Good Things Come in Threes

We've had a very uneventful past few weeks. It seemed like nothing interesting happened, mostly just typical things like papers and midterms and work responsibilities. Well, to make up for that, we did not one, not two, but three whole exciting things this weekend!

Exciting Thing #1: The Vocal Point Concert

On Thursday night, Gerrit and I had tickets to go see the Vocal Point (BYU men's a cappella group) concert. It was, as usual, so much fun and we actually had seats remotely near the stage this year. Typically, my seats tend to be on the very last row of the balcony. The music was well done and the show was entertaining, but the extra excitement came during one of the first few songs. Vocal Point started throwing these foam balls into the crowd and Gerrit actually caught one! I never catch these things, probably because I can't catch anything. We were really excited when we realized that by catching the ball, we had won a free CD! We were somewhat less excited when we realized that between the two of us, we already own all of the Vocal Point CDs and this CD in particular we even had already purchased extras for various birthday and Christmas gifts . Oh well! Here's Gerrit with his winnings:



Exciting Thing #2: Good Food and Good Friends

On Friday night, we went on a double date with our very awesome friends Sara and Sam. Sara and I were roommates for about a year and hanging out with them always means lots of fun and laughter. We went to the international food fest on campus and tried various foreign foods, some tasty and some mildly frightening. After, we went over to their apartment and read funny stories and played TriBond. Technically, I don't think TriBond is supposed to be a humorous game, but that didn't stop me and Sara from laughing so hard we nearly started crying. We played wives against husbands, and here is a sample of the hilarity.

Gerrit and Sam's question: What do Nat Turner, Dred Scott, and Sally Hemings have in common?
(For the record, the correct answer is that they were all slaves)
Some sample reasoning:
Sam: Well, maybe they all have nicknames. Nat...that could stand for Natalie!
Gerrit: And Dred....short for Dreadlord!
Sam: Now, this is an academic category question, so we need to think smart!

It's probably not a good idea to openly laugh at the opposite team's answers, because they may realize that they don't have the right answer, but it was so funny! We loved hanging out with Sam and Sara and we can't wait to all try Balderdash together!

Exciting Thing #3: A Bridal Shower in Brigham City

My cousin Joe is getting married over Christmas break, so my mom's family threw a bridal shower for his fiancee Kandice on Saturday. It was a great chance to talk to my grandma, my aunts, and cousins, since I don't necessarily see them all that often. My aunt came up with some great bridal shower games, including one that was a fun cross between Concentration and those Candygrams, where she came up with candy bars that matched each concentration object and you won the candy if you correctly matched the items. We also played a version of "The Price is Right" where you had to guess which item was more expensive of a pair and how much each item would cost (not on sale). I am terrible at this game! I only know the cost of things in the weekly ads and we pretty much just buy whichever item is cheapest. I am clearly not yet a master grocery shopper, what can I say?

Farewell to Mervyns

I just read here that Mervyns will be closing all of its stores within the next few months. (For those of you unfamiliar with Mervyn's, it is a clothing/household goods store mainly found in the western U.S. The merchandise is pretty much exactly the same as Kohl's.) I am really going to miss it! Mervyn's gave me my first real job in their shoe department when I was home after my freshman year of college, even though all the experience I had was in tutoring and refereeing. They gave me an even better position and hours in the office the next summer. They were understanding that I didn't want to work on Sundays and never made me come in then. I learned all sorts of customer service skills, how to fold clothes properly, and how to make gift wrapping look really nice. My computer skills made me a hot commodity the second summer when I got put in charge of typing and distributing the schedules.

It was by no means a perfect job, and I have been known to occasionally hide behind racks of clothes when I'm visiting that store and I see the manager who used to scare me. Nevertheless, I loved that store and I always found really good deals there. They had cute clothes for good prices and their little kid's clothes were some of my very favorites. Also, well over half of my wardrobe comes from Mervyn's and now I need to find a new place to shop. I have a really hard time shopping for clothes and this prospect does NOT amuse me. Any suggestions?

Highlights of a Routine Week

We've reached a point in the semester where things are a little bit crazy and we don't do much that would likely be considered interesting. Between Gerrit's limited amount of time to finish his thesis and my rapidly looming deadlines on several term papers and my thesis proposal, we spend a lot of time and school. Here's what we were up to otherwise:

Tuesday's election was an exciting first for both me and Gerrit. Both of us have always been absentee voters before, so this was the first time we ever got to vote in person. We expected far longer lines, but we got to walk right up to the polls. We also enjoyed getting free Krispy Kreme donuts for voting. I'm not much of a donut fan, but it's always fun to get free food anyway.

