Monday, July 30, 2012

Random highlights

Shake Shack, before Potted Potter.  No, we don't eat oatmeal with our hamburgers.  It's ice cream, and it was delicious. 

Along the High Line.

Blurry monochromatic books at the Film Biz prop store.

Whenever I'm out of bed before he leaves, Paul makes the bed. 
I love him. 

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Hello again!

Isn't it sad that when my life gets more full, I feel like I don't have time to write about it? Like, for instance, my engagement and wedding? Big mistake. I've worked on fixing that a little bit. . . a very little bit, in all honesty. But yesterday I decided that I was not going to let that happen to this little month of my life, which has been shaping up quite beautifully.  No pictures of my own yet, sorry. The reason for that is part of the adventure, I guess.  This is going to be one of those journaling-for-myself posts, not a what-a-cute-blog posts. I'm sorry, I hate those too.  But hopefully the little devil-thought that someone else who is not my distant offspring may read this will keep me on track with actually explaining things in a clear way, and help me refrain from other weird tendencies of my middle school journal days (so many emotions! so much boring stuff!).  I just read that last really long sentence and decided that "explaining things in a clear way" can be one of those long-term goals, because it's not happening so much in the short term. 

I'm in New York! Sort of.  I'm actually in New Jersey, in the house of the friends we're staying with, sitting on an ornate brass bed. Maybe I'll take a picture of it someday. In the meantime, picture this:
                                    Only ours is much prettier, and doesn't have the canopy thing. 

This little town has a nice little train station with lots of direct trains into Penn Station, so that's where we've spending most of our time.  Paul is doing a month of work training downtown, and I am enjoying summer vacation.  I arrived here last week with my brother David, who stayed for a couple days.  He is pretty much the ideal traveling companion, by the way. I highly recommend him.  He left on Friday, and Paul and I got to party in the city over the weekend.  It was great. We went to the last temple endowment session before it closed for cleaning, ate pizza, did a little bit of shopping, and walked through Central Park, which is particularly lovely on a Saturday early evening.  However, I think that eating ice cream from the tub and watching Food Network in the hotel room may have been the part I enjoyed the most.  Funny how life is. 
This dude won two episodes in a row.  All-star episodes, at that.  

Sunday was. . .interesting.   The big take-away was  that I left my purse on the train.  Contents of purse included:  iTouch (our only camera for the first three months of marriage, that I haven't been able to back up), cell phone, meds, my favorite pair of sunglasses, and my wallet (i.d., cash, hundreds of dollars in gift cards).  Yeah. It was nice to have a husband who could talk to lost and found offices without  a voice that would get perpetually higher and occasionally sob-hiccup-breathe.  One of the results was that instead of going into the city on Monday, I stayed at the house. I wasn't loving the idea of going into the city without a phone when the lost and found office could call Paul at any minute, who could then email me. It gave me a chance to do laundry and other sundry things that had been piling up (such as a couple episodes of certain television shows). Finally. . . .ta-da! "The pocketbook that you put in a request for has been returned."  Wait, what? Pocketbook? What does that word even mean? Turns out, according to the internet, pocketbook definitely means purse, not wallet, which cleared up a misconception both Paul and I had. Learn something new every day. Anyway, its return was definitely an answer to prayer.  Let the Amy-partying-in-NYC-during-the-day-by-herself adventures begin!


Sunday, April 17, 2011

Flashback Sunday


Remember these?
I don't. Well, yeah, I do, but I never did get one. I remember being startled in the middle of a great game of MASH when my friend had to leave right then to go feed her Tamagotchi. Right then. So confusing.
During a math lesson last year, I heard a mysterious beeping and caught one of my students trying to sneakily "feed" his Tamagotchi. Yes, they still exist. You can buy one for 20 bucks (!) from their website.
Wouldn't it be cool if they were cool again? You could carry them with you everywhere you go. In the middle of conversations, all of the sudden you would have to stop and pull it out, feed it, take it for a walk, or whatever. You'd have to plan your life around what it tells you, which would give you purpose and direction.
NOT.
My dear roommate Alyssa over on the other couch was just talking about how the way we use our phones is remarkably similar to the way we used our Tamagotchis. I thought about it. Yep, guilty (Although I am definitely the kid with the ones that were constantly dying due to neglect). I think I'm going to rename my phone Memetchi.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

A list of goodness:


Frozen Lemon Cake

1. I decided to make this, despite the complexities of stirring 3 different bowls of stuff to varying degrees of thickness/lumpy-ness/crumbly-ness/peaky-ness/shiny-ness/merrychristmas-ness as well as having to sit in the freezer for 3 whole hours. It looks simple, huh? Not fancy?Hurumph.

