can't we all just get along

it's hard to believe, sometimes, that i left canada more than a decade ago. 11 whole years. the first couple of years, i was still surrounded by my canadian friends. we were defined by our quirky canadian accents and constantly asked about the cariboo and igloos and free health-care and canadian bacon (which i had never even heard of until coming to the US, by the way). each year, when our canadian holidays would come around, we'd have parties and dinners and get-togethers to celebrate. we were often land-blasted with questions like "so, why is thanksgiving in october?... what are canadians thankful for?... canada day? why do they celebrate independence? independence from who?... what's with boxing day?" i will state, for the record, that these questions were typically asked by freshmen in college... who had little experience or knowledge about their own countries traditions, much less those of other countries... but i still hear them occasionally.

so, somewhere along the way, during the last 11 years... i lost my accent. my canadian friends all got farther and farther away. and we slowly stopped throwing parties and dinners and getting together to celebrate our holidays. and now... i live in the capital of the united states of america. so i assure you, no one cares in the slightest that today is canada day. but i do. i found myself humming "o canada" while making lunch, and i decided to dawn a red shirt today. if i'd been thinking ahead, i'd have planned a bbq or dinner or something... but again... pretty much me, myself and i are the only ones who care around these parts. and so... in three days, i'll go to the district of columbia and watch fireworks from the steps of the jefferson memorial and feel a sense of pride for my two countries. because really, that's how i feel. i found myself having a difficult time getting through "america the beautiful" without choking up in church on sunday... and while some canadians might have issue with my feeling of pride and love for the country in which i now live, and some americans might have issue with my feeling of pride and love for the country from which i come... frankly, i love them both. and that's just how it is. :) i'm a canerican! .... hahaha .... that was seriously stupid.

so, happy canada day! and happy early 4th of july!

*ahem*

don't you just love those kind of friends where you can go weeks or months or sometimes even years without talking, and then suddenly you find yourself picking up the phone and calling and it's like you haven't even skipped a beat?

i hope this is one of those moments...

remember me? i went away to canada sometime in mid-december... i didn't even say good-bye. i just left. fell off the face of the blogosphere. left comments here and there. but mostly just hid out. well... i'm back. and here's to being the kind of friends who can just pick up where we left off! :)

is it too late to say merry christmas? how about happy new year? a little too early to say happy human rights day... anyway. i feel like it's been so long, i hardly know where to begin. i left off talking about how lame i was at 15. i'm glad to hear i wasn't alone in that; albeit, a little nervous to have a 15 year old of my own someday.

anyway... this is one of those lame blog posts where no one comments because it's about nothing in particular, but i just thought i'd say hi. i'm here. working long hours and completely nullifying the fact that i took a vacation. but i'm here.

p.s. i went to yoga today. aren't you proud of me? and it's not a new year's resolution... it's a last year's resolution revisited.

embracing the insanity

yep... it's the first week of november, and it's already beginning to look a lot like christmas... every where you go... da da da da da dum. and i've decided that this year, instead of being scrooge about it and complaining about how it's not even thanksgiving and i'm already hearing christmas music in costco and bumping into christmas trees in the mall... i'm going to enjoy it. i mean i love the holidays. i love christmas. i love the music. and the decorations (ahem... SOME of them). and the food. and the cards. and the phone calls. and the presents.... and come on... the clothes, people. you can never have too many pea-coats. or scarves. or sweaters. anyway... this year is going to be different. i'm going to embrace the spirit of christmas. now. november 7th. shockingly... i've even thought about sending out christmas cards this year... on time. but don't count on it.

so... merry 48-days-before-christmas! and a happy 55-days-before-new-years too!

do they make 48 day advent calendars?... 'cause sign me up!

a pimp and a... wha?

despite the fact that burton didn't intend to go as a "pimp" for halloween, but rather a "70s guy" (whatever that is), and we both thought our costumes were as far from a "couple costume" as you could get, as soon as we walked through the door to the halloween party and someone said "hey! it's a pimp and his witch!", we knew there was more we could have done with it.

this year, was like many before it -- we start to think about halloween months beforehand, and say things like "this year we should really do something cool. this year's going to be different because we're talking about it early." and then 2 days before the halloween party comes, we're scrambling around trying to think of something "cool" to do. we spent an evening driving around to various places, looking for the perfect costume. burton finally decided to just go as something he'd been before, but i only had pieces of old costumes, so i was out of luck.

