Thursday, August 27, 2009

Ashley's Weather Forecast

I tell you what, when I'm sleepy I tell the best jokes! Well, technically it didn't start out as a joke. I was pondering out loud before falling asleep, "I wonder what the weather will be like during the Second Coming...probably partly cloudy..." Then I got it! Get it?! PARTLY CLOUDY?! MEANING THE CLOUDS WILL PART?!!??!?! I'm freaking amazing you guys!!! I crack myself up! You can't tell me that wasn't good! lol David doesn't think it is, but I know that he's just mad because he didn't think of it first! I love me. ;P (David is still just shaking his head right now) 


Thank you, and goodnight ladies and gentleman. hahahhahahahah! (yes, I am sleep deprived)

Sunday, August 23, 2009

I DID IT!!!

For those of you who don't know me, I have belonephobia (fear of needles....a word I just learned). :P It's not so much the needle I'm afraid of, because I'm okay with shots, it's the thought of a needle being inside my vein. Anyway, lately I've been more and more curious about how to start an IV and how to draw blood. I've watched both a million times at work. When I actually caught myself WANTING to try it, I freaked out! That is a huge step for me!!! So I decided I needed to act on that, before I change my mind lol, and take a phlebotomy class. So, I did this weekend. It was a 16 hour class, so we started poking on the first day! Talk about crash course! At the beginning of the first day of class, we had to sign a consent form that stated we would draw other peoples blood and allow others to draw our blood AN UNLIMITED AMOUNT OF TIMES for the purpose of learning. As I was signing this form, my neighbors were chuckling because I was shaking my head and mumbling "I can't believe I'm doing this...." lol I still kinda in shock that I took the class.... Anyway, I survived and only had to be poked 3 times. I am a pretty easy stick because I'm so white, I'm clear! lol Here's a pic of what my arms look like two days later. (they looked worse yesterday)

The bruise on MY left arm (right in the pic) was a lot worse. The next day the teacher walked around making sure everybody's arms were okay and documented who had bruises etc. She announced to the class that my arm was the worst. lol So everybody had to come over to me and check out my arms lol. I felt bad because usually that is a sign that the "poker" did a bad job, but the girl who poked me didn't do too bad. She just went in way too slow, so blood squirted in the air. :P I was just worried someone was would either blow my vein or go fishing for it-which is a no no. There were a couple people that I watched that got nervous in the middle of the stick and let go of the needle (which is super bad) and who went in at one angle and then changed angles while the needle was still inside (also super super bad). Several more people got nervous and pulled the needle out before taking off the tourniquet, which results in blood squirting or gushing out. Another problem people had was pushing the needle a little further in or out while trying to change the vials to collect the blood. This can also make the blood squirt or worse, It can blow the vein. I accidently went in a little when I did it the first time, which was uncomfortable for the person I stuck, but I didn't blow the vein or squirt. Thank goodness... The class was fun though. It felt SO good when I successfully got blood on my first poke!!! Not to brag or anything, but David is making me add that I got a perfect score on the written exam. :) I was surprised I did so well because we had to memorize so much. Like all the different types of tubes with different colored caps which meant different additives in them which means they are for performing different tests...AND the order of draw- meaning which tubes of blood have to be filled first so they don't contaminate each other. I think my fear of needles is almost gone! I can't lie and say that I like getting poked, but I sure do like poking other people! ;D

No End In Sight

So, something short, but really funny happened the other night as we were having our family prayer, and I had to share.

As I was getting towards the end of my prayer, Ashley lets go of my hand and turns away. I knew she was really tired, but that was still weird, so after I finished I asked her what was up. She tells me, "There was just no end in sight..." She, of course, remembers none of this. But it was hilarious. :-)

Also, I should note that yesterday, when she was blessing the food, she prayed for rain. Two hours later, a thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere, drenched our neighborhood, and disappeared. Now I'm going to have her pray that we win the lottery. :D

NEW CAR!!!

So, this is about a week late, but we bought a new car! And by new, I mean NEW new. Brand spankin' new. It had 5 miles on it when we drove it off the lot. :-) It's a 2009 Honda Fit, BYU Blue, and it's awesome. Ashley thinks it's really cute. And with her granddaddy helping us during the negotiations in Houston, we got it pretty much at the invoice price.

Part of the reason we did it now was because the one car thing was just getting ridiculous, with the forgetting of shoes and all... ;-) But really, it is such a nice car, and it has already been so helpful and so useful in helping us get more done, especially when Ashley has to work. I can be home 4 hours before her, clean the house, and have dinner ready when she walks in the door.


