Thursday, February 21, 2008

President's Day is the new Valentine's Day

Since our Valentine's day sucked, Dave decided to do something really sweet for me on Monday.

When I came home from work (yes, unfortunately people still feel the need to buy computer parts on federal holidays) I found that Dave had a surprise for me. Waiting for me on the end-table in the front room were a bag of Love Messages M&Ms, a new set of metal measuring spoons (which made me glad, since the majority of our old plastic ones had met their demise in the garbage disposal...and I'm pretty sure the only one remaining is a useless 1/4 teaspoon), and...


...flowers!

(these look so good, I bet you can just smell them now!)

No, not just flowers, but hyacinths! These are one of my favorite flowers. Over the past couple of days, they have really bloomed and the area near the sink actually smells good. No...heavenly! I love, love, love these flowers. Thank you for being so thoughtful, Dave!

Speaking of Dave...the poor guy is sick. Again. We've learned that this is probably because of his plasma donations. Whether or not this is the cause, he isn't going back to the plasma center until winter is over and the odds of him catching the cold are less.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Valentine's Day, Car repair, and an Adventure

Happy week of love! Valentine's day has always been somewhat magical for me. Even though I often found it depressing during my teenage years, I still enjoyed the spirit of it. I don't really have any great romantic story for this Valentine's day...unfortunately, it was pretty much like any other day--work and school saw to that. And poor Dave! He has been so busy this week. Along with work and school, he has been trying to fit in volunteer hours at an elementary school each day for one of his sadistic teachers. Blah. But such is life.

Wow, yesterday was busy. We realized that it was oil change time again, and so we took Blanca in Saturday morning. Now, recently we have noticed that the car smells like gasoline when the heat is on (obviously a red flag) so we asked the guy at the oil change place about it. He took a peep under the hood and informed us that we had a leak in the fuel line. Yowch. Not only that, but he told us the leak was in such a place that it could cause it to ignite. Images of our car exploding at random on the road filled my head, and I knew that we had to get it taken care of pronto. The oil change guys didn't do repair work like that, so we began our journey to find a repair shop that was open on a Saturday afternoon. This is a task not so unlike trying to locate a snowman in hell...it's just not there.

I don't know why mechanics refuse to be open on a Saturday. You'd honestly think that this would be the prime day for business--everyone who had work during the week and couldn't take their car in then would have to come in on a Saturday. That's when people have time for that kind of thing. But I'd wager about 80% of repair shops are closed on Saturday, and of the ones that are, only like half are open after noon. Crazy. So we searched, all the while fearing that our beloved car would burst into flames, until we found Master Muffler and Break. The man at the counter informed us that we would have to wait a good 45 minute just to have our car looked at, and to fix the car would be $60 an hour. That seemed a little steep, so we decided we would try our luck elsewhere. We went home and took out the phone book, calling around the city to see who was open and how much they would charge. It turned out no one would be able to fix it that same day EXCEPT Master Muffler. *sigh*. So we took the car back and hoped we wouldn't be terribly ripped off.

The guy there was pretty nice. He needed to order a special part to fix the car, and he made like 10 phone calls to find one he could get that day. Thank goodness he found one at last! We had to wait for a good hour for everything to get done, but we drove away with a non-gasoline-smelling car and $175 less in my wallet (the part was kind of costly_. I kind of get the feeling that having a car is a pretty poor 'investment'... :)

By the time we were done with all that, it was getting pretty late in the day. We did our grocery shopping and went home for a bit before going to visit family up in SLC. But I suppose everything turned out okay. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing that our car wouldn't blow up on the freeway. It was a really fun night, though, and it was a good way to end a day that had sucked so freaking much.

Today, Dave and I went on one of our adventures, this time to our old high school in P.G. Neither of us have been back there since we graduated. We parked and walked around the outside of the empty building, remembering the old days. Some of our memories were shared, many were not, but it was so amazing to have all of these dormant memories come back to life. It's so strange--they are doing all of this construction on the school, like building a new wing or something. A lot of the city is changing like that. My goal is to go back and take pictures of everything I remember from living in P.G. before they are changed beyond recognition, so I will always have them.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Last night...