we went to D.I. (secondhand store) and i just stood there amid the hundreds of painfully ugly shirts and started to pout. "i hate halloween. i hate trying to find a costume. i hate secondhand stores. i hate the smell of moth balls. i hate spending money on a stupid costume every single year that i will wear for one friggin' night, when i could buy a new shirt or a pair of shoes that i'll wear everyday." (ok... not EVERYday. gross.) finally, i said, "let's leave. i need to leave. i can't be here anymore." and we left (but not before burton made me try to slip a childrens winnie-the-pooh costume over my head... too bad it couldn't fit over my huge pouty lip).

we made our way to a halloween costume store. i hate to be a broken record and say the same thing i said last year... but seriously, what the crap is with halloween!? is it too much to ask for a costume that covers my butt cheeks? i'll spare you my soap box speech about how halloween has become a holiday to celebrate the glamorous livestyle of hookers, and how disappointing it is that WOMEN are perpetuating the problem, because THEY are the ones BUYING the freaking costumes. (ok... i'll at least spare you the long version of my speech). anyway, i found a witch costume tucked way at the back... it was classic, it covered my "parts", and it wasn't too expensive, so i decided that from now on, each october 31st... i'm gonna be a witch. (and apparently, one with an attitude problem).

canada day? independence day?...

happy iPhone launch day!

um ya... i'm a dork.

i know tim mcgraw is true...

(UPDATED: ok... so since last monday's FHE lesson was based on elder holland's talk about our tongues being "an unruly evil, full of deadly poison" AND someone who attended this meeting found this post -- although, they gave me a hearty "hear hear" -- i felt compelled to make some adjustments to this post and make my words less venomous...)

there is something inherently evil about making fun of people in church. and when i am tempted to, i suddenly find myself with my face cupped in my hands... a combination of trying not to laugh and praying "PLEEEEASE make these thoughts go away!? please please please make me a kinder, more compassionate person who recognizes the good in other people and doesn't find humor in their unfortunate inability to write a talk." but this sunday was father's day. and i LOVE father's day. i love my dad, and i love thinking of fun stories about my dad (i love mother's day equally for clarification... but this post is about father's day)... and generally speaking, i end up teary-eyed in church while someone talks about the blessings of fathers, etc etc. this father's day, i will admit, i still had a few of those moments... but it was slightly overshadowed by the overwhelming feeling i had to gouge my eyes out with a fork hug everyone around me.


now, at the risk of someone somewhere in the future finding this blog and recognizing that i'm talking about them or their daughter or their friend or whatever in the hope that everyone will find this and think i'm a really sweet person and always have nice things to say about people... umm, well... i'm still going to tell you this story.

four girls, returning home for the summer from various colleges, were asked to speak about father's day and talk a little bit about their experience at college (first mistake was allowing 20 year old girls this much flexibility in their speaking assignment... we're lucky we didn't hear about how bobby broke their heart... anyway... what a wonderful idea this was). they were each asked to speak for 8 minutes... i know this because each in turn mentioned that they had been asked to speak for 8 minutes right about the 12 or 13 minute mark and they were really good at trying hard to stay within those 8 minutes.

the first talked about byu and how byu was the best place for her, but not for everyone and how she had been raised to think byu was the only place she could go and how she never thought she would actually go, and spent just a little too much time talking about byu... and a little less time talking about... well, what do most people go to church to talk about again? ;) and i love byu, so it was great! ANYway... here's me typing away... knowing every letter i type is one letter closer to total condemnation bliss.

so... number two gets up. this is where the fork would have been handy for the eye gouging i really wanted to hug people. i'm going to skip the part where she talked about her dad... 'cause honestly, this is where i got a little misty... so i'll give her that much. but, let's go straight to the part where she held up her copy of the "Father of the Bride" DVD and quoted george banks (which she admitted to playing over and over again so she could be sure she got the quote "just right"... which was so thoughtful of her) as he talked about his little girl growing up, it was so sweet. and then let's skip to the part where she read THREE verses of a tim mcgraw song about a father losing his daughter as she grew up (i love tim mcgraw), but like she realized that like the song was like kind of hard to read 'cause like it's totally "country" and like says words like "ain't" and "ya'll" so she like decided at the last minute to like write it out in like normal words so she could totally like read it normal. AND i'm not exaggerating. AND i'm going STRAIGHT to hell for this one... BUT... it was like totally worth it. ;) which was a really good idea, and i appreciated it.

