October/November Top 10

How is it suddenly November? I know it is because the sun has been rising and setting each 12 hours but yikes it seems like the Earth has lately been rotating at top speed.

This is a lazy countdown (and a no particular order countdown) post because I can't think of anything to focus on but still want to write. Here's what we've been doing:

1. Last night we went to see District 9 at the cheap theaters and right before the previews there was a commercial for mayonnaise. They tried to make it look appetizing to put mayo on your green beans and let's just say it didn't work. It just made Brandon laugh really hard.

2. The temperature. It now drops into the 40s and 50s at night and hallelujah we can sleep with a blanket rather than just a sheet. Plus, we haven't used our air conditioner in several weeks and have already noticed a difference in our electric bill. We are finally entering the weather that makes Arizona awesome. While I'm bummed we missed out on Denver's recent snow days, I don't miss driving in that crap or scraping my windshields in the morning!

3. Brandon has been started running a few miles with me every now and then and he hasn't died.

4. We recently went up to Mt. Lemmon to see some fall foliage. Mt. Lemmon is a 8500 foot mountain about 30 minutes outside Tucson. It is close enough to be a quick and easy respite from the heat and city. We were a little late for the leaves but I found the perfect heart rock, Brandon found a burly log, and we managed to find a pretty spot to document the changing of the leaves. We also couldn't help but reminisce one our leaf excursion last year where our friend Morghan howled at some mease (aka mooses). (Looking forward to seeing you in December Cheneys!)



5. I have been nurturing my fondness of Life cereal. I bought five boxes of it the other day cause it was on sale for a real good deal and now have to hold back whenever I'm hungry because that is my first instinct. I've also been wondering if I'll ever tire of eating cereal. It is always one of my favorite moments of the day.

6. I finally made freezer jam and found out it really isn't that hard. I felt very domestic.

7. We actually went to a concert the other night. You know you are old and unhip when you find out about bands on NPR. That being said, we had a great time and we glad we made the effort to go. The band was Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Here's the song that initially got me hooked and still makes me want to run off to a hippie commune every time I hear it...



Although I should mention the lead singer looks homeless in real life as evidenced by wearing a nasty tank top and sweatpants while performing.

8. Brandon saved the day (and our wallets) this week when he replaced the alternator in his car. It went out on him while he was driving and he did all the diagnostics and labor himself. I was very proud (and I think he was too).

9. There was this one time that we drove the 2 hours to Phoenix to attend the temple (something us Mormons do from time to time) and upon arrival found out it was closed for cleaning. Shoot! To compensate for our time, we ate at the Cafe Rio in Gilbert, went to Ikea, and drank about 88 oz of diet soda between the two of us.

10. One of Brandon's fantasy football teams in almost the worst in his league. Send him some good luck vibes so he doesn't get completely dominated.

That's all for now folks...

Internet Truths

This evening I've been watching this music video on YouTube for one of my favorite songs, Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Here's the link to the video in case you want to hear it. It is a little punky, maybe a little whiny, and perhaps a little romantic. You might not like it but maybe you will.

Anyways, I've always loved the song and reconnected with it when it came on my Arcade Fire radio station on Pandora.com (which is a life saver at work btw). To feed my renewed interest, I naturally came home from work and watched the video about five times on YouTube. And like all good obsessions, I scrolled through the YouTube comments and happened to find one that explained the meaning of the song. Supposedly "Maps" is an acronym for My Agnus Please Stay; according to YouTube comments, Agnus was the singer's boyfriend who left her and broke her heart.

Intrigued by the concept of having a song based on an acronym, I checked my facts on Wikipedia and found that this was indeed a fact which also meant that my intrigue was legitimate.

Just as I verified all this info, Brandon asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he said, "So you're saying that you're excited about something you learned from a Random Joe on YouTube because it is supported by the Encyclopedia of Random Joe?" "Absolutely!" I responded.

Anyways, everything I ever needed to know is on the Internet and that's a fact because now the Internet says so.

