard. Every once in a while the mall would bust out that guilt-inducing classic “Do they know it’s Christmastime?” (Sara and I always referred to it as “Feed the World”). I had never really cared for this song before, but that winter it became one of my favorites. After hearing “Have Yourself a Skanky Little Christmas” or whatever abomination was blasting through the mall speakers, it just felt good to hear something recognizable. Even if it did make me feel like kind of a jerk for not donating my paycheck to Africa.

A few days ago I found this video while browsing on YouTube:

It goes without saying that my Christmas is now complete. And can we all just agree on the fact that the ‘80s was a magical decade for men’s hair? Because that much is glaringly obvious. In this video I recognize Sting, Bono, and Boy George. If anyone could tell me who the rest of these peeps are I would greatly appreciate it.

Other things I am loving at the start of this holiday season:

Reading this book and laughing:

Reading this book and crying:

Sipping on this:

Topped with a scoop of this:

(And don’t tell me I could save myself the trouble and just drink mint-flavored cocoa. So not the same thing).

-Watching Mike put Christmas lights up and hearing him scheme about the Griswold-esque spectacle he is going to create next year (inflatable penguins are most likely going to be involved. Get excited).

-Opening a new window of our Advent calendars each night (one of my favorite traditions).

Now if it would only snow...

In Good Company

2009-11-30T09:07:00.005-07:00

A big "thank you" goes out to Max Hall for overshadowing Utah's loss on Saturday with his astonishing case of verbal diarrhea. Stay classy, dude.

GO UTES!!!

(In case you have been living under a rock and haven't seen it yet, you can watch the zoobie rage here)

Gratitude

2009-11-24T13:57:00.003-07:00

“Let us rise up and be thankful,

for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little,

and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick,

and if we got sick, at least we didn't die;

so, let us all be thankful.”

-Buddha

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

(P.S.-If you're making yams as part of your feast, you should try this recipe)

Things-I-Love Thursday

2009-11-19T22:32:00.006-07:00

Sara and I just got through showing Butch our new favorite YouTube video. His response? "You should have put this on your blog for Things-I-Love Thursday."

Apparently my husband actually pays attention to what I post on this blog. Our marriage is full of surprises I tell you what.

Since it is still Thursday for the next couple of hours, here is the video (Freaking YouTube won't let me embed it but I'm posting the link):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUO0gd7cr9o

I fell in love with this song last year, so I was thrilled to find this beautiful little video. And best of all it's a "winter song" so I can technically listen to it now without breaking my No Christmas Music Before Thanksgiving rule, and keep listening to it as long as there is snow on the ground. That my friends is what we call a win-win situation.

See this little dinosaur?

2009-11-13T09:04:00.003-07:00

Once upon a time she was my baby sister, but then she grew up and became this gorgeous thing: Today little Masha is turning the big 2-1. And, even though it's weird for me to think about how old we are these days, it makes me happy to know that we haven't outgrown our friendship or our hyperactive tendencies (even if it means that our significant others can't handle being in the same room as both of us).

Happy Birthday Smash! Remember that no matter how old you get, you will always be my favorite little sister.

Because I am fresh out of nice stationary

2009-11-10T09:19:00.009-07:00

Dear Kneaders All-You-Can-Eat French Toast,
I have lived just a short drive away from you for months now, yet Saturday morning was our first introduction. It makes me sad to think that my life was void of your cinnamon-y goodness for so long, but rest assured that we will be seeing a lot more of each other in the future:

Dear Friends and Family,
Most of you know about my owl fetish. In fact, I have even alluded to it on this blog. Over the years many of you have given me an incredible amount of owl merchandise. You are lovely people.

Thing is, given that owls are super trendy and therefore widely available these days, my fetish has gotten a little out of control. A while back I told Mike that it would cool off once I got my most sought-after item: an owl cookie jar. Being the thoughtful husband that he is, he presented me with this little guy as an anniversary gift:

So in the interest of being true to my word I think I am officially done collecting owl items. Just in case you were wondering.

Dear Residents of Cottonwood Heights,
You know those white lines painted at intermittent spots across our roads? You may think that those markings are just there for decoration, but that is not the case. They constitute what is known as a crosswalk. Meaning that next time you see my dog and I waiting patiently by these lines you should probably stop and let us cross instead of speeding by in your Escalade.

Dear Butch,
I like it when we have buffalo wings and salad for dinner. Let’s do it more often.