and the third speaker was actually really good and the fourth had to be postponed to next sunday... because when you're 20, apparently it's too difficult to look at the clock and realize you've been speaking for twice as long as you should have you're just so wonderful, and i love you.

and of course, the little primary kids singing "i'm so glad when daddy comes home" made me want to hug each and every one of them and thank them for being such angels. maybe i'll get bonus points for that one in heaven and it will all even itself out.

happy hallmark holiday greetings

it's that time of year again when flowers miraculously triple in price and become almost impossible to find, the cards at hallmark are completely picked through, hotels are booked solid, reservations at restaurants are impossible, and men begin to frantically tear apart their homes for the gift list their wives gave them at christmas... "there's gotta be SOMETHING on that list i didn't get her!" so burton and i decided awhile ago to do away with the gifts on valentines and anniversaries. as we get older and start spending money on things like diapers and doctors appointments, perhaps we'll reconsider the rare opportunity to splurge on each other, but in the meantime... we've simplified. rather than spending money and time trying to find the perfect gift for each other (which, by the way, isn't even part of traditional valentines day observence anyway... traditionally, it was simply intended as a day to express love and affection for your significant other... we can thank Hallmark and the diamond industry for the new tradition of gift exchange), we decided to put the money towards doing something fun instead. usually a fancy dinner and a cool hotel... and the traditional breakfast at Denny's, of course. he usually still buys flowers and the typical monkeys in lingerie cards are exchanged... but other than that, it's just a fun night on the town.

happy valentine's day.

helpful hints for the men:
flowers - yes / something for the kitchen - no / card expressing your sincere love and appreciation for your wife - yes / no card - no / day at the spa - yes / tickets to the nba playoffs - no / gift card to buy new clothes - yes / new xBox - no / reservations at a nice restaurant - yes / "oh... i thought you were going to cook something special?" - no

helpful hints for the women:
flowers - no / something for the bedroom - yes / mushy card gushing with pink and purple flowers - no / a card with something funny about sex inside - yes / tickets to the opera - duh! / tickets to the nba playoffs - duh! / gift card to buy new clothes - no (unless we're talking about my husband, then "yes") / new xBox - yes (unless you want to stay happily married... then "no") / reservations at a nice restaurant - sure, why not? / "oh actually... i was planning to cook you something special" - yes (if you can cook, and it starts with an "s" and ends with a "teak")

good news from punxsutawney

after that super long post i feel like i've set this precedence for myself or something... like i have to sit down with a good hour available in order to write a new posting. so... this is to break myself of that feeling. this will be short and sweet.

punxsutawney phil says spring is right around the corner! yeehaw! (like the way cowboys say it). i hate the snow today. maybe because i washed my car and now it's covered in snow again. stupid provo. make up your freaking mind! anyway, the groundhog has spoken (or whatever he does) and spring is on its way. happy groundhog day. (aw cute, that rhymed).

belated seasons greetings and 10 lbs later

merry christmas. better late than never. christmas is one of those holidays that you really never end up with enough time to prepare for properly. every year, i know it's coming... and yet every year, a couple days before christmas i'm running around like a crazy woman trying to get everything ready for the big day. and every year, we start getting christmas treats and cards delivered to our door sometime around the end of November, and every year burton and i say to each other "man... we're the worst friends ever... we need to take something to people... " and every year... nothing happens. but to all of you who so faithfully leave treats on our doorstep or send cards in the mail, we love you. to the rest of you... this is why we're friends. we're here to make each other feel better about being such slackers. :)

and now... happy new year. it's that time of year when everyone dedicates themselves to a long list of resolutions about a new diet and their bad food habits and their trips -- or lack of trips -- to the gym and their portion sizes... basically anything having to do with their weight. since deciding on my resolutions, i've managed to not go to the gym once yet, eat at least 8 AMAZING chocolate chip cookies in one sitting (burton puts betty crocker to shame anyday!), enjoy some amazing chocoloate fondue and eat pizza twice. YES! off to a great start! may your new year be much more effective and 10 pounds lighter. :)

