Goings On

It has been awhile since I last wrote, but these are a few of my more recent goings-on.

Surprise!
My mother turned 50 on July 30th and my dad decided to plan a surprise birthday party for her. She had a bit of a hard time with he whole turning 50 thing,but it was difficult to keep a straight face when she called complaining about how didn't want to turn 50 and didn't have any friends. All I could think was "if you can only see the guest list!" I flew in and surprised her on Tuesday night, and we made "special birthday plans" for the afternoon (the party was in the backyard and we had to keep her away from the house) and then on the way home, we swung by the airport and picked up her second surprise - my sister, her husband, and my two nephews! Just in case my mom suspected anything, we hoped to use my sister's arrival as a decoy. It worked! She totally didn't expect to see her and was expecting a quite family dinner. About 75 people were waiting in the backyard, and she was totally surprised! It was really fun to be able to surprise her like that. My dad had the party catered by our family's favorite caterers and Claire put together a wonderful slide show with pictures form my mom's life. Although it was a pretty hectic trip for me, I had a great time and it was really wonderful to celebrate my mom's birthday with her and to have the support of such wonderful family and friends. Happy birthday, ma!

Leilani
I have known Leilani since my freshman year in college. We lived a few doors down from each other in the dorms, and I kept her up many a night with my loud laugh. Despite that, we came to be great friends and ended up as roommates for the rest of our time at Utah State. She just finished defending her thesis at BYU (plant genetics!) and took a job in Iowa with a seed company. She will be moving soon, so she came out to visit me for a weekend. We had a lovely, if very relaxed weekend. It was really hot that weekend (up to about 115), and our morning excursion to the Desert Botanical Gardens was pretty uncomfortable. We mostly hibernated for the rest of the day, catching up and watching the miniseries North & South. We did venture out to attend the play The Music Man at the Hale Center Theater and to attend church, but overall it was a very relaxing weekend and great fun spend time with a good friend and to catch up.

Jackson Pollock and Me
At the end of July one of my roommates moved out so I switched rooms. It is larger overall and has more closet space (hooray!), but there was one very, very red accent wall. Don't get me wrong - I am quite a fan of red. However, the color was too intense for my tastes and I found myself getting the urge to sing odes to the Communist Party every time I walked into the room. Clearly, the color had to go. Now, for those that are not aware of my decision-making phobia, making decisions can be rather difficult for me. Actually, they tend to paralyze me. The thought of having to choose a new wall color was nearly overpowering. After much debating and an intervention phone call with my sister, I settled on the color "Porch Swing." It is a dark sage-like green, and it matches the sand color on the other three walls very well. The painting was an adventure in and of itself, but I had great fun splatter painting the primer. I suddenly understood why Jackson Pollock favored the splatter painting method! For various reasons, I have only been able to work on touching up the corners only intermittently, so I am not quite finished. However, I only have one corner left and I love the new wall!

Goodbye, Little Sister
Per previous posts, you are probably aware that I was a volunteer with the organization Big Brother Big Sister. I mentored an impossibly cute 7-year-old named Alexa. Alexa, her sister, and her mother, Kristie, moved from Iowa about 8 months ago. About two weeks ago I found out that Kristie decided to move back to Iowa, and they left this morning. Although I totally understand Kristie's reasoning, it was still very hard to see Alexa go. I grew to love our time together and always looked forward to our outings. We went to the library, to museums, baked cupcakes and frosted cookies, and went swimming in my backyard. She gave the the opportunity to adjust my viewpoint and see the world through the eyes of a 7-year-old. She is very bright and interested in the world around her, and she encourages everyone to do the right thing. For example, we went to the movies a few months ago, and I brought in my own candy. She looked up at me with her huge, chocolate brown eyes and simply said "I don't think we are supposed to bing that in here." Ouch. Although it was of short duration, I am very glad I had the opportunity to be Alexa's big sister!

Alexa and our impossibly cute ladybug cupcakes!

Sedona

Last week I went to a conference for work in Sedona. I was there for three days and two nights, and let me just stay that I am considering moving to Sedona and taking up employment as a clairvoyant. (For anyone that has never been there, Sedona is known for its artist and "new age" scene. See this link, the "vortices" section.) Not that I really have much talent in clairvoyance (at least that I am aware of), but still. That has never stopped anyone else. :)

Below are some pictures of the area. Please note, I did not take ANY of them myself. I just stole them off of the internet. :)




I definitely want to go back to Sedona again and explore the area a little more.