Love,
Dasha

Anniversary

2009-11-06T10:04:00.002-07:00

"There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved."

-George Sand

Tomorrow Mike and I celebrate two very happy years together.

I sure do love you Butch.

What kind of strange karma is THIS?

2009-10-30T16:10:00.003-06:00

I am not a successful thrift store shopper. I have always wanted to be, and really wish I were one of those people who, when asked where they got a certain ultra-cool piece of clothing or home decor, can just casually respond with “I found it at DI” or “I picked it up at a yard sale.”

To compensate for my lack of thrifting skills, I tend to shop at secondhand stores and online antique shops; same unique items, less browsing and sifting through crap in suspect conditions. A few weeks ago I was looking on eBAY and found these little dears:

Mere days after I got these brass owls in the mail, Mike and I went to Savers (yes, we are classy like that). As I was browsing through the home décor section I spotted a pair of owls identical to the two smaller ones I just bought. I looked closer, and, sure enough, they were exactly the same. Don't believe me? I have proof:

WHAT ARE THE FREAKING ODDS? I swear stuff like this just does not happen. I am the only person in the universe who finally finds a cool item at a thrift store only to have it be something I just bought for twice the cost. I am also probably the only person that is stupid enough to then buy the thrift store item for no logical reason. So I now have two sets of identical 1970s owls sitting in my living room and no idea what to do with the spare one. I win at life.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-30T09:40:00.001-06:00

Love,

A homely librarian and her nerdy admirer

Things I Am Excited For

2009-10-28T10:37:00.012-06:00

1) The start of another season:

And the opportunity to sport my Millsap t-shirt tonight while eating junk food and screaming at the TV with friends. GO JAZZ!

2) Going to a real concert for the first time in almost a year. I know. I'm probably getting old and boring before my time, but what can I say? Three hours surrounded by sweaty bodies and the aroma of weed just doesn’t scream Time Well Spent to me the way it used to.

So what band has gotten me out of this funk, you ask? The freaking Sounds!!! I have been dying to see them live for years, and it is finally happening this Friday. In my opinion, there is good music, and then there is good concert music. There are many musicians I love that I wouldn’t care to see in concert, and then there are bands like The Sounds that just beg to be listened to while dancing wildly surrounded by a mob of people. Don’t believe me? Check them out:

3) Watching creepy old horror movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? this weekend. You can keep your slasher flicks and M. Night Shamalayn weirdness, because to me nothing says scary like a black and white movie about a crazy former child star trying to feed her wheelchair-bound sister dead parakeets and rats. They just don't make 'em like they used to...

What are you all excited for?

P.S.- New recipes posted here

Definitely not hiding it under a bushel

2009-10-26T11:14:00.001-06:00

It’s not unusual for siblings to share a hobby. The Osmonds sing and dance, the Browns play their instruments, and the Mannings throw footballs. I would like to say that the Preobrazhensky children are known for oil painting or something cool like that, but the truth is that our collective talent is eating. And we are very, very good at it.

In fact, we are so passionate about our hobby that if you spend at least half an hour with my brothers and sisters you will undoubtedly find the conversation turning to topics like the new sushi restaurant downtown, the superiority of homemade ranch dressing to the store-bought variety, or the mystery of people that “forget to eat” or are “too busy to have lunch” (my brother-in-law made such a statement once, and we all looked at him like he was a visiting martian).

We all differ a little in our tastes- Helen hates Mexican cuisine, Smash and Smeegs love their burgers a little more than the rest of us- but one food is a definite favorite with everyone: wings. Specifically Winger’s wings, because apparently something about that spicy yet sweet sauce just makes our collective taste buds rejoice.

Once a year Winger’s has a special promotion: all-you-can-eat wings for ten bucks. If you haven’t guessed already, it’s our kind of event; a chance to really showcase our talent for the world to see. For years now fall has meant not only changing leaves and cool weather, but my brothers and sisters and I stuffing ourselves with wings until we swear that we are never eating them again, only to return eagerly the next year.

Here is a photo tour of last year’s dinner. Wingfest 2009 is happening this week. I can’t wait.