christmas with the godfather

well... i made it. i'm officially 28. and i've been super moody the last couple of days. i've been trying to determine whether it's because i'm having issues dealing with this new age (an age that for some reason sounds REALLY old to me right now), or if it's because it's almost christmas and the only preparation i've done is buying gifts FOR burton WITH burton, or if it's PMS... or maybe i'm pregnant (that is not an announcement... just to clarify)... i have no idea what's going on, but one second i'm really happy about life and the next second i'm pouting about having to go grocery shopping (ok... realistically, i always pout about grocery shopping, but you know what i mean). anyway, highs and lows all week... it's driving me bonkers.

but i do love this time of year. our christmas tree is up, and i've invested in some great christmas music this year (check out sarah mclachlan's new album "wintersong"... you'll love it)... and my first online christmas purchase for burton just arrived in the mail today and is neatly tucked under my bed (for those of you concerned about this divulgence of information, i assure you that burton hardly has time to read the things he's assigned at school right now much less waste time reading the ramblings he gets to hear all day long). anyway, it's beginning to look a lot like christmas... (aw cute).

random subject change... i watched the godfather for the first time in my entire life. loved it. still loving it actually as we're half way through the godfather 2 now. and i'm loving that one also. seriously, i found myself laughing at parts that were far from funny simply because i have seen them mocked so many times in other movies and it was just so strange to know i was watching the origination of those scenes. amazing. love marlon brando, al pacino, robert de niro... and diane keaton... holy crap. she's much hotter at 60 than she was in the 70s. anyway, if you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it in awhile, curl up with a warm blanket and a hot chocolate and settle in for a little horse head and oranges (if you haven't seen it... aren't you just a little curious now!?). i actually used a quote from it today on a business call. someone was asking how we were going to get a certain individual to do something... and i said "we'll make him an offer he can't refuse"... i got a few chuckles... mostly from the new yorker i work with who had been shocked and almost appauled earlier when i told him i had only just seen the movie for the first time this past week. anyway, it's great... "i know it was you fredo! you broke my heart! you broke my heart!" so awesome.

disclaimer: i just realized that i have to admit i watched the godfather on a clearplay DVD player which edits movies and makes them not so violent and vulgar, etc etc. so by the R rating my assumption is that there is probably a lot of things in the movie i didn't see or hear that many may find offensive if they watch it unedited... so, be warned. :)

almost 30 and shrinking fast!

been awhile since i've written anything... lots going on. thanksgiving--which consisted of five days of eating, watching way too many movies, watching way too much football, and doing way too much sitting around for the amount of food being consumed. we then watched two cute little boys (see monkey and chicken below) while their parents partied it up in hawaii (welcome home guys). we went to park city for my company christmas party where they put us all up in this sweet hotel for the evening and let us spend the following day shopping at the outlet stores (pre-holiday shopping that you justify by saying "ok, this one will be for christmas... and this one too... and this..."). then we went straight from park city to another christmas party where we ate amazing fudge and fondue and rice krispie covered marshmallows and more fudge and more fondue... i love christmas. please note that both of these christmas parties occured before the month of december even started. anyway, it's been a busy couple of weeks.

it's my birthday on friday... 28. i'm still deciding how i feel about it. it's not like turning 23... 'cause 23 was cool (that may seem random, but i've had this discussion with many friends and that seems to be the pinnacle of existence). but this is almost 30. not that almost 30 isn't cool... or over 30 for that matter. it's just hard to believe that's me. i'm older than my mom was when i was born. oh well, i guess most of my friends are right there with me... some who have paved the way and others who are soon to follow (fyi... i'll be almost 34 before burton even leaves his 20s). sweet.

well, it's almost 9:30 PM... time for my glass of warm milk and then off to bed for my old bones. i freaking asked for slippers for my birthday... although, i also asked for "trivial pursuit 80s edition"... which only makes me feel old when i'm with my husband.

