XXX

This post is not what you think.....a terrible Vin Diesel movie. Actually, I am speaking of the first summer blockbuster X-Men 3: Last Stand. We recently saw this movie and I must say it is not a bad follow up to the previous two. This movie does raise some interesting questions. If you were a mutant what power would you like to possess? What size of a nerd think tank did it take to create such a movie? Finally, how many comic book collector tears were shed when (beware plot spoiler) Professor X kicked the bucket or should I say disintegrated, without spilling a drop of blood? My mutant power would probably be patience to endure the upcoming Mr. Belvedere marathon. The other two questions have yet to be answered but I am pretty sure I heard a few sobs during the movie.

I am impressed with the actor Hugh Jackman. This guy can go from playing a prancing gay man on Broadway to playing the hard nosed, rip to shreds anyone who prances, Wolverine. This takes some serious acting skill. I believe this would be equivalent Steven Cojocar (Cojo) playing Jack Bauer. I can see him running around LA trying to save old Aaron Pierce from being a fashion victim with his pink man purse in tow. Anyways, for the next big comic book to be made into a movie I nominate Collin Firth as the lead. Who can forget him in the riveting role of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. His power would be bitter invective and proper english, and if that doesn't work he will splash you with is luke warm tea and throw his hard, but enjoyable, biscuit in your face. Does anyone else out there have any good ideas?

That is enough fodder for one night. Take Care. By the way the furry animal is a wolverine.

paying tribute

We're in the middle of a thunderstorm now, but earlier today was beautiful as we went down to the deserted financial district to visit the statue of Joseph Smith in a little plaza near Old Slip. To have the statue approved, it was put in as a temporary art piece on the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith's birthday on December 23, 2005 and will be up until June 10. In the inscription, it read, "At the age of 14 he told of a remarkable vision in which he saw and conversed with God the Father and Jesus Christ." After many complaints from the public, this sentence had to be removed by grinding down the letters. Now, the calls from concerned citizens wondering if the plaque was vandalized...

While downtown we walked on the south pier and ran into this cool ship. Later on, we met up with our friends the Boerems, the Hennemans and Sorensons to see "X-Men III" which was a good time (there is a little extra movie after the credits, for those of you who haven't seen it), and then walked down to the Shake Shack which had a ton of hype so we had to check it out, but in retrospect probably wasn't all it could have been, after waiting in line for an hour. But, it was a fabulous afternoon and I know my standards for good milkshakes are sometimes impossibly high.

Me, Julia and Andrea waiting for the bus near Times Square.

Standing on the Edge of tomorrow

Greetings. I have decided to jump on the very large bandwagon, get with the times, and post a blog. Blog is a funny word. It sounds like some sort of a hideous swamp creature that preys on children and small dogs. As most of you tech savvy readers out there know, blog comes from a shortened form of the words "web log." I have a friend who's last name is Webb, he could literally have a Webb log. So anyway I am getting with 21st century pop culture and am ready to lay it all out there for family, friends, and weirdos in basements who live vicariously through reality TV and blogs.

For anyone who recognizes the title of this post.....bravo, you were most likely a teen in the 90s. For those who don't recognize, it is the theme song from Saved By the Bell: The College Years. That's right I went there. I really can't contemplate why this show was ever cancelled, although it probably had something to do with Zach Morris being 35 and a freshman in college. What message does that send to the kids? Maybe that it is okay to wait to go to college, or that it is never to late and don't give up, or possibly pick the biggest nerd, aka Screech Powers, and make him your slave through high school and even on into college. I tell you reader, that the wacky hijinks of Zach Morris, Kelly Kapowski, and AC Slater taught me some of life's greatest lessons (insert sardonic sneer).

The reason I even bring it up though is because I am in school and have in fact just this last week finished 2nd year of dental school (please hold the applause for when there is someone around). Yours truly will soon be sitting in front of some poor sap (most likely a Dominican) holding a hot piece of machinery that the lay person calls a drill, but as a dentist I call it a handpiece. That's right next time you are at the dentist mention something about his handpiece and I am sure he will be impressed. I had an operative dentistry professor whose goal was to break us of the habit of calling the handpiece a drill. The ironic part is that we made a tee shirt with the slogan "You Know the Drill" for the incoming freshman. When he saw that shirt he went ballistic, knowing the power of tee shirt slogans. Technically it was put on the tee shirt as a result of me coming up with the theme but in actuality Christina brainstormed the idea and I presented it, and won. Ask her about it, true story.

On a completely different note we watched the documentary Supersize Me this weekend. The basic story is that a healthy man eats McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 30 days. During this time he is being monitored by three doctors. Interestingly enough his health deteriorates rather rapidly and he is almost forced to quit the pseudo scientific case report. He endures and the audience is grossed out. I recommend this show to everyone. So go rent it and become temporarily motivated to stop eating fast food!

And finally, Happy Birthday Mark or should I say Feliz Cumpleanos Senor Mark.

memorial weekend

Happy Memorial Day weekend! Last July we took a trip down to Washington DC to get out of the city for a bit and visit my old roommates Christianne and Sarah - here's me with the Jefferson Memorial. That is a long walk around all those monuments! Helaman is busy now studying for his first board exam in mid-July, so we'll be putting off our summer trips until after that is over.

It's kind of a muggy day in New York today, so I'm staying in to do a little cleaning, and am taking a break right now! One thing I love about our apartment building is that there is a washing machine and dryer on every floor. Most people have to go several blocks to a laundry mat and sit there while it gets done.

