My Fantastically Funny and Brilliant Weekend

Per Tink's request, I did have a fantastically funny and brilliant weekend, so now I get to blog about it.

Friday night, Grant and I had a date night. We went to Cafe Istanbul at The Greene, which was awesome. It was a beautiful evening, so we chose to sit outside. The food was fantastic, although Grant's Turkish classmates aren't too impressed by it. But for those of us who have never been to Istanbul, we were pretty happy with it.



After dinner, we saw a movie, also at The Greene. This is the brilliant part of my weekend. Beginning April 17, and going until April 30, active military plus their dependents can enjoy free movies (any time, any movie - no restrictions), plus a free small popcorn and a free small fountain drink. This is with any theatre owned by National Amusements. You can read about it here. So, we took advantage of that and saw In the Land of Women, with Adam Brody, Meg Ryan, and Olympia Dukakis. I really enjoyed the movie. Definitely a chick flick that guys can watch.

Saturday, we went to see another movie (still brilliant!). This time, we saw Blades of Glory. I knew not to expect too much, but I did expect it to be a little funnier than what it was.

Saturday night, and this is the fantastically funny part, we went to a dog birthday party. Our neighbors, Leslie and Logan, had a birthday party for their dog, who turned 1. In reality, the reason for this party was so Logan, who is OBSESSED with Dairy Queen (really, obsessed), could have an excuse to get a blizzard ice cream cake.

We had a great time. Most of the neighbors came out, so it was a good time just to hang out with everyone. The dogs all got along, for the most part. Oh, and the blizzard ice cream cake was delicious. I'd gladly go to another dog party, or anything, for this cake!







Sunday, we saw yet another movie - Perfect Stranger, with Halle Barry and Bruce Willis. It had a really good surprise ending, and I love that!

Then we went to Tracy and Jeremy's house (friends from church), and Shaun and Jessica came, too (also friends from church). We had dinner, played with the kids a little, laughed our heads off at some YouTube videos, then played a semi-violent game of spoons. It was great!

Sorry

Life has been pretty routine lately, so that leaves little for me to write about. Routine is good, though, I guess.

Something kind of interesting happened last night. Grant went to yoga with me for the first (and maybe only) time! He did much better than I thought he would, too! I really enjoyed him coming with me, so he can see what I do twice a week, every week.

Oh, something else along that note...my yoga teacher also teaches boot camp aerobics at 6 am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I was asking her about it a few weeks ago, and said that I would come once, just to try it out. I never went. She never noticed. That was fine by me.

Last week I get this email from her saying something to the effect of, "I thought you were going to start coming to boot camp aerobics." Uh-oh. I'd been caught. So I basically told her the truth, that 6 am was way too early, and I was just too lazy add that to my regimen, but that didn't mean she needed to take it out on me at yoga, which would be meeting that night.

She did sort of take it out on me at yoga that night. I was already trying to do my best, which was pretty hard, but she would come to me and tell me to "sink down a little lower" while I was doing lunges or squats, or "I think you can do a full plank" as opposed to a modified plank, etc. Fun.

So she convinced me to promise to go to at least one boot camp aerobics class this week. That will be tomorrow morning. I've already set my alarm so I won't forget.

5:15 am.

That's early.

What am I thinking?

Book Club

As most of you know, I joined the AFIT Spouse book club right after I got here. Well, we have this great bookstore here (Books & Co) that regularly has authors come and do readings and promotion for their book. So far, we've gone to 3 of those. This last one, we decided to take pictures of the event.

We did it a little backwards this month...We usually read the book first, and then go to the event at Books & Co. This time, we picked the book, based on the fact that the author would be here, and then we're going to read and discuss a few weeks later.

This newest book is called The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz. A few of us were sick of the dark, depressing, heavy books we've been reading, so we wanted something light and funny this time. This book definitely fits the description.



At Books & Co on Wednesday night, instead of the author herself reading passages from the book, she called on people from the audience (all 10 of us) to help her read some of the characters. The excerpts she picked to have read were hilarious! So I knew right away that I would like this book. I did not volunteer to read, but one of the girls from our book club did, which was cool (only 3 of us actually made it to this event).



After the readings, and the Q&A time was over, we had a chance to have the author sign our book. Apparently, she said something really funny, because I'm laughing my head off.



And here are the only 3 ASPA book club members who showed up. The author was pretty excited to know that we were reading it for a book club. She even offered to do a call-in!



Just to give a little synopsis of the book, here's what the inside flap has to say (I started to write something in my own words, but then realized that there are people who get paid to do this, so their words are way better than my words):

"Meet Isabel 'Izzy' Spellman, private investigator. This 28 year old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors - but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, black-mail, and wiretap a Spellman.

