proof

for those of you who already know that i am blond in every sense of the word (i have never colored my hair) you don't need to read this entry. for those of you who would like to get a good laugh by reading some proof, read on.
so about a month ago i had a run in with the curb and a lamp post with no other vehicle than our new car. it really only scratched the paint, no real body damage. i just got around to going to a body shop for an estimate, and then called the insurance for their estimate. they sent eddie to look at our car and compare estimates. we agreed eddie would drive to our house and then he would follow me to the ups plant, where the car was currently parked. here's the chronological order of events:
1. eddie pulls up in our driveway and calls me to let me know he is here.
2. i run out of the house, grabbing the cell, the copy of martin's body shop estimate, and my wallet.
3. i go and shake eddie's hand, hand him the copy (patting myself on the back because i am so responsible), and say, "all right, follow me..."
4. i then realize i don't have my keys. in either hand or any pockets.
5. i look at eddie in desperation.
6. i think vickie (our landlord, we rent a section of their house) will have a key i can use to get back inside.
7. there's a note on vickie's garage door to "conway"--"i'm gone, but the garage door is open, get to work!"
8. i think, "maybe the garage door is open to michal, too, not just conway..." alas, it is locked. i can't go inside and try to find the key myself.
9. maybe cindy is home (more renters in another section of the house), i run down and knock on their door. she is home (!), and i beg her to take me on a fieldtrip so eddie can see david's car, parked at the ups plant. she agrees with a smile and we pack up baby alex.
10. eddie follows us to ups, does a photo shoot, prints up his estimate, and cuts us a check.
11. we drive home and vickie is now home.
12. i knock on vickie's door and she immediately knows why i am there (this isn't the first time i've locked myself out). she hands me a few keys to try (they aren't labeled and we can never remember which one is for our apartment because they all look alike).
13. simultaneously: vickie's phone rings and she answers it; i remember i didn't lock their side of the laundry room, i think i can cut through to our apartment quicker through there. i mouth to her what i'm going to do and she nods in understanding. explanation: we rent an upstairs portion of the house (see apt #3); our side of the house connects to their side of the house through the walkway laundry room. there are 4 slide locks, two on each door, one on the laundry room side, and one on the house side.
14. i run upstairs and, to my relief, their side of the laundry room opens.
15. i step into the laundry room and close the door behind me. i didn't bother to turn the light on because i figured in two steps i'll be home anyway.
16. i take two steps to our laundry room door. the handle turns and i push. the door does not open. i may not have locked their sliding lock, but our sliding lock was locked on our house side.
17. i went back to their door to just go back down through vickie's house. while their sliding lock was unlocked, their handle was locked.
18. i was stuck in a 5'x7' area in the dark.
19. first item of business: find the light switch.

no music, just lyrics

david and i rented music & lyrics the other night...we weren't very impressed. it was very flat. we thought the best part was the spoof 80s music video in the beginning. from there it went downhill--the story never really picked up, and never made you really care about the characters enough to understand their idiosyncrasies, or how and why there was a "love" story in the end.
anyway, i thought it'd be fun to post some of my own lyrics. once upon a time i was artistic and poetic, and a friend from high school asked me to write some lyrics for his band. i dutifully handed them off to him. last i heard, he was studying guitar at university of the arts in pa, and was trying out as a guitarist in jewel's band. so if these lyrics ever get somewhere else, remember where you heard them first! imagine this being sung by one of those indie rock voices--

"she's once more"

she's waitin for you to come round once again
walkin through the triangle with the trapeze man
crossin the tightrope wearin the wind in her seaweed tresses
swingin low and followin that chariot
to carry her home
and catch her sins
as she lies beneath the fallen elephant slums

standin on the edge again
no more lies in no more cans
wearin the ring and fakin the smile
and she's once more
once more

and will you trace your nude harmony once more
play me in your littered chords once more
with or without
deliberate intentions
bearded or blushed inspections
braided or removed impressions once more
ruby red and white stops signs
in the kaleidescope of circus colors no more
in this white suburbia
and she's once more

standin on the edge again
no more lies in no more cans
wearin the ring and fakin the smile
and she's once more
yeah, and she's once more

csi: georgia

i love csi las vegas. i love the terminology, the cases, the characters. most of all i love that evidence speaks for itself, and leaves trails and facts you can't dispute. looks like union city, georgia has their own hard working csi crew! good thing we have crime labs watching out for all those cops, trying to prevent heart disease and hypertension due to sodium overdose.

