Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Best Weekend Ever!

I just had the BEST WEEKEND EVER, in a long time.  If I could describe my weekend in three words I would say, "Laughed sa hard!"
This picture describes my weekend!
Three friends (Kyle or Karl - whatever he chooses to be called, Auntie Cami, and Lisa Lou) and I just road tripped it to Flagstaff to view the last SUU Football game of the season.  We all hopped in the car Friday afternoon and "drove all night" to get to the folksy town of Flagstaff.  We stayed in a cozy little hotel right off the historic route 66, ate an immaculate continental breakfast, went shopping in the historic downtown, watched as the SUU football team won their final game under a covered dome, ate at some fun/different restaurants (one being Brandy's from Dinners, Drive Inns, and Dives) the other an Italian restaurant called Stromboli's, got lost numerous times even when using three different GPS systems, ventured out to more shopping at a Goodwill store - hit the jackpot in the book section, Auntie Cami saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, I joined a prestigious club known as the "sock club" (which if you would like to learn more you can email me and I will give you the FULL details), and lastly we learned a great deal about one another.

Lessons Learned on this wild weekend 
1.  Always make sure that there is lots of good music present!  Wilson Phillips, Spice Girls, Marie Osmond, and of course the song, "Let's Hear it for the Boy!"
2.  Bathroom breaks are only mandatory when it's time to gas up.  However, it may be okay to stop at a gas station so I can talk to random people, possibly use the bathroom, buy a sandwich that will wait until the next day to be eaten, and basically stop just so I can lengthen the time on the road. ;)
3.  Always remember your camera, but be grateful for an iPod (yes I finally replaced mine) that has a camera - doesn't produce the best pictures, but I'm still grateful I had something to document this road trip.
4.  Only eat at restaurants that are unfamiliar, or that only exist in the town you are visiting.  (We ate at some drive inn at Kanab, Brandy's, Stromboli's, and a deserted steakhouse/bar in Vermilion cliffs)
Made Sweet Love to the best buttermilk
 pancake EVER!!! (At Brandy's, Flagstaff, AZ.)
5.  When stopping for the bathroom, be it on the side of the road, on top of a mountain, in the freezing cold, and darkest woods EVER make sure you have some sort of paper product available...if not, two white socks will work wonders!!!
6.  Sharing an adjoining room with four people in toe lends to some funny antics, and childish acts.  Playing games known as "Girl Talk," which makes you talk about your dream wedding - gag, and developing a bad case of acne!
7.  Don't complain about the group of people at the restaurant who are completely loud, obnoxious, and drunk.  It will only backfire when you then become the loud, obnoxious, not drunk - but people start to wonder, table at the restaurant.  
8.  When attending a football game make sure you have a roster of all the football players, and a smart phone so that people, like myself, can continually look for a future boyfriend and let the others enjoy the game.
9.  Shopping should consist of hitting up a Goodwill store, finding books outside of Utah becomes more fun then finding the typical used LDS romance novels.  I still wish I would've bought that book about people who suffer with IBS - could possibly have done a world of good on top of that darkened mountain.
10.  Lastly, laughing so hard your head, stomach, and butt (pops out a fart - wasn't me, just saying) hurts is definitely a prerequisite for any type of road trip.  Thinking you are funny by sharing thoughts on marriage and how my future husband actually already died in the Civil War makes for some head hurting laughing.  Oh, and be sure to share stories about past boyfriends and how cheap they are...always a sure fire way to make people laugh!
The Kibby (Kyle+Libby)
Let's Hear it for OUR Boy - The Man!
The Posse, minus Auntie Cami, who graciously took all of our pictures!
Lisa Lou and I.  Need to point out our old lady ways of
mending and crocheting in the back seat!
All the way there, and all the way back!
The magnificent Grand Canyon!