Part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry, Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties include: completing assignments from the bosses, aka Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny); appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress); setting an example for her 14 year old sister, Rae (who's become addicted to 'recreational surveillance'); and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed 'Lost Weekends'). But when Izzy's parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy's new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there's hitch: she must take one last job before they'll let her go - a 15 year old, ice-cold missing person case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life."

Boys and their Toys

I'm going to give some background to this story, before I get to what happened this weekend.

For Christmas, Grant's mom got him a remote control helicopter. As far as RC things go, even I have to say this little guy was pretty cool.

Well, it broke.

A couple months back when he went to return it, we spent about half an hour in Radio Shack while he looked at all of these RC vehicles. I was bored out of my mind! At least when I'm shopping at the mall, Grant has stuff he can look at, too. I was all alone in Radio Shack. All alone. He ended up not getting anything that night, except for store credit for the helicopter.

So that brings us to last week. Grant found out that there was one RC truck that he had his eye on left at Radio Shack, so he used his store credit and got it. He was so excited about this truck! Watley hated it, by the way.

Evidentally, he showed one of the neighbors, Logan, the truck. Logan got really excited about it, too, and told Grant he was probably going to get one.

That was Friday.

Saturday morning, at around 8:30, Grant and I are in our upstairs room that looks over the street. What do we see "driving" around the circle? The stupid RC truck that Grant influenced Logan into getting!! So Grant tells me how he has to go out there, and I told him to not forget his truck.

So, there they are...2 grown men, playing with RC trucks on Saturday morning. You know this was way too good of a photo/video op for me to pass up.



PS - since Saturday, they got together last night to play with their toys, and then again this morning before their classes. AND, they've convinced another neighbor, Ryan, that he needs to get one. AND, Grant is actually thinking about telling the other guys on our street, so they can all get one, too, and have a big RC play date! Oh, and Logan has now built ramps, so the trucks can go up curbs. Yay.

Pity Party

I said in my last post that since I didn't believe the nice weather would last, I couldn't be disappointed...well, I was wrong. I am disappointed! Our gorgeous 70-something degree, no humidity weather is gone!!

We went from having our windows open, fans on, to having the windows closed, fans off, heat cranked up. We also went from being able to wear shorts, tank tops, and flip flops, to being bundled up. It's very strange to see beautiful, lush, new green grass with patches of snow throughout. The temps will go back up in the next week, but only to the 50s and 60s. It's very hard to go back to this when we've been enjoying fabulous weather.

I just keep telling myself that it's April now....this can't last too much longer. Summer will be here before I know it, and I'll forget all about the cold and the snow.

When I write completely depressing posts like this one, I like to do something a little random. So, here's a picture from high school. This is "the group" on our Senior Trip in Williamsburg. Enjoy!



**There are a couple of cool things that I'm reminded of when I see this picture. Grant and I were high school sweethearts who got married. The guy and the girl in the background were also high school sweethearts who got married. There is at least one other couple from our graduating class who got married. That's pretty rare! Another cool thing, is that I still keep in touch with everyone in this picture.**

Wallflower

It started about 3 years ago. I'm obsessed, and I can't quit. "What?" you ask? Wallflowers from Bath & Body Works. If you don't know what these are, they are home fragrance thingies that you plug into the wall, and the scent lasts for about 6 weeks. When I worked at Coca Cola in Albuquerque, one of my co-workers told me about them, and since then, my house has never been without.

I love so many of their fragrances, it's hard to pick a favorite. But I have. It's the newest one I've tried - Midnight Pomegranate. Some of my other favorites are Brown Sugar Fig, Creamy Nutmeg, Spiced Cider, and Cherry Blossom. Some that I'm not crazy about are Moonlight Path and Cappuccino Hazelnut Torte.

The scents that I've mentioned as my favorites all last pretty much the whole 6 weeks, which is really amazing! The Cappuccino one, I could hardly smell at all. Figuring out which ones smell the best and which ones last the longest is really just a trial and error thing.

Unfortunately, these bad boys are pretty expensive. That's why I wait until they go on sale, and when they do, I stock up big time! When my Midnight Pomegranate has run it's course then it will be time to try another new one - Eucalyptus.

Call me weird, but it's all very exciting to me when I try out a new one, or even when I get a scent that I know I already love. I love for my house to smell good! It's one of my "things" I guess. Maybe I should've listed that on that weirdness quiz from a while back.

More video!

