Sunday, August 24, 2008

I hate other drivers, but I love Schadenfreude!

I'm beginning to believe that no one but me should drive at least when I am driving. Also, I am probably a horrible person, but I laughed at the misfortune of others today while driving. There was a bit of justification though. At least I think so, and that's really what matters... to me.

I was driving out of Brigham today heading back home with the rugrat. She spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's after a day of fun at Lagoon so that I could have a birthday party for myself with my friends without having to wrestle her down. Main street in Brigham has 5 lanes. The Right hand lanes are right up near the curb, so there is not a lot of wiggle room there. I'm in the right lane heading down main street attempting to get past a truck pulling a boat trailer. I was going slowly because the guy driving wasn't so good at the keeping in his own lane and so I was also hugging the right side of the lane as much as possible. Just as my front end comes up even with his passenger window he started coming over. I immediately hit my brakes and my horn at the same time. Apparently his reflexes suck because had I not come to a dead stop in my lane about 1/2 inch from running my car up over the curb, he'd have taken off my front bumper. His passenger then hangs his arm out the window and flips me off and was yelling something. I'm pretty sure it was non-complimentary because you know, it was totally my fault for being in the lane where they wanted to be. Jerks. I was so shaken that when I pulled into 7-11 two blocks later I had to sit in the car for a few minutes and get my heartrate down before heading in to get some beverages for the ride home. Too dang hot for the end of August I say.

Anyway, got beverages and stripy chips for Malia and we headed out. For some bizarre reason I decided to take the freeway. Yes, I took the freeway. I found out later that it must have been pre-destined. About a mile and a half before the Smith & Edwards exit I noticed a truck pulling a boat off to the side of the freeway. As I got closer I realized that it was the one that nearly broke my car. Being a big old jerk, I honked and waved at them as I passed by. I then chuckled a little bit here and there for the next 15 minutes or so. It was fantastic. Looking back now from a couple hours onward I feel a bit bad about finding so much joy in their misfortune, but at the same time I can't help but continue to feel a bit repaid. I don't know if they actually saw me or recognized my car even though I was going significantly lower than the 75 MPH speed limit because apparently Sunday early afternoon is mass migration of semis and I got stuck in the middle. I do like to think that they recognized me and felt a bit bad.

I'm going to post at a later date about Lagoon because being the horribly unprepared parent I am on many occasions, I did not take a camera so I have to wait to get some pictures from other people. Just add this to the post of fun from the Dinosaur Park because I'm waiting on pictures from that one too.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Quickie for a friend

This post is just to tide folks over until I have time to put up the big one about the Weekend of Birthday Fun. haha, I'm such a dork and you all love it.

Saturday, the day after the day of Dinosaur fun, my sister Kami and I decided to go "rummaging". Brief backstory on rummaging is that is what our Grandma Bonnie and her friend Kay called going to garage sales back in the day. So, after dropping of some stuff at Krissy's garage sale, we jumped in the Tahoe and were off... and then not off, because we realized that we didn't really want to aimlessly drive around town or we'd never get to everything. So back to the parents we went and got the paper so we could plan our attack. I had no cash, and Kami had $15. Normally that is more than enough for a day of rummaging, but we hit the jackpot eventually. The first couple were just kind of run of the mill stuff, but I was able to score a sweet Rick Astley CD for $1.50. They were having a 50% off everything so I got quite the deal. Kam picked up some scrapbooky stuff for 50 cents, which is apparently really good pricing. Yeah, I don't know, some letters or something. I'm not really up to speed on the lingo o' scrapbooking.