This is the Place

I've been thinking--if I ever become sick with an incurable disease and need a place to celebrate life, say goodbye to my loved ones, and then gracefully die, I want it to happen at Casa Alhaja. OR, if I ever win a big art endowment and need a hideaway to collect my thoughts as I write the great American novel, I'll rent out Casa Alhaja and live there for a year. The ocean, sand, tides, and migrating birds are exceptionally suited for either task. Until those things happen, though, I'll take a weekend here and there whenever I can get it.

Its that Time of Year...

Football season. In other words, Brandon is in heaven.

Last year, I joined my work's fantasy football league in an effort to help me bond with Brandon and get in on some playful work banter. Let's just say that the part about it helping me bond with Brandon didn't really work. My interest lasted about two seconds and then I had Brandon do everything for me. Actually, I did two things. As he did all the drafting etc, I named the team and searched the Internet long and hard for an avatar to represent my team in the league.

I ended up naming my team The Cookie Monster Riot and chose this avatar:

Both of those things got me plenty of playful work banter and indirectly and innocently proved that football will never be my thing.

Anyways, I have a point. It is football season again. Brandon is enthralled and loving every second of it. I'm not in a fantasy league (Brandon's three leagues cover this house pretty well) and I don't like it any more than I did last year. BUT something strange has happened. Instead of feeling this twinge* of annoyance when I hear the TV blaring a game, there's a piece of me that is actually pleased that Brandon has something so enjoyable to do. He's working pretty hard these days and lets me do my own thing without batting an eye, so why not let him soak up all things NFL? This revelation has left me feeling so mature and a little like the Grinch whose heart grew three times in size after he let the Whos have Christmas. I just had to share. That's all.




*OK fine. That 'twinge of annoyance' part was a bit of an understatement.

Dilemma

A few days ago, I pulled into my parking space after a long day of being really bored at work. As I pulled my keys from the ignition I noticed a new sight. TWO new garbage cans.
Actually, one of them (the blue one) had been there for a few days and to be honest, I was a little irritated about it. This new garbage can has a drop down lid whereas the last model had a window that you slid open. Although the window version was way less sanitary (the door would always stick forcing you to touch it more. Sick!), it was great because the door was usually left open and our 8 billion kitties would meander in and out their hearts content. This meant that I got to see them in all their glory several times a day. It was a little like this:

Ok, so it turns out you have to click on my art work to see it better.

Anyways, the trash management people switched everything up and all of a sudden everything has changed. I mean, how will my kitties get into the trash now? As I sat in my car, trying to figure out what the people around here have against my precious kitties, I slowly realized that there was something very very different about the second bin....

A recycling bin! Only the devout will remember that I have a conviction about recycling but have never had a curbside recycling service. As a result, I have been diligently driving across town for several years now to properly dispose of my recyclable waste. Once I realized that I would no longer have an embarrassingly large pile of recycling in my kitchen, a radiant smile spread upon my face and washed away my sadness about my job that is slowly killing me and the passive-aggressive way my neighborhood is trying to rid me of our kitties.

That smile, though, disappeared the next morning when I didn't see any of the kitties prancing around the parking lot. They've officially jumped ship to forage in greener pastures, I'm afraid. So now I'm torn. While I can breathe a sigh of relief that I can now live my conviction with gracious ease, how am I going to replace that void that our kitties once filled? Perhaps I need to put out that water bowl I was musing about a few weeks back...is it possible that they would then trickle back and I could have the best of both worlds?

This Post is Kind of Contradictory

I haven't written in a while, namely because I have been trying to spare you from marginal topics of conversation that have been running through my head over the past few weeks. I know the whole concept of blogging in general is marginal but my current inner ramblings are exceptionally so.

Let me prove it. These are the topics I could have told you about over the past few weeks.

1.) I got a new job (yay!) but it is really really boring (grrr) and every day I come home wanting to bang my head really hard against a wall to try and revive my soul. Call me prideful, but I didn't want to tell ya'll that I'm dying a slow painful death at work. I can now, though, because I think things will get better since I'm almost done training. The risk of me getting a traumatic brain injury is decreasing with each passing day.