The Joy of Baking (sort of) and Jennifer Aniston circa 1996

Fanny Farmer Doesn't Live Here
I volunteer with Big Brother Big Sister, and my "little sister" is Alexa, the world's most adorable 7-year-old. She has dark, super curly hair, no front teeth, and often punctuates her walking with energetic skips. We generally have an activity about 3-4 times a month, and she usually chooses. She has grown fond of my house and likes to spend time there watering my dying plants, swimming, and banging on the piano. This week she wanted to make "the kind of cookies you cut into shapes," which I assume meant sugar cookies. I have to admit, when she said that my heart dropped a little bit. Why? I really hate baking. Really. I pretended to like baking for awhile, just like I pretended to like jogging. I finally decided to be a little more honest and admit that I am no Fanny Farmer (and really don't want to be), so I gave up my futile attempts at baking. Although I am quite fond of cooking, I just don't find much enjoyment in baking. Baking requires so much precision and I find it stifling. I prefer the artistic freedom allowed by cooking. If you don't have an ingredient, you can usually leave it out or substitute, and you never have to measure anything. Or maybe what I call "artistic freedom" is just a ruse for laziness. :)

I sucked it up, scoured the internet for a good sugar cookie and frosting recipe, and purchased the ingredients and necessary implements (because pretty much no one I know here in Phoenix just had cookie cutters just laying around). Alexa and I spent several hours on Friday mixing and rolling and frosting, and actually had a pretty good time. Below is a list of things I learned about baking with a 7 year-old:

1. No matter what the recipe says, double the preparation time.
2. The smaller the cookie cutter the more cookies you get - and the more cookies you have to frost.
3. Egg shell shards can be fished out of batter pretty easily. Just make sure you get them all.
4. White frosting is not very exciting.
5. If your frosting recipe calls for 4 cups of powdered sugar, seriously consider halving the recipe. Trust me.
6. Sprinkles rock.
7. Baking with 2 people is definitely better than with 1.
8. I still prefer to cook.

New Do
I got my hair cut on Friday. I went to a new guy (one of the 3 straight male hairdressers in Phoenix) for a cut, which can be pretty frightening. I told him what I wanted . . . and I didn't get it (of course). What I got looks a lot like of Jennifer Aniston circa 1996, only shorter. It took a bit to get used to, but I actually like it now. Between the new glasses, the new do, and my lovely new blouse (thanks, Target!), today at church I felt like a totally new woman! I don't have a picture right now, but I will post one later in the week.

Check these out!

I was growing rather tired of my old frames, so last week I bought a new pair and I picked them up on Saturday. As most of you are aware, I have never been much for making decisions (what an understatement). It took me way too long to pick them out, and the poor employee at the optometrists' office had to put up with a whole lot of "what about this frame? Do you like this style, or was the last one better?". Anyway, it is kind of fun to get new frames. Wahoo!

Seriously, this is a really cool fan.

I live in Phoenix, and it gets hot here. Really hot. We are just barely into June and it is warming up pretty quickly. In preparation for the impending 4 or 5 months of oven-like temperatures and in an effort to save money on the electric bill, I got a new fan for my room to use while sleeping. It is a Seville Classics UltraSlimline Tower Fan. Let me just say, this is a seriously cool fan. From the picture below, you will notice that it comes with a remote (a necessary feature to sell anything electronic in America) and a little mini fan for . . . something.



This fan has timing features, three speed selections, and it oscillates. It also has two very cool features I am eager to explore more: the "natural wind" feature (select low, medium, or high speed) and the "sleeping wind" feature (again, select low, medium, or high). The "sleeping wind" (the name alone is intriguing enough for me) feature allows the air to flow "as an evening breeze slowing to a light night breeze." I am already so relaxed just typing that. The "natural wind" feature "automatically selects wind speeds randomly as you would find outdoors" and the instruction manual has intriguing graphs that show examples of the 80 second wind cycle for the low, medium, and high settings. This fan really does provide an excellent and convincing breeze. I am totally hooked. You should all get one. (Available at Costco! And I am not even getting paid for this!)

The fruits of my labor: a cure for insomnia.

After much blood, sweat, and tears, yesterday my very first audit report was published. Here is the link:

http://www.azauditor.gov/Reports/Universities/UniversitySystemWide/Performance/08-03/08-03_Report.pdf

A few highlights:

My name, page 2/72
I wrote the three bullet points on page 32/72
Finding 2 - this is my portion of the audit report that caused me a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears. And I think a gray hair. Or two. Page 34/72.
A beautifully crafted appendix, if I do say so myself, page 59/72.

Oh, and don't attempt to read while operating heavy machinery or while driving. This report can and will cause extreme sleepiness. Believe me, I know. I wrote it.

Someone tell George Lucas to stop making movies.

So tonight I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. Save yourself the $9.50 and don't go see it. Trust me on this one. Even Cate Blanchett and her terrible accent couldn't save it. What a sad time for American cinema.The only thing left to say about it is that Indiana Jones and aliens don't really mix.