Christmas stuff is up everywhere! We went to both Wal-Mart and Target this week on various errands and I was surprised at just how quickly the stores transitioned from Halloween. Apparently, you can sell more Christmas merchandise than Thanksgiving merchandise. There were aisles and aisles of Christmas candy, decorations, and toys. Wal-Mart, in particular, had an entire aisle of singing and dancing plush Christmas animals and characters. The animated Santa in a bathtub was particularly scary. It was also a lot of fun to look at the toys and talk about the kinds of toys we would buy our kids in the future.

On Saturday, we got to watch our friends' baby for a few hours. She's a really cute little girl and it was a lot of fun, but I realized just how tired I will likely be when we have our own babies. The little girl was fine playing with us for a while, and then I think she realized that we were not, in fact, her parents. This cued the tears. Lots and lots of tears. After a while, she calmed down to the point where I could comfort her and she fell asleep, but I nearly fell asleep by this point too. Hopefully, by the time we have a baby we will be better able to figure everything out!

An Art Week

For our big date this week, Gerrit and I went to the art vending machine on campus. We chanced upon it last year when we had gone on campus one night to study, so when my bookbinding teacher announced it this week in class, I was really excited. They gather donations from various art students and faculty for about a month, and then they load a sandwich vending machine with small pieces of art that range in price from $1-20. All the money goes to the Utah Food Coalition, so you can buy neat art and support a good cause at the same time. I really like the idea of a unique, non-food vending machine,since they aren't all that common. We did see a ProActiv vending machine in the mall last week...but art is much more exciting. This would not necessarily be Gerrit's thing, but they have excellent refreshments and he enjoyed the garlic crouton-cracker things with hummus.

This is what we got from the vending machine:



Isn't it pretty? The idea is to use it as a centerpiece for our table, since I've been meaning to buy one since we moved in and haven't gotten around to it for 10 months.

In other art-related news, here is my second project for my bookbinding class.

This book is a flat-back binding, covered in black floral corduroy fabric that I backed with Japanese paper. You can't put fabric straight on covers...it doesn't work right with the glue. The book is approximately 5 1/2" by 4 1/8", so it's pretty small. The edges are painted with gold watercolor, which is the poor man's version of gilded edges. It also has sewn endbands at the top and bottom made with tan and brown silk thread wrapped around black hemp. I really love how this book turned out. They're pretty complicated and definitely NOT cheaper to make than buy, but the end products are worth it.


Sewn Endbands


Back Cover


Painted Edges


Front Cover

Sixth Picture Sixth Folder

Stephanie tagged me to post the sixth picture in my sixth folder of my pictures. My pictures aren't particularly organized. I usually just put them into iPhoto and then I will possibly put them in folders later, so folders are not necessarily the best representation of what I actually have pictures of. That being said...here's what popped up.



Christmas 2006. This is me and my little sister and I took the picture as part of her Christmas present. For her present, I covered a block letter "E" (it's both of our first initials) with some pretty striped paper, then attached some of inside jokes with paper and ribbon. I wanted a picture of us, too, but I couldn't get that done while I was still at school. I was trying to do it secretly so she wouldn't be too suspicious, so we took a series of incredibly goofy pictures in front of the tree and then took this nice one. This is the picture that currently resides on the E and is somewhere in my sister's bedroom.

Solutions

Here are the answers to last week's brainteasers!

1) Can you prove seven is half of twelve?

I have to admit...I truly hated this puzzle when we did it. It's one of those sneaky "trick question" kind of puzzles. In this case, it's more of a visual puzzle than a mathematical puzzle. Here's the roman numeral for twelve.

XII

Now, draw a horizontal line in the middle of the number.  You should get a VII on top, which is, in fact, the roman numeral for 7.  This puzzle is a cheap trick.

For the next two, Trudy nailed them on the head, thus demonstrating that she is bound to be an excellent lawyer in the near future :)
The inventor has not invented any toys.
The parrot is deaf.

Good job everyone!  It was fun to see all your answers, and I'll post more as Gerrit and I keep going through our book.