2.) My kitties. I've discussed them before, although last time I thought there was only my precious kitty, Deliah Garrity. We've since figured out that our next door neighbor has about 8 billion kitties living in a dilapidated shed and they pretty run the roost around here. I am oddly obsessed with them and spend way too much time telling Brandon what I saw the kitties (and by kitties I mean full grown cats) doing and how it was so awesome. I even have a high-pitched obnoxious voice that I use to endear them to me when I see them and started to draw ya'll one of my famous 'Windows Paint' pieces to illustrate some of their key concepts, but then got bored and quit. So if I get bored mid-Windows Paint, how could I ever formulate an entire post?

3.) Yoga. I'm becoming obsessed and often have to restrain myself from telling everyone I know about how there's this studio near my house with $4 classes that will seriously rock your world and won't you please come with me? I try to go twice a week and love it when my mat pitter-patters with sweat about half way through the class; my heels now touch the ground when I do down dog which is a big deal for me. I hope to one day do arm balancing poses but that's probably a long shot. Are your eyes glazing over yet? Brandon's are getting that same look as when I tell him about shopping (and come to think of it, the kitties, too). Don't worry, I'm not offended. You are lucky you got the short version.

4.) The serious stuff. And no, I'm not trying to elicit sympathy or curiosity or worry. I'm just feeling a need to be pragmatic and talk about how blogland is so shallow in the sense that it is mostly about our (collective) awesomeness when in reality, there's all this serious junk floating around in all of our minds that is often more important than the stuff we post. The shallow stuff though is a fun, dandy, and innocent way to escape and 'stay connected'. I am SO guilty of it (this is like our 110th post or something and the list of blogs I follow is way longer than the outdated list on our sidebar). I don't think that's a bad thing, either. But you know, sometimes you are just not in a clever, show-offy mood. And since this is not the Dear Diary sort of place, the blog just kind of sits sometimes.

I can't end on such a Debbie Downer note so here's the final reason why I haven't been so bloggy-bloggy lately.

4.) Friday Night Lights.
BEST SHOW EVER. SERIOUSLY. (a whole post on the show, though, is not the best idea ever). We have pretty much spent the whole summer watching all 3 seasons of it and it has gradually started to consume our thoughts. Brandon developed his first 'man-crush' and I have actually looked into purchasing Friday Night Lights merchandise. This show is also the reason that I've used the phrase "ya'll" several times in this entry. We are both officially in love with small town Texas high school football. We have each had dreams about the characters and have been known to lie awake at night wondering how season 4 will ever compare to seasons 1-3, lamenting about characters we no longer see, and trying to predict what will happen next. And while I've talked a lot of TV on this blog (which in and of itself is a little weird), this show tops them all. Yes. It is better than LOST. I feel like a traitor but this show is A-MA-ZING. So there. I told you all about FNL. Did you feel it was a little gratuitous? I did.

All right. Now you are caught up on all the stuff I tried so hard to hold back. Maybe next time I write I'll be a little more concise and purposeful. Maybe.

A Good Deal

We all love them. This one (buy one get one free at Jamba Juice) is good until Sunday...

Kind of a weird thing to write about, but it is so fun and summery, why not?

Maybe if you get one, you can go with your sweetie and ride your bikes to the closest one so you won't feel guilty about having only sugar for dinner. If you are like me, you will probably ride much slower than your sweetie, even though you really are peddling hard and are sweating profusely to prove it. If you are like Brandon, you will probably ride much faster than your sweetie but kindly offer to let the slower one ride first.

When you get there, be careful not to spill a good portion of your buy-one-get-one free smoothie all over your leg that is propped up on your sweetie's chair because you will come close to saying a swear and then your leg will be sticky sticky sticky (and a little pink), despite all the napkins you might use to clean it up. If that does indeed happen, it won't really be tragic because you'll still have plenty left and you can always taste test your sweetie's flavor. This time, it will be hard to determine which one is better. They each seem to perfectly satisfy.

Also, perhaps your ride home will be a race against a dark monsoon storm with quite the lightening storm. There is horizontal lightening with wirey hands on either side, threatening its fingers at you. Don't worry, though, because the approaching storm will bring gusts of wind that smell like rain and are refreshing against your sweaty self.

Your sweetie will likely beat you home but wait for you so you can be close by as you each haul your bikes up to your second story apartment and plan the rest of your evening. Showers, reading, and an episode of that one television show you both love are agreed upon and in that order. It will be a good night.