mount timpanogos conquered

david and a friend, dustin, hiked mt. timp saturday morning. it was a huge production even getting to this point. david first started talking about going alone, which i utterly refused. then i made him over pack--a first-aid kit, enough food to last them 3+ meals, water to make them look like camels, extra socks, etc. they left at 330am, thinking it'd take them 11-12 hours to do the whole hike, and they'd be back in the afternoon to still have some of the day left. i was excited to have a productive day at home doing saturday chores and some reading for school. i received a photo message on my phone at 7am, a picture from somewhere along timp, i thought. i texted david, "are you at the top?" he wrote back "3.5hrs". i thought that meant they still had 3.5 hrs left to go until getting to the top...then about 10am david called and said, "we're on our way home." "you mean you're walking down now?" "no, i mean we're in the car, we'll be home in 20 minutes." what?! i haven't even showered yet! when david told me 3.5hrs, that's how long it took them to get to the top, and then they raced down to the bottom. turns out dustin is a better hiking buddy for david than i am--they made it up to the top of timp and back down in 6 1/2 hours. that's quite a pace, if you ask me. they'd have had to roll me down the mountain had i gone with them...some things sure are better left to the conquering boys.

vacation of the year

we took a week off mid-august for our vacation this year, and as soon as we got back life kicked right back into gear...so i am just now posting photos from our great adventure. my mom came out and we hit the road from the petrified lava fields in idaho to yellowstone park and then the grand teton valley. we drove all the scenic routes, stayed in all the places with the most scenic views, and took all the most scenic hikes. i had a hard time keeping up with mom, she and her little walking stick were bookin' it while little ol' me was lagging behind every corner. and i was also the only one who ever seemed to be hungry! every time i turned around i was ready for a meal--all that calorie-expending hiking really took it out of me. i'm such a whimp...
we loved driving through that country--the air is so crisp and clean. we did run in to fires in yellowstone, the east gates were closed, and the air was really hazy and smoky. we stayed outside the north entrance to yellowstone (in cook city), and when we woke up one morning there was ash on our cars, as though a fire had been burning right there. the wind had actually carried it all that way. anyway, the outdoors quality was really different from utah--the air cleaner and clearer, no valley smog or inversion. when we did finally make it back into utah david and i gave each other a look that said, "what are we doing here? why aren't we living in montana yet?!" another interesting note--the worse drivers i have ever met are utah drivers. i feel safer on the beltway in dc. we had great driving time and road/traffic conditions the entire trip, until we crossed the idaho/utah border. as soon as we did the air was heavy and thick and hot again, and within minutes we passed two really bad crash scenes with paramedics.





we even got to see montana mom and dad, christian and robin, daniel and met his wife amanda, and ryan, rachel, and bethany! it was great to have spent time with family and friends--we really wish we could have spent more time with everyone. vacations are always a good time to remind us what really matters and how to live life! thanks for all the great views, shopping sprees, and cowboy hats!!

the "stand-in"

i was hired at utah valley pediatrics 2 years ago as the "after-hours nurse." there are 7 drs in the on-call group, 4 of which are from the office i am employed at. so when any of those 4 are on-call, i work the clinic shift with them. during the day, each dr normally has 2 nurses that work with him or her. i was offered a full-time position over the summer to work with a dr. who only had one nurse. so i rearranged my school schedule so i could work full-time. about 4 wks ago, the office announced they were going to a 1.5nurse/dr. ratio...they wanted to have me be the "stand-in" for the main nurse if she went on vacation, got sick, etc.

the result: i've had a lot of time at home the past couple of weeks. i've been a little nostalgic and i've been going through all my journals and old high school things my mom mailed out to me. high school was such an odd time--i am sure everyone will agree with me. "stand-ins" in high school were not allowed...can you picture a cheerleader saying, "omg, ashley's sick! like, michal, can you stand in for her today and like, um, hang out with us?" i don't think so. things were so very defined and labeled! you had to belong somewhere and belong there with intensity!