This is our first picture with the car after we bought it, out in front of Ashley's family's house. Don't you just love that huge smile on her face? I love it! And I love her! And therefore she has a new car. :D


Here's an action photo taken by Ashley's mom as we drove back to Austin on I-10. Don't worry, we went slowly and carefully.

Here it is in the garage, from the front...


...and from the side...


...and in the driveway...


Here we have our two cars. Poor Groundskeeper Willy 2 (that's the Camry) is going to have to give up his spot in the garage, but hopefully he'll get along with his new, nameless friend. I'm trying to get Ashley to name the Fit, but she claims girls don't name cars.

Whatever. ;-)

Here's the front seat. It's a small car, but it's amazing how much room is inside.


Here's the steering wheel and dash. It's awesome. It looks like a Star Trek bridge, only cooler. The gauges light up all blue and the needle glows red. It's nice. Also, you can't see them too well, but there are paddle shifters on the steering column. That means, you can drive it like an automatic if you want. If you don't, you can put it in "Sport" mode, and shift manually with the paddles. But you don't have to worry about the clutch; it's all handled electronically! Too bad it's only got a 4-cylinder engine - a V6 would be freaking AWESOME with that. Also, the radio has a display that tells you what station you're on, what song is playing, and who sings it, for any FM radio station.

Despite being a small car, the back seat actually has a lot of room! I can sit back there comfortably. But that's not all...

You can also fold the seat bottoms up, if you need to put something tall in there. The seats also have storage underneath them, too. There's a crazy amount of storage space in this thing! But wait! There's more!


The seats also fold down flat with the deck! Like this, there's a lot more storage space, especially for something bulky, than we have in the Camry, which is a much bigger car.

And now for the obligatory picture of me posing with the car...

And look at this hottie posing with it! :D I have to admit, she looks WAY better in my pajamas than I do.

Anyway, that's our new Honda Fit, and we love it.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Call CPS

So, today we had to have the water softener people come over to check our water softener out, because our water wasn't soft anymore. When I open the door, he says to me, "Are your parents home?" I kinda blinked a couple times, and I was like, "Ummm... no... I'm the owner of this house..." He didn't apologize or anything, he just said, "Oh." I should have said, "No, are yours?" Or, "I don't know, they live in Houston, do you want me to check?" When I told David what happened, he said, "Great, he's going to call CPS and they're going to take my WIFE away." The rest of the time he was here he didn't say anything, and it was really awkward. lol Do I really look that young?

Thursday, August 13, 2009

You forgot WHAT?

So, my commute to work today took me about an hour and a half. Why's that? Well, just as we were about to drive up to the hospital to drop Ashley off for work, she informs me that she's forgotten something, and that I need to go back and get it for her.

That something? Her shoes.

I don't know how you walk out the door without your shoes on. I don't even like going in the garage with just my socks on, the floor's pretty nasty right now. But no shoes?! Seriously? I guess that's what happens when we have to get up before 6 for 3 days straight.

I sure do love her, though. I went back, burned probably 2 gallons of gas and $4 in toll road charges, got the shoes, delivered them, and got in to work at 8:00. And I was happy to do it.

She'll never live it down, though. :D That's what blogs are for. Mwahahaha!

Friday, August 7, 2009

!!!Que onda wey!!!

I love this video! Ryan, does this bring back any memories from your mission? hahah This video SO reminds me of my mexican ex-boyfriend...wow... For those of you who don't know me very well, I used to think I was mexicana. Actually, I was. There will always be a part of me that is :) I <3 this song! Enjoy!

Monday, August 3, 2009

Worst. Lyrics. Ever.

I hereby nominate Kanye West for the dubious distinction of writing the worst song lyrics to have ever been written by mankind. I dare say ALL of our blues night lyrics in 222 - despite the fact that almost all of them involved rhyming "blue" and "poo" - were Shakespearean sonnets by comparison. Are you ready for this? Here it is:

Tell me now can you make it past your caspers

So we can finally fly off into NASA?

Kanye West, Knock You Down

Now, I could have put all his lyrics from this three artist effort in as the submission, but honestly, these two lines were all I needed. Also, they were profane, and this is a family blog. So, how doth this lyric suck? Let me count the ways...