So, down to $13 we wandered aimlessly through a couple more run of the mill sales. Eventually we ended up at the best one. We encountered this bastion of all that is doll related goodness (to a little girl anyway):

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That is a "ginormous" dollhouse. That's Malia's word by the way and it comes up almost to my waist. The lady wanted $15 for it, but we only had $13. Unfortunately some other person had expressed interest and had gone to get $15 so the lady wouldn't budge on price. Kami then went through her ashtray of change and came up with 2 more dollars and we walked away with the prize. We then hit up the bank so we could continue the fun. We found some great cookie/candy jars for Kami, a little rocky chair for Hannah, and I got some sweet suitcases at a little old lady's sale. That pretty much sums up the day of rummaging, but we're planning on doing on down here in SLC because I'm pretty sure we can find more. It only took us about 2 hours to hit up all there was available in Brigham City.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Malia's Birthday Adventure... with just me

Due to the overwhelming requests I've received (one - hahaha), I am posting about the day Malia and I had yesterday to celebrate her birthday. The day started a bit late as I had to head into work for a couple of hours for some meetings that I couldn't reschedule. Stupid work sometimes.

First up for the day we headed to Nordstrom Rack to get her the shoes she has been coveting for months. She has wanted Skechers since before Christmas, but I told her that I was not buying her any until she started real school instead of preschool. Since she starts school in just a few weeks I thought what better time to purchase them than on her birthday. I know, sneaky me because now she thinks of them as a birthday present instead of just for school. Also, we hit up the Rack because the price was about 1/2 of anywhere else. Here are her Lights Skechers:
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Seeing as we were there and I like shoes I decided to splurge and purchase a new pair for myself as well. I'm using the excuse that my birthday is in less than two weeks as my reason. Here are my new shoes:
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Next we headed down to Gateway. I've been meaning to get us a membership to the Clarke Planetarium for some time, but just had not gotten around to doing it. Well, we set it up yesterday so for the next year we have unlimited free shows. We had planned on seeing the show on the Human Body, but it's not there anymore so we went with Deep Sea 3D:
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It was her first 3D show ever and she loved it. She, along with every other child in the theatre, was trying to catch the Jellyfish and various other fish. She wasn't so much a fan of one point where a grouper snapped as though it were coming to eat us. Even I jumped for that one. Outside of that she loved it and kept informing those around us what kind of sharks were swimming by. The guy on my left commented that it was a little disturbing that my 5 yr old knew more about sharks than him. I let him know about the joy of Shark Week and how much she likes watching it with me. Who doesn't know about Shark Week? Seriously, it's not like they don't advertise the hell out of it. Oh well, they'll have another viewer next year if this guy remembers.

Since the show started 30 minutes late due to some projector issues, we didn't end up going to the Fly Me to the Moon 3D show as I'd planned. Instead we headed over to the Children's museum. I wasn't all that impressed with the stuff they had, but maybe I was just too tired. They had a lot of hands on stuff, but it wasn't really geared towards single children to play with. I bet it's a great place to take a group of kids, but not so much to take just one. Especially when it is full of groups of kids who don't really want an extra one thrown in that they don't know. Malia liked it though and that's what really matters.

After the joy of the museum we were both hungry so we wandered around a bit and ended up at the food court near the north end of Gateway. Because Malia has no taste whatsoever and is really picky about food we ended up eating at S'barro instead of some place that had real food. She had cheese pizza (pretend there is no pepperoni visible):
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I had whatever this is called:
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After eating, we headed home. I ended up taking the long way because she fell asleep before we had left the parking garage. We were parked approximately 15 feet from the exit of the parking garage to give you an idea of how quickly she was out. It was not a super long way, but I managed to take 45 minutes to get home so that she was not super cranky due to short nap. We got home and got all swimsuited up and headed for the pool. After some small freakouts due to drowning wasps we got to the swimming and it was good.

I don't really remember the rest of the evening other than the lady across from me got Malia a birthday card and I finally got a hold of the handyman to get my cooler fixed. It appears that the cooler was indeed possessed the other day because it did not work Monday or Tuesday, only Sunday. I may or may not have fed Malia dinner, it's kind of a haze of exhaustion. I fully expect that Friday will do the same after my entire family heads to the Dinosaur Park for Malia's big birthday party.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Take your pick - possession or spontaneous self-fixing

To be specific I think that my swamp cooler is possessed. It started acting up a few weeks ago when we had the joy of almost thunderstorms every evening for a couple of weeks. I thought it was because it was so humid. We all know that humidity trumps the cooling effects of the swamper, so I didn't stress too much. Once the humidity went down it didn't start working any better so I had the resident handy man take a look. The prognosis was not good and looking back also doesn't make sense to me.