so, in looking back over my journals and high school memories...i was a heavy-duty aesthetic artist wanna-be!! one side of me is looking back and laughing at how emotionally intense i believed everything to be. the other side of me feels a little...the word is better put in portuguese--saudade (pronounced sow-dah-gee). the best translation would be nostalgia, but the word in english doesn't quite give the whole gut feeling of the word in portuguese. anyway, the older i've gotten, and the more concrete i've become in myself, the more logistic and analytical i've become...somewhat utilitarian, grounded. i sort of miss that side of me that was so intensely dedicated to reserving one day a week as my "art day," or carrying a spare notebook in my back pocket to write poetry, or drinking in a post-impressionist painting and feeling its influence in my own work. i am much more interested in non-fiction, health issues, and life maps. so are we just stand-ins during different points in our own lives, until we are (as my mom calls it) crystallized?
(from a poetry notebook my senior year):

what if i were a van gogh

what if i were a van gogh
and
had a million different
repetitions lines staccato blanks
and
shreds pieces patches
quilted, intertwined sewn
and
expanded stretched taut sallied
from
ingenious strokes laid
without much thought
fitting defining resting
without much foe
a million different
shades and stains and
stains and sallows and
sallows and shards
charcoaled and unbelievably
stark

girls and cats in the lap lane

i really don't understand why girls have to get so defensive and personal when it comes to sports. david and i went to the rec center to swim some laps for our tri training. we started out swimming in the same lane until a girl joined us, then david went to another lane (he isn't fast enough yet to swim with 3+ people in the lane, although he has come a very long way in the 4-5 wks he's been swimming!!) so i'm swimming along, doing my freestyle 1200m, and the girl who joined our lane was doing freestyle with her arms but breaststroke with her legs...i'd never seen this before, and she was going pretty slow.

ok, just to quickly go over the courtesy rules for lane swimming with 2+ swimmers: you always stay on the right side of the blue tile line on the bottom of the pool. you swim down the right side of the lane, and when you reach the wall and turn around, you swim down the other right side of the lane, so you're swimming in sort of a circle. if someone is swimming at a faster pace than you, and you feel then touch your toe while swimming, that's usually a polite indication to a. slow down your pace even more so that person can easily pass you, or b. when you reach the wall, wait a few seconds so the faster person can pass you at the wall. this gets real fun when there are 4+ people in the lane. i've had a few head-on collisions. so anyway, this is nothing against any other swimmer, saying they aren't good enough or aren't fast enough--it's not personal, it's just common lap lane etiquette.

so this girl was doing a cross between two stroke styles, and her pace was slower than mine. there were a few times i tagged her foot and attempted to pass her. every time i sped up to pass, she sped up, too. she would match her speed with mine, make her legs swing out bigger so they were nearly kicking me, and her hands were getting close enough to my face to rip off my goggles. so i would get right back behind her, slow my pace, and just try to pass her at the wall. there was even one time i sat at the wall until she was 1/3 of the way down the lane, then i kicked off and started swimming again...this was not even enough of a time lapse to keep her in front of me. i still tagged her foot to let me pass. she wouldn't have it. then another lady joined our lane. so in addition to trying to pass this cat of a girl, i now would have to watch out for oncoming traffic as i was trying to pass. i finally sprinted my last full lap, swam side by side with the cat for probably 25m, we both reached the wall at the same time, she looked over at me with a look of death, and i kicked off like there was no tomorrow to make sure i would keep her behind me. when i finished david asked what was going on--why couldn't i pass her? he could see i was keeping a faster pace than her, and every time i tried to pass, i just didn't. i explained the whole thing, which he thought was crazy. he told me while he was resting in between laps he saw she was behind me and must have hit my foot, so she stood up in the lane, threw her arms out, and looked around as if to say, "what's going on here?!" i don't know what was going on.

needless to say, i got a great workout. i really hope we have all boys--i can't handle catty girls who take things personally...