OH!... i almost forgot to share the funniest discovery in a really long time. if going through a quarter life crisis wasn't enough (come on... i could live to be 112... it'll be 2090 when that roles around... i guarantee they'll have figured something out by then to keep my little heart pumping passed 100), i went to the doctor a couple weeks ago for a basic checkup, 'cause i haven't been to a family doctor in like 15 years (no joke). so... somewhere along the line in my adult life someone pulled out a tape measure and said "hey, let's measure everyone's height" and somehow that tape measure was incredibly... well... WRONG. literally for the last at least 8 or 9 years i have been under the impression that I am 5 ft. 6.5 inches tall. and because no one really likes saying the half inches and everyone secretly wants to be a little taller than they are (unless they're already crazy tall) i would round up to 5'7". so needless to say, i was a little shocked... kind of like i had been kicked in the gut... when the nurse stood me up to the measuring instrument and proclaimed for all to hear "5 feet 4.5 inches". WHAT?!?! I said "ummm... i think that's wrong!" so she said "ok... we can do it again" and we went through the same ordeal. aware of my obvious concern she pronounced the results a little quieter this time, "well... it's still 5 feet 4.5 inches". a whole 2 inches shorter!... 2.5 inches shorter than i have quite proudly stated to government agencies over the years... like the department of motor vehicles, who so trustingly put 5' 7" on my drivers license. i will admit i had a bit of an identity crisis over the whole ordeal. you know, i blame this mishap on my canadian education... it's the silly centimeters vs. inches dilemma... my canadian drivers license says 165 cm. come on... how the crap am i supposed to know that converts to 5 feet 4.5 inches?! no one taught me these things! i suppose it's totally possible that i've shrunk in my old age... it happens you know! anyway, i guarantee i will be rounding up FOR SURE now. 5' 5"... so lame.

lederhosen

and first prize goes to... the idiots who squeezed themselves into their lederhosen! :) take a good look folks... I doubt you'll see burton in anything so tight ever again. so, after much debate and scouring the internet for the perfect costume, we went with the lederhosen; despite the fact that burton could not actually bend in the middle and had to spend the entire evening straight as a board... which made the drive to the party pretty interesting. halloween wasn't too bad afterall. but... was i right or was i right? my friend described the scene on halloween as being like a "lingerie store exploded on the city". while somewhat entertaining to watch scantily clad females running around the streets freezing their cute little tushies off, it is still a sad reflection of the moral state of society. i mean seriously, why look hot and sexy when you can look like overstuffed hansel & gretel dolls? :)

and what did i say... little toddlers dressed up like monkeys and chickens and stuff. aren't they the cutest things you've ever seen in your whole life? THIS is what halloween is about... dressing little children up like animals and cowboys and witches and goblins, and promising them candy if they don't throw a fit about it, and then dragging them all around town to other people's homes where you have to say "trick or treat" for them 'cause they really don't get the concept of WHY they're dressed up in the first place, and then you fill their bags with candy and have to live with the consequences for at least the next week. i can't wait! :)

halloween is for kids... and lingerie models

what the crap is with halloween? first of all, i've never liked the holiday in the first place. it always seemed like some kid was getting his hand blown off by a firecracker, or someone was getting egged as they trick-or-treat... whatever the circumstance, someone was almost always either going to get hurt or get in trouble. and then there's the costume. THIS is the main reason i hate this holiday. i swear i've been a hippie or an angel or a fairy of some sort at least 20 out of the 27 halloween's i've been on this earth. i have no imagination when it comes to the costume. no desire to spend tons of money or time creating the perfect costume. and now... NOW... what in the world has happened to women's costumes?! halloween has literally turned into a really good excuse for all those women out there who have aspirations of becoming a hooker someday, to practice out there in the real world for a night all dressed up like one. forgive me for not wanting to strap on some thigh high nylons and patent leather go-go boots and try to explain to everyone how little bo-peep was really a high-class prostitute. :) so instead of succumbing to the pressure of baring all for an evening, i've been eyeing my fly fishing gear... how lame can i get? a fisherman? or i could add some make-up to the equation and be a dead fisherman or a fisher-ghost. wow. halloween is awesome. and now that i've hurdled over the age 25 milestone, and junkfood goes straight to my butt, eating all the candy i want isn't an option... which is basically the only good part about halloween. and of course, seeing all the little toddlers dressed up like ducks and monkeys and chickens and stuff. so cute. anyway, happy halloween. blah blah.