  1. First off, in the context of the verse, this is supposed to be a couplet. A couplet is a pair of lines that rhyme. Caspers and NASA do not rhyme. Even if your English pronunciation is atrocious, they don't rhyme. It doesn't even qualify as slant rhyme. And you might claim that caspers was supposed to rhyme with past, but that's crap, because if so something similar would have been done in the second line - which we'll get to in a moment. There's no rhyme. The next two lines are a couplet, suggesting that the artist knows how to do them. Unfortunately, this attempt is an epic failure.
  2. A couplet is also supposed to have the same meter. Meter in poetry is the rhythmic structure. I would do an analysis of the meter here, but not only do the lines not have the same meter, there's no discernable poetic meter in either of them! I tried to figure it out, and it was a complete waste of time.
  3. I know, I know, meter and rhyme is no longer required for something to be called poetry (which is retarded, but unfortunately true in our retarded society). However, both are still very important for music, and even more important still in rap music. Since you don't have a melody to tie the lyrics into a song with rap, you really on rhyme and rhythm to do it. In fact, many rappers often rap about their ability to rhyme and having rhythm. (A discussion about how including your own name in a song automatically makes it suck is beyond the scope of this essay.) Because this rap lyric has no rhyme, no meter, and hence, no rhythm, it doubly sucks. You could get away with this in the verse of a country song, maybe, but as the lead-off couplet of a rap verse? WOW. Epic failure.
  4. Now let's get to content. I want to get the obvious out of the way right now. "Fly off into NASA?" That makes NO SENSE! You want to fly off into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration? You want to fly off into a government agency? Huh? NASA != space! NASA is not even a place, it's an abstract organization with locations throughout the United States, including Cape Canaveral, Florida and Houston, Texas, among several others. Now, I guess you might use NASA as a metaphor for space, if you needed NASA for the rhyme. But we've clearly established that YOU DON'T! RETARDED!
  5. Caspers? I'm guessing this is a substitute for ghosts, which are a metaphor that haunt someone that's scared of the future because of past events. However, I've got problems with it. First, Casper is a name, not a ghost. It has many uses besides that of a name for a ghost, including a city in Wyoming. However, even as the name of a ghost, it should be noted that the full title of the ghost is "Casper the Friendly Ghost." Ashley is deathly afraid of ghosts, and yet I have witnessed her watching a Casper the Friendly Ghost movie without any problems! Maybe that doesn't seem to matter, but think about it: if the reason for using Casper was as a substitute for ghost, for a metaphor as I explained above, the fact that Casper is a friendly ghost completely destroys the very metaphor you were attempting to create!
  6. Let's put it all together now. So, you're singing about someone that needs to get past their friendly memories so that you can figuratively fly off together into a government agency with no specific locality? Holy crap, that sucks! Why do they need to get past their friendly memories? Why do you need to go to NASA? What do either of those to things mean in the context of a love song? And why does this keep getting airtime on my radio?!
  7. This song is a three person effort, and you still have crap like this in it? I'd have better luck with three monkeys on typewriters... Maybe that old joke about monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare should be updated to include hip-hop artists...
Wake up, people. I could similarly destroy most of the rest of this song, as well, but it's not worth my time. Is this really all you need to be a millionaire recording artist? Because I can write crap like this in my sleep.

Lest ye doubt me, observe how easy it is for me to change very little of this lyric to make it rhyme, make the lines have similar meter, and preserve the intended-yet-poorly-executed meaning of the original. Behold:

Tell me now, can you make it past your poltergeists

So we can finally fly off into higher heights?

See? Simple. Poltergeists are also ghosts like casper, but they're scary. Higher heights are somewhere you would actually fly to that make sense in the context of the song. In fact, it's somewhere NASA flies off to frequently. That change took me 15 seconds, tops, to think of. Not hard.

Anyway, I'm done. I'd love to hear any suggestions you have for the "Worst. Lyrics. Ever." Award, but you better be able to back it up.

P.S. Pay no attention to the songs in the player to the right. Presence on this blog - with the exception of "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" - does not constitute my approval of the lyrics, message, content, melody, beat, rhythm, meter, rhyme, quality, implications, declarations, or defecations of said songs. In fact, I think some of them (guess which?) are some of the most idiotic ramblings ever recorded by mankind, and can only be called music by such a loose definition as would render the term utterly meaningless. I pick my battles. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" is on there, which is an excellent song presenting a dizzying variety of musical styles and talents. Also, it's freaking hilarious, and I love it.