How to be happy

So the other night, at a time of unusual leisure, I asked Amy what she wanted to do. She replied with an apathetic "I dunno." I asked her what would make her happy and once again she repeated "I don't know."

I proceeded to ask what would not make her happy, to which she freely gave the following answers:

Get eaten by a dog

Do a handstand

Throw up

Get lit on fire

Get stuffed in the refrigerator

I theorized that, and logic confirms, if doing these things would not make Amy happy, then doing the opposite of these things would make her happy, so I offered her the following suggestions:

Eat a dog

Do a footstand

Throw down

Get lit on … ice?

"Come out" of the refrigerator

Because of time and resource constraints, we were only able to accomplish three of the things on the list, but as expected, it did make her happy.

a little of everything

Here are some things I've done this week:

No, I didn't have a baby. ;) A while back, I offered to take pictures of one of my friend's kids because I wanted to practice my photography skills and learn how to use my camera better. We haven't done it until now because of busy schedules, but she thought this would be a good time because I could help take pictures of the new(ish) baby, Amy (sort of named after me!). This is an edited version of one of the pictures (hopefully it's ok that I'm putting it here, I didn't ask permission...but I'm not identifying her other than by first name). I liked it even with the pacifier.

Brian and I went to Hayden Run Falls yesterday. It was much prettier than the last time we went (a lot more water). Not a great picture, but I couldn't really get far enough back to get everything in. Meh. At least Brian's in it to make it look good. ;)

These are some ducks we saw at the falls. I thought they were cute, so of course I had to take pictures of them with my zoom lens.

I've become crafty lately. Or at least, I've decided lately that I like doing crafty things. I think I found the idea for these cute little magnets on Pinterest, though I'm not a member. I just glued scrapbook paper on the back of large-sized mermaid tears (I'm not sure what they're actually called, that's just what I call them). I think the original idea used Mod Podge, but I wasn't about to buy a bottle just for one project - though I'm sure I could find more things to do with it - so I just used white Elmer's glue, which I already had. Once the glue was mostly dry, I used a stronger glue to attach round magnets to the back. Voila!

More crafty things. I've discovered that I love making cards. These ones just use scrapbook paper and blank cards left over from our wedding thank you notes. I liked the first one so well that I had to make more of the same kind until I ran out of brown paper. I do similar things with other ones using blank white cards. Sometimes I use cute stickers as well.

My mom gave me this yummy recipe when I was up in Michigan for Spring Break this week. My sister-in-law had given me a bunch of chocolate chips (and other kinds of chips), so my mom figured this was a good way to use them. I made them tonight and we just tried some a minute ago. Very rich, but oh so good.

clean air

I've been meaning to change our furnace filter for several months now. In fact, there's been a notice from our landlady on the fridge since we moved in, which says to check the filter regularly. We haven't done it since we moved in a year and a half ago....

So I finally got around to looking at the furnace the other day to see what size filter I needed to buy. I took off 2 panels on the front and couldn't find the filter anywhere. I felt pretty stupid but figured it shouldn't be that difficult to find, so I enlisted Brian's help. He couldn't find it either. With no other ideas of what to do, we called one of our neighbors/friends to see if he had ever changed their filter (we were guessing they have the same furnace because they're in our building). He explained where it was supposed to be, and we realized we couldn't find it because it wasn't there! So we've been living here for 1.5 years with no filter on our furnace. We're guessing the guys who rented before us decided that changing it wasn't worth the hassle, so they just completely removed it. Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever. I'm actually really surprised that we haven't been sick much more often.

Speaking of being sick, Brian caught some sort of mild cold a few weeks ago. It wasn't too bad, but his cough sounded pretty horrible. He seems to be mostly better now, but that cough is still lingering. However, we decided that might actually be from allergies, especially since I've been waking up with a raw throat but haven't actually gotten sick. We recently got him a new dresser (the old one literally fell apart) off of Craigslist, and the previous owner had a cat. I wiped the dresser down when we first brought it in the house, but Brian seems to have more problems with coughing in our bedroom, so I decided to wipe down the whole thing more thoroughly (and also re-wash all the clothes he's had in there). We brought it down into the kitchen last night, and I wiped the drawers out individually with bleach, as well as the whole frame. It was actually nice that we took it apart because I discovered that 2 of the drawers had loose bottoms, so we were able to glue them before they fell apart. Anyway, we're hoping the allergies will get a little better, although the early spring (summer?) probably isn't helping.

save me

...from myself. I made cinnamon rolls even though I knew I shouldn't. They may not look that pretty, but they smell incredible. The recipe I use is called "The Cinnabon Rolls." Last time I made them, Brian agreed that they were about as good as Cinnabon's. Yum!

Fortunately, I haven't succumbed to the temptation to eat any yet. That may be because it's 11:30 PM and I'm still extremely full from dinner. We had friends over and made BBQ pulled pork, sweet potato fries, and artichoke dip. Our friends (2 separate families, a total of 4 adults and 3 kids) brought baked beans, homemade macaroni and cheese, and a delicious dessert bread.