The crowd last year. We missed Dema (as we will again this year-stupid grad school), but Colton and Logan made very good substitutes:
The first time we went to Winger's Smash ate not 10, not 20, but 24 wings in one sitting. I knew then that I was truly in the presence of greatness:
Lots of ranch is a necessity:

Unless you are a wing purist like Butch:

Smeegs trying not to get the wings stuck in his braces:

Alex's first wing. The year before he was content just to dip his whole hand in Ranch dressing and lick it clean. Definitely his mother's child:

The aftermath. We are truly everything that is wrong with this country. Notice how we didn't waste valuable stomach space on the starchy french fries and popcorn, though. Dr. Atkins would be proud:

I guess it could be considered a Twilight tribute...

2009-10-21T12:25:00.008-06:00

Pumpkin carving tends to be one of those festive activities- like making gingerbread houses or dying easter eggs- that always sounds fun to me in theory but when it comes to actually doing it I lose interest in about 2.5 seconds and sit around distracting everyone around me, usually while eating sickening amounts of candy.

Maybe this is because my immigrant family wasn’t too big on these holiday projects. I think we carved pumpkins all together once in an attempt to be festive, but after that we just had one family jack-o-lantern carved by whoever felt the most motivated that year and called it good.

The Cassitys, on the other hand, are all about the seasonal crafts. They make ornaments at Christmastime, dye eggs for Easter, and, of course, carve pumpkins when Halloween rolls around. The first time I participated in the annual Cassity pumpkin carving night was two years ago when Mike and I were engaged. By the time I had hollowed out and cleaned the pumpkin my craft ADD was really up and going, so I grabbed the simplest looking stencil I could find and went to town (yes, they had stencils. And special pumpkin carving tools. The Cassitys don’t mess around).

I probably should have paid a little more attention to how I positioned the stencil though, because what was supposed to be a frightening image of a vampire biting someone turned out to be a little…well…erotic in feel:

Yep, I unintentionally created Pumpkin Porn. Awesome. I think I am going to keep things a little more simple this year:

Because apparently I can't be trusted to keep it G-rated otherwise.

Make it work!

2009-10-19T13:30:00.007-06:00

A few thoughts that have been going through my head while catching up on Project Runway this weekend (Besides the usual "How are they going to buy fabric in a HALF HOUR?!!" and "Holy crap how is he going to finish that dress in ten minutes?!" Apparently watching people sew really stresses me out).

1) Can somebody please explain to me why Christopher is still in the running? Does he have mafia connections or something? That is the only feasable explanation I can come up with cause he makes dresses that either look like tin foil or something that a five-year-old constructed. Plus he is a crybaby that has meltdowns on the runway. The day Heidi tells him "you're out" cannot come quickly enough as far as I'm concerned.

2) These adorable people just need to hurry up and make out already:

3) Someone should do us all a favor and punch Nicholas in the face. Hard.

Yikes.

2009-10-15T09:21:00.007-06:00

Last night I bought some fancy schmancy shampoo for curly hair. A hairstylist recommended brushing your hair before using it, and, since I am nothing if not trusting, I followed those instructions.

After ten minutes of playing tug-of-war with a cheap plastic hairbrush, this was the result (please take note of my awkward Sylvester Stallone smile):

"Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different."
-The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I am a nerd. A deeply nostalgic and overly sentimental nerd.

2009-10-08T16:03:00.004-06:00

I’m kind of having a dilemma. You see, being the snotty English major that I am, I usually find the thought of turning iconic children’s books into movies pretty abhorrent. Mostly because the majority of these books are so simple and short that in order to turn them into feature films the writers have to add all these elements that make the story more complicated, realistic, and "grown-up” in feel.

For example, the first time I saw a poster advertising a film version of the Dr. Seuss classic The Cat in the Hat, I thought “what in the devil are they going to do to make that book into a movie? It’s about a cat barging into a house and creating chaos with a couple of kids while rhyming.” The answer? Add a bunch of random subplots, including a single mom’s dissatisfaction with her job and a sleazy neighbor who has some mysterious vendetta against the children.

Same thing goes for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. In picture book form, it’s a simple story imagining a world where food falls from the sky. The movie, from what I have gathered by watching the previews, centers the plot around an inventor that creates this phenomenon, thereby completely changing the nature of the story.

I’m sure there are plenty of other picture books that have been given this same treatment- I’ve even heard that my beloved Eloise was turned into some made-for-TV monstrosity- and it kind of bothers me. I mean, you can make a movie out of a novel or even a longer, more detailed children’s book while remaining true to the tone and nature of the story, but when you take a simplistic book of 100 words or less and make it into a two-hour movie, you are invariably transforming it into something completely different.