Quote from Middlemarch:
"But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire; the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love." - Chapter 42 

isn't he cute?

This is one of my favorite pictures of H. This was in Mesa when we had been dating about 5 months and thus got suckered into helping me and my roommates move into the Gilbert house we lived in until we got married. It looks like he fell asleep on the job.

Mom and I (and I think Sheralie) are reading "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. Every now and then she has commentary that is so well put I have to write it down. Here's one from Chapter 19:
"There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet."
Anyone know people like that?;)

shop talk

In case you haven't visited (or saw our last website), this is the view from our apartment window on the 18th floor.

Almost four weeks ago I started a new job at a law firm as an immigration paralegal in midtown. I help our clients' foreign employees come into and go out of the country - it is an amazing amount of paperwork to contend with but I like it a lot because there is always something new to learn, like how to get a Japanese Police Certificate stating that you are not a wanted criminal over there. There are only a certain number of temporary work visas for foreigners available in the U.S. every year, and they are almost out so everyone is scrambling to get them before its too late. Unfortunately in most cases you have to have a degree of some sort related to the job you are doing, and most people won't graduate until next month so it is creating a small amount of panic. Anyway, interesting stuff. This is the fifth full time job I've had, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that you really need a job that will keep you interested to where at least you aren't nodding off after lunch (although in some cases I can see how that can happen to anyone).

Birthdays and other fun

In my blog, no post is complete without a picture, so I'll include one of the last ones we took, a couple months ago at my birthday party held at "Queen of Sheba", an Ethiopian restaurant Helaman surprised me with. Apparently, in Ethiopia when people have food (all the National Geographic magazines I've ever read say they don't) - they eat on huge plates sitting in baskets like this. You pick up your food with flatbread.

My last blog entry was about a year ago... and since I finally have my life back after changing jobs twice it will be fun to keep it up again.

Visitors

It has been a really fun weekend. Aaron and Shara got in on Friday night and we met them down in Chinatown where their bus came in. Thenwe went to this great Chinese place, Joe's Shanghai, down there. We stayed up pretty late talking and playing games. I was glad that I had finished scrapbooking all my arizona pictures because they liked to see those (b/c Aaron was in most).

On Saturday we got up really early and went down to TKTS to try to get some good tickets but there really wasn't anything real good left, and even the shows we'd never heard of the cheapest tickets were $50 each. I felt bad because Aaron and Shara were expecting to pay that much and it was fine with them but me and H can't afford it! We said to go without us but they didn't want to do that so we ended up just having lunch and going to museums, going to the Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's cathedral which was amazing, I'd never been there. But it was soooo cold outside.

Then we went to Central Park and took a carriage ride around it. There is an art exhibit up there that just consists of 1700 huge orange flags on the trails of the park. We all thought it was a little weird. If they were a different color it would have been fine but it was like construction orange. Some millionaire put it up.

After that we had some pizza and went to a comedy club we had some free tickets for. Two of the comics were just hilarious and we were all dying laughing, but the others were just not so funny and crude. When that was over we went to Serendipity's for dessert. During the day H's friend from high school Jake called and he and his wife Mary had driven in from Maryland spontaneously and wanted to hang out. So we all went to Serendipity's together and it was really fun but we were sooo exhausted and freezing by the time we got home it was insane because we had to get up so early for church the next day. Somehow we did it though.

When we got home we expected that Aaron and Shara would want to go see more sights but they were too tired so we just came home and took naps and then played games and made/ate dinner for the rest of the evening. Jake and Mary came over later and we made some ice cream. It snowed pretty heavily on President's Day morning and so we opted to stay in bed while Aaron and Shara went down to Times Square and wandered around a bit. They just barely got back to get their stuff and go catch the bus.

It was really fun, they are great to hang out with and were up to do pretty much anything. And since we really hadn't talked to Aaron for so long it was good to catch up on everything and hear about how they are doing in Boston. Shara is nice, it was hilarious to talk to her about the whole Stephanie/Aaron dilemma and all that drama.

This weekend I got a major windburn on my cheeks from beingoutside so much and so I look like raggady ann with my rosy cheekstoday. Hilery sent me a picture of her new dog - sooo cute. And I'm not a dog person.

Getting Started

One of the main reasons I can't ever keep up a regular journal is that I hate to write with pens and pencils and all those 20th century relics. A sub-reason is that my husband, Helaman, reads my journals in his spare time. While there isn't anything in there I'm trying to hide, I now want to hide it just to spare myself the mocking I get from him regarding pre-marriage entries about other dates, other guys and the silly things that you decide to write about late at night.

I do, however, believe in making some sort of record of your life if for no other reason than to pass some of the lessons you learn along. I got this idea from the show "Felicity". Felicity and I went through college at exactly the same time - 1998-2002 - and she made tapes to her friend Sally and it seemed to serve a theraputic purpose, as well as a narrative purpose, without being overly cheesy like some pathetic voice-overs in dramas can be.

Along the Same Lines

Yesterday I read "The Secret Life of Bees" which was pretty good, a story about a young girl in the Civil Rights Era south. A quick read anyway.

Last night since there aren't any shows on that I like to watch I got completely involved in fiddling around with Picasa again and spent hours doing it and editing all kinds of pictures to make me look like an amazing photographer. It is a big project, which is nice because it tends to keep me occupied for a while when H is studying. However, it will cost me since now I want to order all new prints that have been edited. I had about 30 prints all ready to be scrapbooked, now they will go to waste. Oh well.

H and I are such nerds. We watch Jeopardy every night and now we are keeping score with eachother and whoever wins has to clean up dinner.