It was one of those times where something that should have taken 3 dishes takes 15. Where something that should have taken 3 eggs takes 10. Of course, I have learned some things. Like the personal necessity of googling "how to beat eggs."

Two hours later, I got out a fork to check my cake. Ladies and gentlemen, I firmly believed I wasn't hungry, that I was too irritated at the dang cake to enjoy it, that I didn't feel like eating it until tomorrow. That quickly turned into me plopping down at the table for a full-blown helping of completely worth it lemon-y goodness. Oh gosh, so great.

2. Making graham cracker crust (i.e. using your hands to mix butter and graham cracker crumbs) is my new favorite thing.

3. My Dad did all my dishes for me, cause he is the best.

4. Moving away from the cake goodness, today I bought jeans. Levis. Skinny jeans. They fit. Miracle. They got me with their "common problems" sign about fit. It went something like: "If your jeans are always too tight in the waist when they fit everywhere else and you dislike jeweled embroidery on your bum, go here, Amy Thurber." Sold.

5. My grandparents are living with us now, and I love them. They have been heros of mine for most of my life. My grandma has always been a spunky, wise, vivacious woman who loves the gospel, doing things with my grandpa, writing in her journal every day, keeping up on her 10 children and 50-something, and going on missions. My Grandma has Alzheimers. She now has the capability and has to be taken care of the way someone would care for a 3 year old. She has lost all memory and most capability for any of those things. But take those things away and you get . . . my grandma. She's still her--spunky, cheerful, and sensitive. There is something to who we are that is more than our life history.

6. My grandpa is amazing. He is a high school music teacher, a composer, and a stone-cutter. He's this unassuming guy, who loves the gospel and my grandma. I mean that in the best, highest meaning of love. It is selfless, it is constant, it is obvious, and it makes him happy. He is in love with my grandma still. The way he has always treated her has been my model of how I should treat my spouse someday.

6. I like this website.

7. I thought fall in Virginia would be over by the time I got here, but it wasn't! Even the dregs of fall here are awesome. I should post a picture, but imagine something pretty darn perfect and there you go.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Spring Break, Day 2


Highlights:

1. These were eight dollars at the thrift store with the tags still on them.



Current retail price: 80.00

2. Mmmmmmmmm


3.

Another great day.

Monday, April 5, 2010

What would you do if you had nothing to do?

As you know, I am a third grade teacher. I get up every day at the same time and go to school for 8+ hours, teaching 25 eight and nine year-olds. It has been a tough year. It has been more physically, emotionally, and intellectually demanding than just about anything I've ever done, especially for an extended period of time. And I love it more than I can express. But I've never been more ready for Spring Break.

Yes, Spring Break. One of the joys of working the public school system. It's already been great. Over the weekend, I had a ridiculously super amount of sleep, went out for ice cream, celebrated Passover BYU-style, had a delicious Easter Dinner, and learned (?) how to play Smash Brothers.

Today was my official no-work day. It ended up being the perfect lazy vacation day, and exactly what I needed.

My Day (originally I had times posted, but they were rather embarrassing):
Wake up
Get out of bed half an hour later
Make buttermilk syrup and french toast with my roommates
Shower, get ready for the day
Go grocery shopping for the ingredients for all the magical things I hope to make as Spring Break continues
On the drive home, play the "Whatever song comes on next is yours, and describes some aspect of your life" game
Visit our new friend Annie
Visit Kevin
Look at photography blogs
Make a big plate of garlic-y pasta with red peppers
Finish reading Anna Karenina (very, very, very good) and then fall asleep on the couch
Unintentionally sleep through Family Home Evening
Go see "The Morning Benders" at Velour
Finally do a weekend's worth of dishes

Guys, this is shaping up to be a beautiful week.

The Morning Bender's Excuses (the video is being funky and driving me mad. I'm not going to fix it, sorry).



Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Graphs are fashionable


My blogging history:
It's not even halfway through 2010!