So, here's another video for your viewing pleasure. I apologize for the lack of blogging lately. There's really nothing going on, hence, nothing to blog about.

We took this video last week. We've been having some gorgeous weather lately. Really. Gorgeous! So we took Watley to a field so he could do what he does best. Our gorgeous weather has been interrupted here and there with rain showers, so the ground was very muddy. But Watley loved it. I don't think he'd ever run in mud before.

By the way, we're supposed to get snow showers this Saturday. I'm glad I'm staying somewhat pessimistic about the weather here, otherwise, I would be really let down. But since I had a feeling this weather has been too good to be true, I pretty much expected this. It's the only time I can think of when pays to be a pessimist!

The Deer Chaser

Well, I feel like I don't have enough time in the day to post good, long posts, so this will have to do.

This is a video of Grant chasing some deer while we were walking around the grounds of Oglebay in West Virginia. We found out that the deer seemed so tame, because they are tame. Evidentally, when they are born, they're put in the petting zoo, so they can become familiar with people. So when they become adult, they're put out into the "wild," and can co-exist with the visitors that come to the resort.

It's been a while...

So, I'm back to the blog-o-sphere. Did you miss me? We had a great time with Grant's family. Let's see...

Friday
I went to work, they went to the Air Force museum, and several of the Wright Brother's sites.

Saturday
Went to brunch at Sunrise Cafe in Yellow Springs (great omelets!)

Saw some baby goats at Young's Dairy Farm (so cute!)

Went to a Wright Brother's commemorative center, where Grant, Ryan, and their dad got to do a Wright Brother's flight simulation


Sunday
Went to church
Went to BD's Mongolian Grill
Saw the movie Amazing Grace (if you haven't seen it, you should! I feel strongly about Christians supporting good movies at the theatre)

Monday
Went to the Cincinnati Aquarium

Went to yoga class (John went with me!! Now if I could just get Grant to go...)

Tuesday
Drove to Oxford, which is where Miami University of Ohio is, which is where Grant's dad went to college.
Took Ryan to the airport so he can go back to school

Wednesday
Headed for Oglebay Resort in Wheeling, West Virginia, where we met up with Grant's aunt and uncle (the ones we stayed with over Thanksgiving in New Jersey)

Went to the pool at Oglebay from about 9-10 pm. It closed at 10, and at 10:03, we got chewed out by the "security guard" for not drying off quickly enough (I wish I had a picture of this!)

Thursday
Went golfing at Oglebay golf course. Well, Grant, John and David went golfing. The other 4 of us were spectators.


Friday
Headed back for Dayton
Picked up Watley at the kennel, where he was very excited to see us
Grant's mom and dad made their way back to P'cola
Me, Grant and John went to the gym, then had some delicious greek food!!

Saturday
Took it easy all morning, watching our favorite Arrested Development episodes ("Illusions, Michael!)
Took John to the airport, so he could make his way back to sunny California

Now it's back to work and school for myself and Grant. If only we could have another week to recuperate from last week!

Today's the Day!

Well, as I'm typing this, hopefully Grant's parents and little brother are on their way up here to lovely Dayton. Grant's older brother, John, will be flying in from LA this afternoon. We're very excited to see everyone, but none of us have seen John for a while, since he was deployed to Africa during Christmas.

So, my blogging entries will probably be few and far between this next week....did I mention I was on vacation? Woo hoo! Grant's taking his last finals today, so his vacation technically starts tomorrow.

Just another day

I just thought I'd post this video of Grant. This is the kind of stuff he does all the time. Isn't he cool?

And The Next American Idol Is...

While Grant was browsing the PCC board (the message board for all PCC reprobates), he discovered that one of the American Idol contestants went to PCC from 96-97. And, he's one of our favorites on American Idol - Chris Sligh. Grant and I usually only watch American Idol for the stupid auditions and then the last episode, but for some reason this season we've been watching it every week. Probably for the lack of anything better being on TV.

We first saw Chris Sligh on his audition. He made me laugh right from the beginning when the judges asked him, "Why do you want to be the next American Idol?" And his response was classic, "Because I want to make David Hasselhoff cry." From that point on, and after hearing him sing, he won me over.

Now hearing that he actually went to PCC, I really want him to win! One of my friends on Myspace, who went to PCC, posted a message a while back saying to vote for him, because he was a close friend of theirs. I just assumed they were from the same hometown, not that they actually went to college together! Evidentally, a few of my other friends from PCC also knew him.

I found the video from his audition, so please watch it. He makes the Hasselhoff comment, and they show the clip of him crying.