a week in the life of rats with wings

7 days ago you would have found david and me looking at each other in disbelief as we named each ruined item that made it look like we owned rats instead of sweet little parrots. after we got to a fairly pricey #5 on the list, we decided it was time to sell our birds. they were very loving, but also destructive. we couldn't take it anymore--the poop, chewing, throwing tantrums and squawking for an hour straight--it was time to sell them. this was a hard decision to come to--these little guys are just over a year old, we got both of them 3 or 4 months after they'd hatched at the breeder's, so we were essentially the only family they knew. parrots live to be 30+ years old, and a move can be traumatic for them, causing them to "pluck"--they will literally tear our every feather they can reach with their beaks due to the stress and depression. we thought if we could sell them together, some of that stress would be reduced. when we went out of town last summer we had them stay with a friend of mine for a week. they were certainly glad to see us, but they didn't pluck any feathers. good sign.
5days ago you would have found a posting for "two conures with cage" on ksl.com. we attached great photos and listed their "special skills"--tumnus will wave for a peanut, and lucy imitates whistles. we had a lot of viewers, but no buyers.
3 days ago you would have heard parrots squawking like cats as their wings were getting clipped by the vet. i took them to see dr. yeoma because a. we had to get their wings clipped before selling them, and b. we wanted to make sure everything was ok to sell them. she first asked me what type of diet they are on, water, bathing, toys, etc. i told her their main diet is the zupreem conure pellets, but whenever we have fresh fruit we always slice some up for them, and they love yogurt, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese. she said it's ok to give them plain rice, pasta, beans, and steamed veggies, too. i told her we take apart their cage once a month to clean in out, and we rotate their toys once a month, so they don't get bored. despite this, they chew on everything--our clothes, the screens, books, frames, etc. she smiled and said there really wasn't anything we could do about that, that's just how parrots interact with their environment. but the wing clipping should help. i also told her we'd "potty trained" our birds to an extent--when we got them out of their cage in the morning, when we got home from work, and before bed, we hold them over the trash can and say, "spit spot," and they know to do their business. but all the in between time, they fly all over and poop all over, and we were tired of living with bird poop every where. she was amazed we had trained them that far and said there really isn't anything to do about that, either. but the wing clipping should help. so then came the wing clipping...it's just like getting your hair cut--it doesn't hurt the birds at all. but the way lucy screeched, you would have thought we were cutting her head off. it made feel like the moms do when i give their babies vaccinations. tumnus took it pretty well. when we got them, tumnus's wings were fully clipped, it took a full 9-10 months for his wings to grow out where he could race lucy up and down the house hallways. but lucy's wings had never been properly clipped, she'd always been able to fly. so this was a pretty dramatic change. i told the vet we were planning on selling them, together, and asked if she had any advice we could implement to help them avoid stressors. she said. "oh, i would be so sad to see these birds leave your home! you take such good care of them! but if you sell them together, they should be fine." all these "what-if" scenarios ran through my mind--what if the new owners don't take them out of their cage enough? what if the new owners don't cuddle under the covers with them? who else knows lucy's special scratching spot under her wings? who else other than david would talk to tumnus at the end of the day? who else would let the birds bathe in their sink, feed them leftover yogurt on a spoon, or leftover mac&cheese out of the pot?



so, 3 days ago, you would have found me scrubbing every inch of our house so we could gauge the location and frequency of bird poop with two birds who now had their wings clipped. you would also have found two very sedate birds after their visit to the vet. they didn't chew on anything, didn't squawk unnecessarily, no pooping in all the wrong places. they sat on the perch we put them on and stayed there until we moved them to another perch. lucy didn't respond to the special whistle we do with her, and tumnus didn't demand to get in the sink for a bath when i was doing dishes. i was starting to feel like we had clipped their souls, not just their wings! the difference was night and day--we had good birds again! they knew right away they couldn't fly. they tried a few times, but then gave up. it was like their wings had given them special powers--they could fly anywhere, poop anywhere, and chew on anything, simply because they had wings. once those were gone, their special powers disappeared, too. i went and got them new toys and treats because i thought they were stressed out.
2 days ago you would have found our birds still very docile, but starting to chirp again, and wanting to bathe in the sink again. but their special powers were still missing. they were very good little parrots. david called to ask how they were doing. he suggested we take them off ksl. and so we did. tumnus and lucy are still ours, and as long as we can keep their wings clipped, we think things will work out. so, when we have visitors, there will be no more flying to the door to scare them, no more flying over the visitor's head to see how close they can get, there will be no more chewing on anything other than a toy, and no more pooping on anything other than a paper towel. visitors, you are once again welcome without fear!!

as feirias

in portuguese that means vacations. our vacations have been few and far between, but fun. we are trying to get into the position where we can take consistent, tropical vacations and have (virgin) strawberry daqueris every day!