I mean, isn’t the whole beauty of being a kid that you can read books like this and thoroughly enjoy them without any additional detail? You don’t need an explanation as to why food falls from the sky or why a six-year-old girl lives at the Plaza Hotel without any parents. I guess what worries me about this whole business is that somewhere out there a kid is going to pick up a copy of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and, instead of enjoying the pure whimsy of the story, is going to wonder where the inventor from the film version is. And that is sad.

Anyways, back to the dilemma I mentioned at the beginning of this post. When I heard that Spike Jonze was making a film version of Where the Wild Things Are, I was determined to boycott it for all the reasons listed above. But then I saw the trailer. Which is, well, kind of freaking awesome:

True, I’m not too keen on the filmmakers complicating the story and potentially making it a little too “touchy-feely” for my taste, but other elements of this movie look pretty fantastic. I love how the cinematography interprets Maurice Sendak’s illustrations, love how the “wild things” look fuzzy and real and not all CGI’d, and think the little boy they cast as Max is cute as a button. Plus any kids movie that has an Arcade Fire song in the preview is bound to be pretty cool.

So here’s hoping Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t suck. Because right now it is my only hope for getting over my nerdishly cynical ways.

Roll out the red carpet

2009-10-06T09:29:00.000-06:00

I have a shelf filled with cookbooks in my kitchen, yet most of them have been slowly gathering dust ever since I discovered the wealth of recipes found on the internet and, more specifically, blogs. For some reason I find a recipe so much more worthy of trying if I know that someone has taken the time to blog about it. So, in the interest of being a giver as well as a taker, I am starting my own food blog:

http://dashasdishes.blogspot.com/

I’ve only posted one entry so far, but hopefully it will be the first of many. Let me know what you think.

Things-I-Love Thursday

2009-10-01T11:38:00.008-06:00

Fall is my favorite season. I love all the cliched things that everyone seems to love about this time of year: the gorgeous leaves, “jacket weather”, pumpkin baked goods, college football, etc. I love coming home from a run with my cheeks red from the cold instead of the heat, love watching the mountains change color, love eating the delicious apples, peaches, and plums my dad generously gets us at the farmer’s market each week, love raking leaves outside at dusk. Love love love.

I think the main reason I love fall is that it is by far the best transition of the year. Winter and summer are both just natural progressions of what comes before them- each one a bit colder or warmer than the preceding season- and spring, at least if you live in Utah, is either nonexistent or a messy beast. It’s full of rain, melted slushy snowpiles, and finicky warm temperatures that, when they finally make their blessed arrival, last about two weeks before transforming into the full-fledged heat of summer.

But fall? Fall is different. After a summer full of late nights, hot temperatures, and constant activity I am always ready for a change of pace. Ready for tennis played in the light of the afternoon instead of on artificially lit courts at night, ready for meals made in the crock pot instead of on the barbecue, ready for fires burning in a fireplace instead of in the backyard or a campground.

Unlike with spring, I am never impatient or antsy for fall to arrive. I keep enjoying the warm weather, wearing my flip-flops and t-shirts until one day there is an undeniable chill in the air that lets me know it’s time for socks and a sweater. It feels easy and inevitable, like settling into a comfy armchair after a long hectic day.

True, this year’s transition was a little messier than usual- a textbook Indian Summer followed by that freak storm yesterday- but this morning I walked outside and was greeted by a beautifully sunny, crisply cold morning. Fall is here, friends. Let’s celebrate.

Yep, I'm Special

2009-09-29T14:14:00.006-06:00

One of the things I love about my husband is his random sense of fun. While most couples get to know each other by going out to dinner and a movie, we spent our dating days garbage bagging at Churchill Junior High or getting lost in various canyons. So when Mike suggested rollerblading as one of his birthday activities I was not in the least bit surprised. Mind you, I hadn’t rollerbladed since sixth or seventh grade, but who am I to deny a birthday request?

So yesterday I strapped on an old pair of fruit boots that Mike found in his parents’ garage. After cruising up and down our street a few times I felt pretty comfortable in them, and we decided to go explore the rest of the neighborhood.

The next part of this story is kind of a blur. A blur that involves me rounding a completely harmless (i.e., barely sloped) street corner and somehow performing a spectacular imitation of a baseball player sliding into home plate:

Only in this instance home plate was a gravelly stretch of pavement. Did I mention I was wearing shorts? I will spare you the photo of what my leg looked like afterward. Not a pretty sight.