Chris Sligh American Idol Audition - Amazing videos are here

Oh, and someone from the PCC board found this posting on one of his blogs:

"I graduated from college **I think he meant to say high school** and my parents gave me 3 choices of where I could go to college: Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones University and Northland Christian College - all 3 were very conservative Christian colleges. I chose PCC because it was at the beach (and it was freaking cheap) and I went to school as a pre-law major.

Now, I should explain that PCC has very strict rules. They go on a demerits system. 150 demerits kicks you out. If they find out you have illegal music (read anything with a "rock or sensual" beat) gives you 75 demerits the first time...kicked out the second time. However unlike my parents, they didn't search through my stuff without cause to look for illegal music, so my first week of school after my parents left me, I went to the local Christian bookstore and bought like 20 CDs of various contemporary Christian artists that I had always heard about but never listened to: Michael W. Smith, 4Him, Michael English, etc. And I fell in love with this music like crazy.

First semester of that year, a few weeks in, I was walking down the hallway humming a Michael English song (for those of you who don't know, Michael English was the Christian version of Michael Bolton). A kid walking the opposite way heard me humming and came up and tapped me on the shoulder and told me he was starting a vocal group and that he liked my voice. I later went and sang for him and he put me in his quartet. I had written a song my first week at school called "Ransom" and I thought we might be able to do it. The guys loved it and from there on out, I wrote all the songs for the group - I would write a skeleton of a song, and then would sit down with Ryan (the guy who heard me in the hall) who was an amazing pianist and we would flesh it out with chord structure and everything like that. It was my first taste of fame, as we would sing for various school functions and people started recognizing me around campus.

About half-way through the 2nd semester of my freshman year, I began thinking that I really wanted to be a music major. More and more I was spending all my time working on music and loving it. I hadn't written any prose in months...just song after song, trying to work on the craft of songwriting. I looked at the school of music at PCC and realized that it was okay, but I really wanted something great. So, I transferred to a school called Bob Jones University - one of the 3 schools my parents would help pay for. It was probably a mistake, in retrospect, but I didn't want to have to pay for school on my own and the music department is well-respected...but it is solely classical."

I have never voted on AI before, but I think I will this year.

Pei Wei

Most of my friends in Albuquerque probably already know what Pei Wei (pronounced Pay Way) is, but if you don't, it's a more casual version of PF Chang's. It's great. Grant and I were first introduced to it by Pinky and SixBit - we were driving down I-40 after church one Sunday, and they caught up to us and asked if wanted to go to Pei Wei for lunch. We had no idea what it was, but we went anyway. I liked it right away, but Grant wasn't crazy about it.

I had been a few times after that, but Grant only went again when a couple from church took treated us to dinner there right before we moved. He had the Kung Pao. It was over for him. He talked about that Kung Pao for weeks, and even months after that.

Well, I went on Pei Wei's website to see if there were any in our area. There weren't any in Dayton, but I saw that there was one opening up near Columbus in March. Well, at the beginning of March, I went back to the website to see if they had a specific opening date. They didn't, and since I didn't want to keep checking back everytime I thought about it, I decided to email them to find out.

Little did I know that that one email would get Grant and I a special invitation to a pre-opening lunch for free!! So that's what we did yesterday. Grant took a break from studying for his finals, we drove an hour to Pei Wei, ate our fantastic meals, then drove back. But it was totally worth it - we each got an entree for free, and when they brought out our food, they included a 3rd entree, just for the heck of it. Grant finally got his Kung Pao fix, so hopefully I don't have to keep hearing about Kung Pao before the next time we go, which will be in about a month - yay!

Forget LA...

When we first moved here, and I got my job in Yellow Springs, Grant and I looked up Yellow Springs on Wikipedia, where we were finding out random facts about the small little town. The most notable celebrity from Yellow Springs is Dave Chapelle (a comedian, for those of you who aren't familiar with him). Grant and I thought this was pretty cool, since we do like his show. Again, for those who might not know him for his comedy, you might know him from the movie, You've Got Mail, playing Tom Hanks' best friend.

Anyways, to make a long story short, a friend from work and I went to Young's Dairy Farm for lunch (it's only about 3 miles from our work), and on our way there, driving through the main street of Yellow Springs, I see none other than Dave Chapelle! I was so excited, the first thing I did is roll down the window and yell out, "Hey Dave!" What a dork! My friend decided to park, and we would walk over and talk to him. By the time we got to him, he was already in his car, about to leave. Through the window of his car, he was kind of "shoo-ing" us off, and I was about to be really disappointed. Then, he rolled down the window, and said, "I'm sorry girls, I'm on the phone, and I'm in a hurry. I can't really talk right now." We then told him that we understood, but we were big fans of his, and we loved his show. He liked that, so he shook our hands, told us to have a good day, then drove off. He would have been justified to shoo us away, because he really was on the phone, and he really did look like he was in a hurry. He got a lot of cool points for talking to us, even if it was for only 10 seconds or so.