spring of 2005 we went back east to see my family. my dad lives in one town, my mom in another, my grandparents and cousins in yet another, and a high school friend about 4hrs away by car. we visited everyone we could within the driving radius, and it proved to be more tiring than a vacation! it was great to see everyone, though. we also spent more time at the smithsoneans in downtown dc. david took lots and lots and lots of photos of the rocks. looking back through the roll there were two photos of the world's largest squid, but the rest were just rocks. the little geologist. my mom was "reffing" high school girls lacrosse, so we watched her games--don't you love her little white legs?!

july of 2006 we both miraculously had the 4th of july weekend off, so we visited david's parents camped up in the mountains near alturas, ca. we hiked up to lake patterson (what a hike!--it looked like we were on the top of the world!), and his parents rode the horses along the trails. it was just so quiet and peaceful up in the mountains--no fireworks or drunken parties to ring in the holiday. i really enjoyed the peace. i remember july 4, 1998: i was nannying for an italian family taking their summer vacation at the beach and galavanting about the country after graduating from high school (while the rest of my friends were going off to college), and i felt so isolated and lonely. about 11 o'clock that night fireworks started going off in the little street outside of the beach house! i looked outside my window and loved hearing, feeling, seeing, and smelling the fireworks. they were actually celbrating an italian holiday, but the fireworks made me feel close to my american roots.

being a ups driver has its perks, but also some downs. one of the big downs: no one in the plant is allowed to take time off between thanksgiving and new years. the package flow is too big that time of year. that translates to not being able to leave utah valley and go to either montana to see david's family, or virginia to see my family. on one hand, we like being independent and being able to spend the holidays with just us, but on the other hand, it would be really, really fun to be able to spend it with our families. last christmas i decided to take david out for a little "weekend holiday"--i found a bed and breakfast outside of salt lake city, got tickets for a movie, and made reservations for a nice dinner. the b&b ended up being someone's house they rented rooms out of...we got the "blue room"...this entailed a blue shag carpet, fake satin blue sheets and a fake velvet comforter on the...oval...bed, and that healthy, musty, grandma's attic smell that comes with old houses. oo la la.

this past christmas, christian and robin got married in arizona, and david begged and pleaded to get a week off for the wedding (and extra vacation time for us!). his managers couldn't let him know if he could have the time off until the week before we were about to leave--we'd already gotten the tickets and were hoping everything would work out. as it was, i ended up flying down there a day before david. that was the first time i'd seen everyone in my family since our spring visit 2 1/2 years ago, so i really enjoyed it! after the wedding we spent another few days seeing cacti in arizona.

artsy fartsy

i have always enjoyed the arts, and in the past 2 years i have explored a few new art projects. bookmaking was my first new project. two christmases ago i made books/journals for everyone. it was a very ambitious idea and i don't know how it entered my brain...at the time i was working two jobs, so finding the time to hand make journals was near impossible. but they all got finished. i've also made a few "baby books" for friends as gifts when they had their babies. this year i tried my hand at scrapbooking. i wanted our wedding photos in a nice album, and, being the perfectionist i am, every page had to be wonderful. by the end i was thinking, "enough wedding! no more photos!" that took a loooooong time...i am very impressed with folks who scrapbook their entire lives or children's lives...i don't think i would be that patient.

last semester i also took an oil painting class, which was supposed to be my creative outlet from chemistry and biology...it ended up keeping me busier than the other two classes! it was the first time i'd used oils, and i really enjoyed the medium. i'd always used acrylics in the past. i'd like to eventually learn watercolors--that's a medium that scares me a little. with oils and acrylics, you paint layer on layer, with watercolors, you have to think about what not to paint. so my final project in that painting class was painted on a 5'x4 1/2' canvas--not by my own choice, mind you!! i missed the week we built our own frames and stretched canvases, so when i got back, my teacher said i was too far behind to stretch my own canvas--she gave me one from a previous semester the student had never come to pick up. we took his canvas off the ambitiously large frame and restretched my own canvas. i painted a photo christian had taken in murano, italy. i could have sworn it was a photo of porto venere, as i have a very similar photo, so i was telling everyone it was porto venere...it wasn't until after the semester that i emailed my brother a picture of the painting and he told me it was murano...how embarassing! so, for the record...

by the way, christian, i still think you need to become a photojournalist--you have a great eye and write hilarious columns! imagine all the things you'd be able to photograph and write about as a ups driver!! wink wink