The best part was that all this occurred right in front of a school bus full of children whose driver stopped and waited as I (with the help of my chivalrous husband) gathered my mangled body and what was left of my dignity.

But perhaps that was the silver lining of this situation. Maybe after the bus driver stopped laughing his head off (okay maybe he didn’t laugh, not everyone is as horrible of a person as I am), he could have used this little incident to teach the kids a valuable lesson:

“See that, boys and girls? That’s why you should always wear a helmet when you rollerblade. And be nice to people like that girl, who probably rides the shorter bus to school and has to wear a helmet all the time.”

24

2009-09-28T09:04:00.004-06:00

Happy Birthday to my favorite:

Happy 24th, Butch. You are the greatest.

Schadenfreude-licious

2009-09-24T09:12:00.003-06:00

Schadenfreude: A German word meaning pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Or, in other words, the feeling I get when I watch this clip of Donny Osmond from Monday's episode of Dancing With the Stars (please take particular note of the instructor's reaction):

I don't know why, but I found this part of the show so hilarious that I made my friends rewind it 5 times on the DVR. And I have to admit that I am still laughing while watching it in my cubicle. Maybe I am just weird. Or kind of a horrible person.

In related news, I think my brief love affair with DWTS has officially come to an end. I blame it on the fact that Tom Delay looks like a total perv of an old man and if I keep watching him prance around with his sweatpants pulled up to his armpits I might start having some seriously disturbing nightmares. Also, Donny Osmond gives me a headache, Macy Gray kind of frightens me, and the cast selection in general just kinda blows. Except for these two, who are so freaking adorable:I guess ultimately there is only room in my life for one guilty pleasure of the reality TV variety, and now that Project Runway is back on after last year's hiatus I no longer need to spend hours indulging in the mind-numbing spectacle that is Dancing With the Stars. Heaven knows I will miss looking at the sparkly dresses, but I'm hoping that the brain cells I conserve by not listening to Aaron Carter practice awkward pickup lines on his partner will make my resolution worthwhile.

Has anyone ever told you...

2009-09-22T10:07:00.018-06:00

So remember how a while back I wrote about awkward things people say? And how I never know how to respond to these kind of statements? Well, I have another one to add to the list. I never know what to say when people tell me that I look so much like so-and-so (so-and-so being a celebrity, a mutual friend, or someone that I have never even heard of).

I’m sure all of you have experienced the same thing, and I really cannot come up with an appropriate response to it. “Thank you” doesn’t seem quite right, cause it’s not like they are really paying you a compliment (unless they explicitly state that they think so-and-so is good looking), and half the time people tell me that I look like their great-niece or something random so I don’t even get what the devil they are talking about.

Here are a few of the random comparisons I seem to get over and over again:

Christina Ricci:
Ew. To me she looks like an emaciated crack whore. But luckily most of the time when people compare us they refer to her as “that girl from Casper.” So apparently I look like Christina Ricci circa 1995, which I am slightly more OK with:

Betty Boop:

Seriously people? A cartoon character? And a deformed, slutty one at that?

Amanda Seyfried:

I’ve heard this one a few times since Mama Mia came out and I don’t see it at all but whatever. At least she’s pretty.

Cabbage Patch Doll:

I’m not even going to dignify this one with a response. Mostly because if I think about it too long it makes me want to cry.

The one time that I’ve been glad of people’s tendency to play the look-alike game was on my wedding day. Mike and I were standing in the receiving line at our reception and my mom’s friend took one glance at my new husband before telling him that he looked exactly like this man:

And suddenly the reason that my dad took such an instant liking to Mike became abundantly clear. I think I will start calling him "Crocodile Butch" from now on.

I ain't sayin he's a gold digger

2009-09-16T09:19:00.007-06:00

Our country is currently fighting two foreign wars, Congress is debating changes in health care legislation that could impact our lives forever, and yet all I seem to hear about lately is Kanye West. Oh, and how npr needs my money. Because apparently it’s that time of year again.

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to pretend to be one of those people that only read the meaty sections of the newspaper- I love my celebrity gossip as much as the next person- but can we all just admit that this has gotten a tad out of control? Even our president has started in on the Kanye-bashing (although if dismissing Kanye West as a jackass isn’t showing good presidential judgement I don’t know what is).