Monday, November 21, 2011

No More Facebook, and No More Netflix

I've spent some time, recently, in the decision of whether or not I should cancel Netflix....AND Facebook!  Well, the decision has been made and I am no longer a member of Facebook, and I canceled my instant queue on Netflix.  Wow - amazing huh?  That's what I think.  Why did I do this - well, there are several reasons.  Let's start with Netflix first shall we.
During the summer, most of you Netflix users like myself, received an email explaining a price increase.  Boy oh boy, did this shoot me over the edge.  Yes, most of you saw/heard my outrage on this matter.  A few months later they sent another email stating that they would be changing the way they are doing things on Netflix.  This was the final straw that broke the camels back.  BUT, I still decided to stay with them.  Although, I should be super busy with school this last semester, I have found that having both the DVD, and instant viewing were ending up being too much money, and a waste of my time.  I was using the instant queue a lot more then the DVDs.  All of my time was going to stupid shows, like the TV shows Felicity (which I sadly sat through all four seasons - good thing they canceled because I was about to cancel) and My So Called Life which I still can't seem to get through and it's ONLY one season.  It took some time and thought in the matter, but after my Sis took the plunge and canceled her instant queue I decided I should follow her footsteps and do the same.  She canceled due to wasting too much time also.  It feels good to cut that out of my life, for the time being.  The great thing about Netflix is that any time I want to go back to my old ways I can, and they are willing to always take me back with open arms.  Seven more months till graduation, and my gift to myself is adding back my instant queue on Netflix.
Facebook and I have had a love hate relationship for some time.  It took me some time to join, and it was late one night around 1:00am when I took the plunge.  I knew what I was getting myself into at the very beginning.  I joined and loved it.  I thought, this is great, I am able to keep in touch with those people I have met in Alaska, and with those from my years of serving a mission in Kentucky and Ohio.  Recently, I have found myself on this website all the time.  I am not doing anything productive when I am on the website, I spend hours looking, and looking, and looking.  I rarely comment, and when I do my email is flooded with notifications.  However, the notifications stopped suddenly when Facebook made some new changes to their website.  It was a breath of fresh air for me, but not receiving those emails was making it hard for me to know what was going on in Facebook land.  As I was not knowing via email notifications, it made me hop on to Facebook more frequently, and thus I would spend more hours just looking.  I guess what it comes down to is I have no self control?

As I was perusing Facebook a few weeks back (when I should've been doing homework), I found that my cousins wife Shellie wasn't on Facebook anymore.  I was shocked and concerned.  It was late, so I decided that the next day I would contact her and ask her what was going on.  She informed me that it had become too much for her.  Her constant Facebook perusing was getting out of hand, so she canceled her Facebook.  Way to go Shellie, for setting the stage for me.  After much thought and serious consideration I have done the same.  It wasn't like I made the decision over night.  I thought about all the pro's and con's Facebook causes me, and then decided to cancel.  No more offending other people by comments I leave (which I had done recently), no more tagging pictures of people who don't want pictures tagged, and no more wasting my time spending countless hours looking into the lives of people I care and don't care about.  Now that sounds rude, but most the people I'm friends with on Facebook already are people I have contact with by other means. The other people are just those who haven't seen me in years and wanted a quick look into my life right now, and by so doing they had to "add me as their friend."  All along I should've listened to my Bro, "Facebook is stupid, haven't you heard of a phone?"  Yes little Bro, you are right, I have the ones I love dearly right at my phone, or email.  What else do I need?

There it is - I canceled Netflix (just instant queue) and Facebook.  Now I'm loving life even more...or finding more to do that doesn't involve me wasting my time!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

I Did What?

WHAT THE....

This past semester I have been observing students at one of the local High School's trying to gear up to student teach, (UGH) and today I got a chance at teaching.  I didn't mind teaching, it was not terrible.  I was lucky enough to be in an advanced nutrition class with mostly seniors.  The "super seniors" were very well behaved and there was only once that I stopped and looked at two girls chatting.  I stopped talking, gave them a look that said, "Ladies, I'm in charge now zip it!" Nicely, YES NICELY glared them down until they stopped talking.  Fair enough, right?

Okay, let's get to the "WHAT THE..."  My teacher, whom I have been observing, asked that I teach for about 20 minutes on the introduction into Lipids - FATS, and other chemistry related junk.  I got completely honest with her a few weeks back, and told her straight up that I don't care to be a teacher anymore...(wondering now if I ever wanted to teach in the first place....I'm digressing here....)  She assured me that I would do a great job teaching, and from what she has already observed from my being in the classroom she said I would be good at it???  What does she know, but whatever?  I told her I am happy to be here and do whatever is asked of me, and when I student teach (at this same school - totally happy about that) I will keep a positive attitude and do my best.  But, come graduation I am heading to the skies to be a flight attendant, if the Lord be will'n of course.  If that's not the case, then what the heck, I'll put my teaching degree and license to work.  Somewhere, hopefully???  Still, I am hoping for the skies baby, the deep blue skies baby!  Again, I'm digressing!!!!!

So, my practicum teacher asked me to teach on lipids.  I studied up to find that lipids - what I am studying now in food science actually goes really well with this nutrition teaching lesson.  I decided to be all cutesy and make a fun little toddler game - "Memory" out of all the lipid terms.  I made color copies of lipid based pictures, put them on red and yellow paper (to match their school colors), and then when the student would make a match with one of the lipid terms we would then discuss that picture/term.  I had pictures of Cheerios to represent cholesterol, a girl throwing up to represent bile which is made from cholesterol, a jar of Mayonnaise to represent phospholipids that create emulsions, and so forth.  Of course I made several other pictures/terms, but this is boring stuff, that involves chemistry and we all know how much I love chemistry....  Speaking of chemistry....as the pictures in the game got turned over, and the matches were made we came to a term known as Triglyceride.  Oh no, this is where I suddenly got all chemical on my students and started talking about saturated fats and unsaturated fats, WHAT THE!!!  Saturated and unsaturated fats always gave me such a headache I could never understand what they are and how they work.  Now all of a sudden I'm spouting out these terms like it's my favorite subject in the world.  I thought for sure that once my chemistry hootenannies were over and done with I would be completely rid of that terrible subject.  Just ain't so ya'll.  I was pouring out chemistry terms like soda pop from a fountain.  Again, WHAT THE?!?!?  Here's to saying I guess this battle of chemistry is actually doing some good in my life, for whatever reason.