For those of you who don't know, Brian "finished" our basement - covered the walls and ceiling and put down carpet - basically so that we could have large groups of people over for dinner/parties. The largest group we've had so far is 14, including ourselves (2 of those were kids, but that's still a big group). Every time Brian suggests that we have people over - which happens every week now - I have this urge to resist because I think of how much work it will be to prepare all the food and everything. We've had potlucks every time, so that takes some of the stress off of us, but we always provide the main part of the meal (thus far, grilled chicken the first two weeks and rice and chicken gravy for Hawaiian haystacks the third week). The funny thing is, once we've actually invited everyone over, I get really excited about cooking and usually end up overdoing it on the food prep (as in, I make more than we originally planned on providing). I suppose that's not a bad thing, it's just funny that I resist even though I know from experience that I'm going to enjoy the cooking and the company.

makes me laugh

What's wrong with this picture? (You may need to click on it to take a closer look.)

stolen from Ellen's website

Also, I want to buy this book.

overheard

Warning: This could be considered a little inappropriate, but I think it's hilarious. Don't read if you think you might be offended.

Brian has told me this story from his mission before, and I laugh every time I hear it. (You need to know the story in order to have context for our conversation.)

Apparently the zone went out for ice cream after a meeting one day. One elder went up to the woman at the counter and asked, with a broad smile, "Tem sorvete?" (translation: Do you have ice cream?) Unfortunately, although this particular elder had been in the field for about a year, his Portuguese pronunciation was still not very good. The woman, therefore, heard something like, "Tem absorvente?" ("Do you have a tampon?") Hesitantly, she answered, "Sim." ("Yes.") Not realizing what she was thinking, he responded cheerfully, "Dá-me um, por favor." ("Give me one, please.") She slowly reached into her purse, pulled out a tampon, and handed it to him.

Now for our conversation tonight...
Brian *excitedly running into living room*: Comemos absorvente esta noite?
Amy *pausing to think hard*: Tampons! We're not eating tampons!

mini triathlon

before - I decided to just wear my swimsuit under my running clothes

In a moment of speaking-before-thinking, I managed to sign myself up for a mini triathlon. It happened so fast that I didn't even realize what I was doing until it was done. I'm not generally one to back out of things, so I decided I would do my best to train and get ready in the ~6 weeks I had before the race.

As it turns out, I'm incredibly motivated by grades. (Who knew? Ok, let's be honest...we all knew that.) Brian set up a training program for me, which is very similar to this program that we did at BYU while we were dating. In his program, I can get one point for biking 4 miles (stationary bike, since it's too cold for real biking, that's what I have access to at the gym, and that was what we used for the mini tri), one point for running one mile, and one point for swimming 5 laps (the pool is 25 yards for one length, so 5o for a lap). He did specify that I can get fractions of points, as long as I get a minimum of one point per workout. Being nerdy, I decided to keep track of my points in a spreadsheet. :) Brian's "grading scale" requires that I get at least 10 points per week in order to get an A (on average...if I get more in one week and less in another, it still works).

Well, I wanted my A. (He threatened to calculate it into my GPA.) So this is the end of week 6 of training, and I currently have an average of 15 points per week (min = 6.6 - it was a crazy week; max = 20.05). Brian told me I might have to take 202 next quarter because I'm doing so well (apparently this is Training 101). ;)

Anyway, the mini tri was yesterday. There were a total of 9 women competing, and we were divided up into teams so we'd all start at different parts of the race (the gym wasn't really big enough to accommodate everyone in one place at the same time). I did the run first (2 miles), then swam (6 laps in a 20 m pool = 240 m) and biked (7 miles on a random hill program). I didn't place in the top 3 in any of the categories, but I did get 4th place overall. That made me proud, but it was actually my overall time that I was the most excited about. From my workouts at OSU's gym, I had estimated that I'd be able to do it in about an hour, not including transitions (it turned out we didn't count transitions into our times). Well, something must have been different at the race, because my overall time was 41:36! I'm not sure I've ever run 2 miles that fast (17:11), and my bike was about 10 minutes faster than any of my training times (17:20).

some of us after finishing (showing off our numbers, of course)
the woman in the middle (in black) is the one who organized the race

this is the awesome shirt we each got - it says "Mama's Mini Tri: It's Mini, but I Tri-ed! February 11, 2012"

Other notes:
1. The race was geared toward moms who wanted to have something to train for during the winter to stay motivated about working out. Kami (the organizer, who is in our ward) said it was ok that I'm not a mom (I was the only one) because I'm a potential/future mom.

2. When I started training at the beginning of January, I realized that my Speedo was not really modest anymore. Not sure how long it had been that way, but let's just say the material in the bum was getting a little thin...oops. I don't think it was necessarily noticeable while I was wearing it, but I decided it was ok to buy a new suit since I had had that one since Dec. 2003 (and I got it used, so it was even older). I don't have any pictures of me in my new suit, but it looks similar to this one (black and white).

3. It was fun enough that I'm contemplating doing a sprint tri. I'll have to actually find one in Ohio that's on a Saturday, but I think it would be awesome to do it.

4. Now that the tri is over, I'm going to continue training (Brian's program wasn't just for the tri). I just signed up for the Cap City Half Marathon in May, so I'll be focusing more on running now. We also might do the Wasatch Back Ragnar in June if Brian doesn't end up going to Copenhagen.

5. I've been feeling much better/stronger physically, and I've even been able to lose some of the weight that I put on last quarter. I'm not exactly fat, but I'm above what I feel is my ideal weight (where I feel the best), so this was a good motivation to get back in shape, especially now that my knee is feeling better.