What I do want to point out here, though, is that by talking about him all the time we are most likely just feeding into Kanye’s little scheme to get more fame, attention, etc. You know that phrase “any publicity is good publicity”? Definitely seems to apply in this case. I mean, homeboy had already established his reputation as an arrogant douchebag with a serious case of verbal diarrhea and a God complex before the VMAs-why not push the envelope a little further? Especially if it gets your name googled a bazillion times the day before you are scheduled to appear on Jay Leno’s new show. Think the timing of that little outburst was a coincidence? Not so much. Well played, Mr. West (or your publicists). And thank you for being the narcissistic fool you are, because it just makes watching The Colbert Report even more enjoyable :

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Kanye West Interrupts Taylor Swift at the VMAs

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Protests

Future's so bright, I gotta wear shades

2009-09-14T15:31:00.005-06:00

If you choose to schedule a long-needed eye exam during your lunch break, remind the doctor not to dilate your eyes. Otherwise you may end up spending the rest of your day like this:

As much as I adore the 5-dollar sunglasses I got at the state fair this weekend, sporting them in my cubicle with my face 6 inches away from the computer screen basically solidifies my status as the office loon.

Things-I-Love Thursday

2009-09-10T10:14:00.006-06:00

My mom has a crush. It has been common knowledge for over 30 years and my dad is fully aware of her feelings, so I don't think she will mind me making this announcement. You see, like many women of her generation, my mom is madly in love with Paul McCartney.

I don’t quite know how this obsession got started, seeing as my parents grew up in a country that banned Western music, but apparently Beatlemania did not recognize the limits of the Iron Curtain. My mom also dabbled in other bands that were part of the Brit-rock invasion (ask her about the time she and a friend were nearly arrested for having a Led Zeppelin album in their possession), but her heart always belonged to Paul, and, by extension, The Beatles.

Moving to the U.S. did nothing to decrease my mom’s love of the Lads from Liverpool, so naturally our family listened to Beatles music quite a bit while I was growing up. And when I say "quite a bit" I mean that I knew the words to every song on Rubber Soul by the time I was eight years old. The Beatles were what we listened to on road trips, while cleaning the house, etc. In fact, I associated their music so much with my childhood and adolescence that, like many vestiges of that era, I ended up more or less outgrowing it.

Moving out of my parent’s house didn’t mean that I stopped listening to The Beatles altogether- I just didn’t do it intentionally. I saw the abomination that was Across the Universe, and you can’t go to a wedding these days without hearing “All You Need is Love” or “In My Life” blaring on the photo slideshow. Surprisingly though, I don’t have a single Beatles song on my ipod and I haven’t really been troubled by that fact. Until this week that is.

You have probably heard that yesterday marked the release of The Beatles digitally remastered catalog and The Beatles Rock Band game. Pretty much the Second Coming as far as Beatlemaniacs are concerned. I have heard about this event every morning this week on my way to work. The news stories are always accompanied by clips of the remastered songs, which means that I find myself singing “she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah” at the top of my lungs while I’m driving. I look like a complete fool but I don’t even care. Hearing The Beatles, as trite as this may sound, suddenly feels like being reunited with a dear old friend. I’m excited to get to know them again. So if anyone gets their mitts on The Beatles Rock Band, please invite me over to play. You may have heard that I suffer from some serious developmental delays as far as video games are concerned, and this claim is not unfounded, but I think I could handle the singing part. After all, I already know the words. My mom has taught me well.

Friday is a good day for a PSA

2009-09-04T10:54:00.004-06:00

To all the men out there wearing those ridiculous v-neck shirts that show your nasty chest hair and make you look like a girl:

Please, please stop. It’s scaring the children.

Thank you for your cooperation,
Dasha

One Smile

2009-09-02T10:14:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I came across this quote by Maya Angelou:

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning Good Morning at total strangers.”

I know it’s not exactly the most catchy or profound quote out there- you can’t really put it on one of those wooden plaques to hang above your fireplace- but it really resonated with me. I feel like there are days when I literally only have only one smile inside me- days when I am grouchy and irritable and a veritable mess of emotions, and I do everything I can to hold my sh*t together everyplace except for where it matters most.