Yeppers, I had to teach today, and I did the unthinkable by talking about chemistry, which I never in a million years thought it would be of any use.  I was proven wrong with that hypotenuse???  Seriously, more chemistry crap coming out of my mouth!  Stop the madness!  To end my little teaching stint we ended with a clip from the good o'l John Candy era, and watched a short clip from The Great Outdoors to finish my lesson off with another lipid term known as satiety.  Which is how fats make you have that feeling of being full - you might feel that here in a few weeks after Thanksgiving...just saying.

When all was said and done I actually enjoyed teaching today, and maybe this teaching thing won't be so bad after all?  However, I still need to get through next semester with student teaching and all it has to offer.  In fact, I just found out who I'm student teaching with, and where I'm student teaching at.  I will have two foods classes (cooking classes), an adult roles class, and my most exciting class interior design. I will be observing/helping out in a pro start cooking class, and an advanced sewing class.  Sadly though, when I got the high school calendar I immediately sat down and counted/marked all 60 days I have to be in the classroom.  I start January 9, 2012 and will end April 3, 2012 - happy day!!!  Won't it be interesting to see how many more "WHAT THE's" I end up having....

Friday, November 4, 2011

Chaco's and Chocolate

I have been a fan of Chaco shoes for almost four years now.  I say four years because four years ago I purchased my first pair.  I wasn't really sure what these sandals were all about, but I had a great coupon to use at a store that sold them, and they just happened to be on sale at the time.  I spent (if I can remember) around $45.00 for my first pair.  Each summer for the last three and a half years I have wore my Chaco's faithfully.  Sadly enough, this summer on a grand hike up the canyon from my Bro's back yard my Chaco sandals broke.  They were still wearable on the hike, and I safely made it back home all in once piece.  However, I was completely distraught to now have no more Chaco's.  I had heard through the grapevine that Chaco's had a life time warranty on their shoes, and if anything happened they would fix the sandals.
My foot and sandal is the middle foot.  Don't mind the other two feet...
The Sis is to the left (weird looking aren't they) and my
friend
 Steph to the right.
That evening after returning from the hike I got on the trusty Internet and looked up the Chaco's website.  Sure enough I found that Chaco's will repair your broken sandals.  I cleaned up my sandals and boxed them so I could send them to the ReChaco team, but before sealing my box I had one last very important thing to do.  I needed to buy some chocolate to throw into my package of broken sandals.  Why chocolate?  Well, among the fine print of the ReChaco mailing instructions I read this, "Our ReChaco team works faster if you include some tasty chocolate in the box with your CLEAN + DRY sandals."  I went and picked up a few bars of the Utah Mint Truffles - threw them in the box, sealed it up, paid the shipping, and waited patiently for my Chaco's to get fixed and sent home.
Within a few days I received an email from the ReChaco group asking that I give them a call.  I happened to be at work, on the computer, and next to a phone.  I called them right up, and received a sweet lady on the other end of the phone.  She informed me that my shoes would not be able to be fixed, however, she asked if I could hop online and choose a different pair. Really? They would send me a new pair at no charge?  I was floored, yet ecstatic.  At that very moment I went online, and I picked me a new pair.  I then thanked her dearly.  Before the call was over she personally thanked me for the chocolate I had sent, and told me how much they enjoyed it.  I told her I was just doing what the instructions had told me to do.
New and improved - don't mind the feet...yes I need to paint my toes!
Days later my new Chaco's had arrived.  Life was grand once again.  I have shared this testimony with others about Chaco's, the comfortable sandals, the great company they are, and the very personable nice service I received via email and phone call.  I will forever be a true Chaco wearer, as long as I shall live.  I have converted the Sis, and now my Mommy.  I love Chaco's - and you should too!    

Why I love my Chaco's:
1.  Make some totally cool tan lines - people always complement me on mine. ;)
2.  SUPER supportive and super comfortable - wear them hiking all the time, and just around.
3.  They clean up really nice, and each time I power wash them it's like I have a new pair of sandals.
4.  Last forever - life time warranty baby!
5.  The ReChaco team is fabulous!

That's all, now go buy some Chaco's!