Mini honeymoon, weekend adventures

Well finals week is almost over and we are making it through. Last weekend we wanted to do something together that was extremely cheap (free would be nice) and fun. So after much deliberation we went to Willard Bay to see the lights. On the way there we figured we'd need some hot cocoa so we stopped in at the flying J in Brigham city only to be disappointed - no hot cocoa machine in sight. Then we googled 7-11 and finally found it only to discover another disappointment - Hot Cocoa Machine out of order. As a last resort we went to the Chevron and were pleasantly surprised. They had a hot cocoa maker and it was delicious. Maybe even better than 7-11 though not as delicious as QT in Georgia. I learned a very valuable lesson - the saying "Oh thank heaven for Seven Eleven" is no longer true. And I'm going to have to eliminate that phrase from my vocabulary. Eventually we got on the freeway and headed to willard bay and then missed it. Turned around got there and discovered it wasnt' free. They wanted 9 bucks! 9 bucks! and I bet they didn't even have free hot cocoa. We were enraged so we turned around and departed from thence. Then on the way home we thought it would be fun to rent WALL-E from redbox for a buck. But when we got into the canyon we hit a wall of red taillights

from a head on collision that just happened. Bored, we took some pictures. So our adventure was delayed even longer. We finally got home and watched Wall-e. Kind of a hum-ho movie. There's no talking til halfway through the movie and then the plot isn't very enthralling. I'm glad we only spent a buck.

Saturday, however, was a delightful adventure. The manufacturing company in Rock Springs invited us down for free steak and fun with them. The food was delicious and afterwards they gave us a set of heavy duty aluminum LED lights. They are small but really cool. Then the plant manager asked if we had a hotel for the night. We didn't and he offered to pay for a hotel for us. We took advantage of the offer and stayed in the Super 8. So that was our mini honeymoon because we won't be going there for a week like we thought. On the way there we saw the huge windmills.

I was telling Sara how the last time I went up I saw a truck carrying one of the arms for the windmills and just as I said it a truck came by with the huge arm. Total we saw 4 of them. Man they are big.

Christmas 2008

Well it looks like the Christmas season has arrived yet again. We decorated the house yesterday with the few decorations we have. We are very grateful for the decorations Dani gave to us before moving out to Denver. That's pretty much all we had. Over the break Sara's parents let us use their fake tree. I once swore I would never have a fake tree but alas it sits in our living room. It was weird setting it up and not smelling pine (or getting pine sap all over your hands). But the tree worked wonderfully. At first it wasn't very sturdy. I thought about flinging more scrunchies on the ceiling and then tying a rope onto the scrunchies then onto the tree to make it more secure -- but I had doubts about the integrity of the rope. So the we found this 'spare part' that we discovered is not so spare and we put that on the stand and the tree became really sturdy. It's a little short so we put it on this big present to make it taller (and so we could fit more loot under there).

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We also had some white lights left over so we tacked it to the wall with thumbtacks and it looks pretty shnazzy. I also found a power outlet timer so we hooked both the cords up to that so we don't even have to worry about turning lights on and off. So, around here Christmas starts at 6:45 AM and ends at 11:00 PM. (Anytime between then is St. Patrick's day as far as I'm concerned.)

Sara has an extremely nasty cold. She is down for the count! She tosses and turns all night and coughs and sniffles all day. Our cold medicine drugs are useless against it. Hopefully it will go away before finals. Plus -she is not the only one who ends up losing sleep.

Our dishwasher has been having problems. Namely the dishes are not getting cleaned. It's really old and crappy to begin with so I figured it was about to bite the dust but then I got looking closer at the water-shooter at the bottom and discovered pieces of glass..... glass!, plastic, and candy wrappers in the holes in the shooter. So I got to work and tried to pull them out with pliers, tweezers, fingers but nothing worked so I resorted to breaking the glass into powder and then I would turn it on and blast it out. (The real problem is I couldn't get the shooter to come off the thing it's mounted to.) At the last minute I had my good buddy Jon come over and look at it. He looked at it for 2 seconds, turned this, lifted that, and vuala! the shooter came off and we got the glass out like a dream. And this is what came out.

I pulled the big piece of glass out from underneath the shooter but everything else came out of the actual shooter-arm. It seems to work considerably better now. We had some problems with our glasses breaking in there but had no idea what it was doing to the dishwasher. At least we got it out now.

And it looks like we won't be having a second honeymoon in rock springs. The company I do drafting work for out there hasn't got word on whether they got their bid for the new project. Even if they did get it by say next week they wouldn't have enough time to get the drawings setup so I could draw them before I go back to school. Too bad so sad.

Home sweet home

Last night I got back from Rock Springs. It was just going to be the 2 days but ended up being 3 that I was gone. I went to Big Piney on Tuesday then drove 2 more hours to get to Rock Springs to the hotel. (I i figured that would be better than leaving Logan at 4:00 to get to Rock Springs by 8:00.) Rock Springs was for the most part easier than I thought but I'm glad I spent a lot of time at home practicing with an evaluation copy of the software. Then when I was there I was supposedly going to be using their software but their software lock wasn't working. So guess what system I used? My own evaluation copy. They were fairly impressed that I came that prepared and liked that I knew the software as good as I did. I still have a long ways to go but it would've been bad news if I hadn't practiced. They gave me 20 drawings to revise which they figured would take me around 4 days to complete (2 days this week and 2 days next week). Well I got those done in a day and a half and ended up having to go to the shop with a pipefitter and sketch my own drawings. Word from my boss is that they really liked having a real drafter on-site who knows what they are doing. The plant manager in Rock Springs basically asked my boss to give me a raise too! We are excited about that.

It sure wasn't fun to be away from Sara though. I ate at IHOP one night and had a lonely lonely big bacon omelette. Delicious but lonely. What made it worse is that I had a huge hotel room. Since we booked so late we took the last non-smoking room available. It had 2 queen sized beds, a 27" TV and a fridge and microwave. All that just for me. They had a pool and hot tub available which I almost went to but when I got close I saw a bunch of creepy old men in there and got so scared I decided to retreat to my room.

Back at home Sara is doing awesome in her job. She sets goals every night for how much she will collect from the customers and she has been setting them high and reaching or nearly getting them every night. She really likes not having to run around and be a grumpy manager's gopher girl too.

Last weekend we also went to Bear Lake. We learned that coming at 3:00 is never a good idea because it gets really windy and gives you sand burns in uncomfortable places. We tried to have fun nonetheless. At night we went fishing and caught 15 catfish with Dad. Then we went to Laketown, ate some greasy burgers and oh-so-delicious ice cream and raspberries while jamming with Frank and Amy who were there to pick up Ava and Koben. Sweet sweet goodness. Oh and when we were there we got a wedding gift- $19.38. That's right nineteen dollars and thirty-eight cents. Weird huh? Not really it was from a friend. That's just the kind of guy he is. Now if only we can firure out what item to purchase that costs exactly $19.38.