Yeah, I get that if you are going to have a full-fledged nervous breakdown it’s definitely better to do it in front of your husband or your parents than an unsuspecting co-worker, but I just wonder if maybe sometimes the relationships we claim as most important are the ones that end up in last place on our list of priorities. Like maybe if I put the same amount of effort into being cheerful around my husband or siblings when I am having a bad day as I do when I encounter a grocery store clerk or waitress, I might actually be putting my money where my mouth is.

This might all sound like a lot of rambling but the point is this: well said, Miss Angelou. Well said.

Things-I-Love Thursday

2009-08-27T12:48:00.003-06:00

I have always had a longing for a neighborhood restaurant. You know, the kind you always see in movies or TV shows where the characters are on a first-name basis with the servers and never have to wait for a table? Yeah, that kind. And although in my dreamworld this restaurant was usually a sit-down diner akin to Luke’s on Gilmore Girls, I quickly changed my tune when we moved into a house near this place:

(Image courtesy of Your Heart Out)

Have any of you been to Lone Star Taqueria? If the answer is yes, good job. If not, you need to go immediately. It’s funky, local, and the food is amazing. It was even featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, so it’s pretty much famous. And because I now live within walking distance of Lone Star (does anyone else get an unnatural amount of satisfaction from walking places instead of driving?), I am claiming it as my very own neighborhood dive.

There are a lot of great things on the menu at Lone Star. I have heard praises sung about the nachos, burritos, etc., but Mike and I both remain loyal to the fish tacos: white corn tortillas topped with freshly grilled fish (selection changes daily), shredded cabbage, tomatoes, cilantro, and jalapeno mayonnaise. We each order two every time we come here and are never disappointed. Even if you are one of those people that claim to hate fish, I recommend giving these suckers a try. I think you’ll be converted.

So next time you are in the neighborhood, come mosey on over to Lone Star with us. And if all goes according to plan, don’t be surprised if I just stroll up to the counter and say “I’ll have my usual, por favor.”

You might be a redneck if...

2009-08-24T13:17:00.015-06:00

Highlights of your recent trip to Bear Lake included watching your three-year-old nephew "boogie board" behind a four-wheeler:

And observing your husband when he and your now dreadlock-less friend applied the same concept to the art of skimboarding:

Truly a classy weekend.

Dreadlocks and a Wedding

2009-08-20T09:41:00.003-06:00

Everyone should grow up on a street like Holly Lane. For many reasons, but especially so that they can have friends like these two: Believe it or not, I have known these hoodlums since we were five years old. And now one of them is officially a married man:
Congratulations to Nate for marrying such a lovely girl. And congratulations to Logan for pulling off the classiest Best Man hairdo I have ever seen:
I have watched this boy sport a man perm, cornrows, and a full-on mullet with steps, but white boy dreads? That’s taking it to a whole new level. Holladay Elementary Alumni, class of '98 (with the happy addition of Butch). I think we turned out pretty well. And yes, I was always on the bottom row of those elementary class photos, why do you ask? Remind me never to stand next to Nert when someone is taking a picture. Even on the days that I am wearing high heels.

Bring on the sequins

2009-08-17T11:32:00.008-06:00

Just in case you were wondering which celebrities’ careers are officially in the crapper, the lineup for the new season of Dancing with the Stars has been announced. And it includes Tom Delay, the former Republican House majority leader. Wow. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

On to the rest of the lineup. Kind of a letdown in my opinion. There is still no Tom Selleck (Annie, I think we need to write to the producers or something), and the rest of the cast selection ranges from shockingly predictable (wasn’t it only a matter of time until Donny Osmond graced us with his presence?) to virtually unknown (if anyone can tell me who Joanna Krupa is without googling her name I will give them a quarter). The one person I am excited to see on the show is Melissa Joan Hart, known to most of you as Sabrina the Teenage Witch. To me she will always be Clarissa of Clarissa Explains It All, otherwise known as the greatest TV show ever created for the preteen demographic (Hannah Montana can suck it). Clarissa rocked. She was smart, sassy, and had incredible style. Plus she had her own computer and a window seat in her bedroom. Here is a sampling of Melissa Joan Hart in her glory days:

Now, you would think that it would be depressing for me to see one of my childhood icons feeding at the bottom of the celebrity food chain by appearing on DWTS, but for some reason it feels oddly satisfying. Like my life has come full circle or something. So here’s hoping Melissa Joan will kick some Osmond butt and take home the trophy.

Anyone else care to weigh in on this oh-so-intellectually-stimulating topic?