...I had a dream that there was a zoo inside of Wal-mart, with zebra(s?) and lions and such. Scary thought, though--I mean, just look at those fish in the pet section :( It's like some sort of mass aquatic grave.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

History of our relationship, Part 2


11. What does your ring look like?
Well, the ring I wear now is entirely different than the one I had when we first got married. Being the poor young couple that we were at the time (and given the fact that we were scrimping on everything about the wedding already)it only made sense that the ring would receive the same sort of treatment. In my mindset, the ring (as well as the dress) was trivial and was not important to spend money on. I just needed something that would do the job for as little money as possible (I really regret that I felt that way... sigh.) There was some wisdom to that way of thinking, though. I mean, I personally couldn't justify spending so much money on a piece of jewelery that it actually requires payments to be made on it. I thought, "I'm not going to pay money for a ring that should be going towards rent or something!" ANYWAY, this isn't answering the question. Basically what we did was go to Wal-Mart and pick out rings for less than $100. Yeah. I liked the ring and all, but I always wanted something a little... nicer. So after almost 2 years of marriage (and after losing weight steadily for that amount of time), when I found that my ring was just too big, I hinted to Dave that I really wanted a new ring. Well, I more than hinted :) I knew exactly what I wanted: a white-gold ring with both diamonds and some other kind of precious stone. I looked at many options, and fell in love with a gorgeous ring with a diamond as the centerpiece (a much larger stone than the old ring) and two small sapphires on either side. it didn't hurt that it was on sale, too :) Dave got it for me and surprised me with it during a night-time drive in the mountains.

12. Do you have pet-names for each other?
Sweetheart, baby, babe, love, princess... there are a fair few.

13. What’s your favorite thing to do together?
We really like to relax together. We are perfectly content to spend the day at home with each other, playing video games or watching movies or doing art projects or whatever. We are also just thrilled to hang out with friends and family, go on random driving "adventures," go for walks, go to movies, out to dinner, etc. We are just like best friends...we kind of hang out and do whatever seems fun at the moment.

14. Do you show affection in public?
Yes, for sure. We aren't afraid to kiss or hug in front of people, no doubt making them feel vastly uncomfortable. But we aren't that bad about it.

15. When did you know you loved each other?
I was really into him from the beginning, but didn't want to tell him. But it wasn't love, yet. After spending more and more time together I really fell for him, but I still wasn't sure I should tell him. After all, he was about to leave on a mission. So I held it in until the 4th of July, 2003. Dave and I went together to watch the fireworks in P.G. We had jumped into his car and drove toward the highschool, but hadn't bothered to put shoes on first. We walked barefoot toward the fireworks and lay directly under them. I recall thinking, as we lay in the grass, that I wished he would make a move, like put his arm around me or hold my hand. He would later tell me that he wished the same thing. But neither one of us were gusty enough. Once the fireworks were through, we started walking around the park and talked. Soon all the crowds were gone, but we hung around. We ended up in the elementary school playground by the highschool. As we walked barefoot through the grass, Dave told me that he had a secret. I must admit, I had a feeling of what it was, but I played dumb. He told me to guess, so I did, offering stupid answers like he had a terminal illness or he was a superhero or whatever. Finally he gave in, and told me that he liked me...REALLY liked me. I told him that I felt the same. It was an awesome rush to finally have it out in the open.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

We don't live in a perfect world, you know!

This week, I brought my thumb USB drive to school to print something in the computer lab. For the first time, I actually did what I always feared I would and left the thumb drive in the computer. I realized 2 hours later what I had done, and rushed after my last class to the lab to retrieve the device, sure it would be there amidst my worst-case-scenario fears.

First I glanced at the computer I had used, but it wasn't there. I asked for it at the desk...but they could not find it! They told me to check the main lost and found, so I did. Nothing. Well, I shouldn't say nothing...there were TONS of USB drives in that lost and found. TONS. In retrospect, I suppose I could have taken my pick of lost drives and had that be the end of it, but my conscience just wouldn't allow me to do it. (Curse you, conscience!!)

At that point, I had to come to terms with something--someone had stolen my thumb drive. Yeah, so everyone gets stolen from at some point. But I guess it mad me a little more annoyed simply because my NAME and PHONE NUMBER were on the drive. If someone had a single spark of human kindness in them, they would return the drive (which, by the way, thankfully had nothing on it but a poem and some wedding pictures) and I would thank them and everyone would be happy. But they didn't--they took something that didn't belong to them, even though they had no justification for it.

I know everyone has stolen something in their life...maybe that person who took my drive really needed it more than me. But it still ticks me off. I even waited a week for a call, just in case... ha. Knowing I've been robbed is also a little hurtful. Just a little. You know?

Well, I bought a new thumb drive this weekend, and hopefully I can manage to keep track of this one a little better.

I know it's no big deal...stuff happens. But it still bothers me.