He said that the motor was on the fritz and I needed a new one. This does not make sense to me because it was still blowing air. However, I am no expert on the inner workings of the swamp cooler so I let it slide. My HOA covers the maintenance of things, but not the actual parts so I have to pay for a new motor. However, I've managed to just miss the handyman every evening since finding out it was broken so I've not been able to let him know to buy the new motor. Needless to say, It's been a bit toasty.

Yesterday I don't know why I decided to try it out, but I cranked up the old swamp cooler and wonder of wonders it worked! Now, it was not cooling down excessively, but it did not get above 79 all day and I'm impressed with that. It even kept cooling over night. Let me tell you that waking up at 67 degrees after dying of heat for a week or so is a little disconcerting.

I don't know if it's actually going to continue working properly or if it's just possessed. I guess we'll see when I get home tonight and start her up.

Friday, August 8, 2008

I used to love school...

I've determined that I heavily dislike whatever School District Malia is in. I can't remember what it is and I'm too lazy to look it up. It's been a grand ole time getting her registered for Kindergarten. I will share the timeline with you:

--Beginning of January I submit a request to change schools so that she can go to the Elementary that buses from her daycare. I am told I will be notified mid-February whether or not she will be able to attend.
--Mid-March I finally receive a phone call letting me know that she's been accepted and I can come get the registration materials.
--Beginning of May I attend (with Malia) Kindergarten Round-up and turn in her registration information. Since her annual checkup with the doctor isn't until the middle of August, I have Malia get her final shots because they won't register her or assign her to a class until she's had all of them. I did not want to take the chance that she would not be in the morning class. I am told that final registration and class information will be sent out at the end of June.
--I call the school on August 5th since I've not yet heard anything about her class. I was told that they changed their scheduling and were just sending out the final registration information that day.
--I get a postcard in the mail on Wednesday. I'll try and scan later to show you the insane amount of information in tiny font on this card. This card lets me know the following:
  • I have to come into the school one night next week to pick up more information that they didn't give out at the original registration and that they'll post the Kindergarten class lists on the door of the classroom.
  • I must schedule a conference with her teacher for one evening on either August 20th or 21st.
  • Malia doesn’t in fact start school on August 25. Even though I was told this was the first day of school at the Round-up, Kindergarten doesn’t actually start until the Tuesday after Labor Day.
  • I have to take her in for a pre-assessment test the week of August 25th.

Now, I don't have a problem with doing everything that needs to be done in order to get her into school. What I object to is the spreading out of everything that needs to happen and not being told everything that needs to happen. Can they not consolidate all of this in some fashion? Would it have been super difficult to hand out the information packets at the Kindergarten Round-up? Failing that, they could have at least mentioned the other items that would be coming up. I asked specifically what other things I needed to do and was told that there wasn't anything else and I'd get everything that I needed in the mail. It just seems like the way they've organized things, and I use 'organized' VERY loosely, isn't very efficient.

Regardless, Malia starts Kindergarten on September 2, 2008. She's beyond excited to start and we've already gotten her backpack and school supplies, which she keeps getting out in her impatience to begin.

Well, she may start school then. Does anyone know how to get crayon and/or colored pencil off a TV screen? I say crayon and/or because she doesn't remember which she used on the TV and which she used on the printer. GAAAHHHH!

Friday, August 1, 2008

I'm a bad daughter

I completely forgot to call my parents this past Wednesday. It was their 33rd Wedding Anniversary.

Congratulations on tolerating each other that long! =) To borrow from your son, "I kid".

Thank you for being a great example of how a marriage should work. You guys have shown me how much you can still love someone just as much as the day you married them. Even if they are never able to keep the aircraft carrier cleared off for more than a day or two at most or they harass you about never being able to keep it cleared off for more than a day or two at most.

I love you both so much and thank you for always being there for me whenever I needed you! I hope you have many more long cluttered years together.