*Oh, and just in case you missed the part where I became shamelessly addicted to a reality TV show, you can read all about it here.

30

2009-08-12T08:09:00.007-06:00

For most of my young life, my relationship with my older sister was an unfortunate cliché. We fought. All. The. Freaking. Time. We argued over clothes, chores, the loyalty of our younger sister, etc. You name it, we probably had a screaming match about it at some point in time. We loved each other, we just didn’t like each other all that much.

But then we both grew up a little. And, against all odds, started not only tolerating but actually enjoying each other’s company. We found common ground in our distinctly Russian tastebuds (lox and bagel, anyone?), our love of movies that are so bad they are actually awesome (we’ve watched more ABC Family specials than I would like to admit), and a fondness for bargain shopping at Nordstrom Rack and the Park City outlet mall.

In many ways Elena has become like a second mother to me and the rest of our siblings. When she was first married, Smash and I often escaped whatever chaos was going on at the Preo house by going to Elena's apartment (much to the delight of my brother-in-law I’m sure). And even now, six years later, we still flock to her home regularly for either a good meal or a good laugh. We watched her do everything first: leave home, get married, buy a house, have kids. And she did it all with an unwavering sense of confidence and self-assurance, two qualities that absolutely define my sister.

Elena is someone that I often go to for advice because I know she will tell me exactly what she thinks, and not just what I want to hear. She isn’t afraid to tell me that a dress makes me look like I'm carrying twins, or that renovating an old house requires way more work and money than anyone tells you. She doesn’t sugarcoat and I love her for that (most of the time). She is someone in my life that challenges me, but is always there for me when I need it. She helped me strip wallpaper in an old smelly kitchen when she was five months pregnant, gave me countless haircuts and eyebrow waxes in her kitchen over the years, and guided me through many an emotional crisis. Her friendship has been one of the most pleasant surprises of my life, and I feel fortunate to have not one, but two sisters that I can call my closest friends.

Happy 30th birthday, Helen! I'm so glad you don't dump milkshakes on my head anymore.

Things-I-Love Thursday

2009-07-23T09:57:00.002-06:00

A few years ago I went to a screening of The Go-Getter at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie was pretty forgettable- just your standard Sundance fare- but I will always remember it because it introduced me to the music of M Ward.

Man, I am absolutely in love with his voice. If you’ve never had the pleasure of hearing it, I have added four of his songs to my playlist (“Fuel for Fire” is my favorite). And, if you like what you hear, you can see him perform at the Gallivan Center tonight for FREE! Details here.

I will be there, along with around ten thousand other people reveling in the joy of free music and the chance to legally consume alcohol at an outdoor venue. So come prepared to squish and possibly get beer spilled on you multiple times. But that’s part of what makes concerts fun, right? Right…

I think I can safely blame this on the public education system

2009-07-21T09:03:00.008-06:00

Although it’s been a couple of years since I got to partake in the glory that is summer vacation, my brain is still convinced that once temperatures climb above 90 degrees it is allowed to spend the next three months in a state of relative hibernation.

Seriously people. I am dumb as a rock these days. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if I didn't normally put so much effort into trying to be smarter, but seeing my efforts go to waste is kind of frustrating. For example, I usually have a good handle on current events and the like, but lately every time I start reading anything remotely serious or technical, it usually dissolves into the whole “lights on, nobody’s home” phenomenon and I’ve just read through five pages of The New York Times without paying any real attention to them. Don’t even bother asking my opinion on the whole health care fiasco, Judge Sottomayor’s confirmation hearings, or any other topic that cannot be found in the Arts and Entertainment section of the newspaper. I will probably respond with a confused look and a profound “durrrr….”

Further evidence of my newfound stupidity includes the following:
1) Asking Mike the same questions over and over because I’ve forgotten the answer he gave me two minutes ago.
2) Needing to use the calculator on my cell phone to perform the most basic arithmetic (math has never been my strong suit, but it’s getting downright ridiculous).
3) Obsessively googling basic grammar rules that I am paid to know.

The one exception to my sad case of Seasonal Stupidity Disorder (SSD) is my choice of reading material. I think years of summer reading assignments for Honors and AP English classes conditioned me into thinking that it’s not summer unless I’m reading A Classic (i.e., something long, wordy, and usually depressing). This summer’s pick? Great Expectations. I’m interested to see how that will go.

Anyone else suffering from SSD?