This is hands-down the coolest thing that's happened to me in a while! The only problem was, I didn't have my camera. I ALWAYS have my camera with me, in my purse. But when we left to go to lunch, my friend was the one driving, so I just grabbed my wallet, instead of taking my whole purse. I'm still kicking myself for that!!

More Etsy

So, I added another section on my sidebar..."Cool Etsy Shops." I talked about etsy.com a while back, and how it's this cool website, full of all sorts of handmade goodies.

Tink's friend just started her own etsy shop, so I wanted to put a plug in for it...Morninglory Kitsch. For those of you with babies, or babies on the way, she makes super-cute knit hats especially for tiny heads.

Moving On...

Well, we joined our new church today. We are officially members of Covenant OPC! It's sad that we're not members of Providence anymore, but this is part of the military life.

No matter how many churches we join, Providence will always be special to us. It was our first church to join as a married couple; it was my first "real" experience at a Presbyterian church, and where I became more grounded in reformed theology, thanks to Randy; we were part of a fantastic College & Career group (otherwise known as ALF), where we made life-long friends.

I'm so excited to be going back to Albuquerque for Mrs. J's baby shower. I'll be there for a few days, so I should have the opportunity to see alot of people. Unfortunately, Grant won't be coming with me, but we're hoping to make it through Albuquerque on our move to LA, which is just over a year away!

**The picture I posted is from our "goodbye Sunday" at Providence - a very sad day!**

New Blogger

Well, Mrs. J beat me to it, but I wanted to say welcome a new blogger - Susie!

Susie and her family moved to Albuquerque from here in Dayton a few months before we moved and began coming to our church. So we pretty much swaped places. They recommended the church that we now attend (and are about to join), at which people still get shocked when they hear that we know Bob and Susie and the kids. They have 4 beautiful kids, and Susie's posts for the next 5 weeks should be interesting, since Bob is gone for an Air Force officer training class in Alabama, and Susie is left with the kids to herself.

Celebrity Look-alikes

So I found this fun thing to do. You upload a picture of yourself, and it scans the photo, and finds out who your celebrity look-a-like is.

http://www.myheritage.com

Evidentally, Grant is much more "ethnic" than we ever knew!

http://www.myheritage.com

Jerry's

I realize that most of my readers could care less about my random, rambling posts about Pensacola, but this is my blog, so therefore posts about my beloved hometown are permitted.

There was a fire at one of my favorite restaurants, Jerry's Cajun Cafe, yesterday. I guess it's not completely gone, but it will take months to rebuild from this (although from this picture, it looks like the damage was pretty severe). This is such sad news!

First of all, Jerry's is hands-down the best cajun food you can get outside of New Orleans or Baton Rouge. I understand that this is a pretty bold statement, and I have no way to prove it, but I'm pretty sure it's true (the seafood gumbo, shrimp poboy, and jambalaya were my faves).

It is/was one of the most popular restaurants in Pensacola.

It's where I went with my family to celebrate my college graduation.

It's where I would buy gift cards for my dad, because even though he's such a picky eater, I was assured that he would never turn down a chance to eat at Jerry's.

When I worked at the front desk of a hotel, and people wanted a non-chain restaurant to go to, it's where I would send them. They would always come back fat and happy, and sometimes Jerry would even send over a muffuletta or jambalaya to show his appreciation.

Anyways, I'm extremely sad that this happened, and I hope they're up and running very soon.

Barbershop

After a series of bad haircuts given to Grant on base, he decided he wants me to start cutting his hair. I have never cut hair before, unless you count the time when I was 5 and took a pair of scissors to my own pretty, long, straight hair, which resulted in my mom having to cut my hair extremely short, making me look like a boy.

I protested this new idea of Grant's - until his last hair cut. The lady butchered his hair so bad, that I figured I couldn't do any worse than that! So we bought a pair of clippers and last night was the night. I cannot describe to you how nervous I was. The last thing I wanted to happen was for me to completely mess up his hair, then go into school the next day and deal with comments from his classmates. Instead of being able to blame it on the incompetent barber on base, he would have to say, "My wife cut my hair." That's a sort of humiliation that I just do not want to deal with.



All in all, it turned out okay. It's by no means perfect. But hopefully, I will get better each time. The important thing is that Grant came out smiling.