Christopher's top 10 moments of 2013

Wow! 2013 delivered. Here's one year for the history books. Here are Christopher's top 10 moments of 2013. Maybe I can get Susan to do one too.

10. Moving to Houston. I'll tack this on to the end of the list because I'm not sure if this qualifies as a top moment, but it certainly was a big one. Moving 2000 miles was very expensive and very stressful, but with lots of help we made it safely and without major incident. It was also a great opportunity to spend lots of quality time with my mom, Bradley, and Susan's brother (who I hadn't spent too much time with since he came back from his mission), and her mother. So if we just forget all the high stakes planning, we can chalk this up as a road trip for the ages.

9. Editing President Eyring's biography. For my advanced editing class, we worked with the author of President Eyring's new biography to help edit each section. It was cool because it was professional quality work for a manuscript that I had a lot of enthusiasm for. The book is very honest, and has some interesting tid-bits most people would be interested in.

8. Free zoo day. When we came to Houston we immediately checked for when free zoo day was. We braved the traffic and headed to the inner loop. The zoo is beautiful, and knowing that we could go for free the first Tuesday of any month, we felt no pressure to see everything. So we just meandered. The highlight was definitely the long and winding Elephant exhibit with at least 6 elephants including a couple of babies. We can't wait to go back.

7. Video game design camp out. While living in Rexburg, I worked with the teacher's quorum. They loved video games and I convinced them that we could spend time on video games if they took it seriously. They bought in completely. And the culmination involved graphic design, story telling, and coding. It was great fun, and at the end we came out with a working video game.

6. Second anniversary. For our second anniversary, and since we're wicked poor, we celebrated in twos. We took a two mile walk. Rented some red boxes (2 for 1), got two ice creams, and spent $2.22.

5. Conference marathon. Before graduating college I presented at four conferences all along the Wasatch front. There is something thrilling about people who sit and listen to your literary analyses. The best of the bunch was the Association of Mormon Letters because I went with two professors. We became close, and chatted all the way from Rexburg to Orem and back. I learned a ton, and made a bunch of great connections.

4. Then I graduated. This wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that I decided to not wear a cap and gown, because wearing clothing that is specifically designed to brag about your accomplishments isn't very humble, or modest. And since as a Mormon I try to wear modest clothing, I couldn't in good conscious wear the cap and gown. Getting to explain this to people over and over all day fed my rebellious spirit and my insatiable ego.

3. 4th of July. Susan and I had the best fourth of July ever. We went to the zoo, because you know--Awesome--where we saw a baby lemur learning how to climb from its mother. Then we had a little BBQ at the park, where we brainstormed the idea for the middle grade fantasy novel I am now in the middle of writing. And then we got a spot where we couldn't see the firework show, but randomly the church we were behind had their own show. It was low key, and perfect for crowd averse me.

2. Reading poetry at Last Poet Standing. So three years ago I had an idea for Last Poet Standing. The little bugger has taken on a life of its own. This year was its third go around. But since I've always been helping I've never gotten on stage before. This season, our vote counting entertainment dropped out, and I had told them I could always fill in. I got on stage and did a short poetry set. It was a huge thrill, the crowd dug my poetry, and since I couldn't get voted off there was no potential blow to my ego.

1. Susan's having a baby! I bet you can guess what will be number one on this list next year. This was a delightful surprise, and the timing couldn't have been better. We learned just a couple weeks ago that we're expecting a boy. It's wicked scary, but once you accept that everyone who has ever had a child has been a terrible parent it takes a little bit of the pressure off.

We're Having a Baby

Susan and I are expecting a baby next May. I have noticed that babies do not do especially well with schedules, so May 11th is only a guess. We don't know the gender yet. We are excited. Susan and I have been married a little more than 2 years now, so the baby is a big blessing.

Susan has a doctor she likes right around the corner. So she is all set up that way. As for our emotions on the subject, very little of consequence has changed. Susan and I have always planned on having children, we still are, just now we have it on the calendar. I'm confident our excitement will grow as it gets closer.

Susan's health has been solid. She had typical symptoms badly for about a week and a half, and they've stuck around but only here and there since then. In our day to day lives this is mostly manifest as Susan not wanting to eat anything I make. I've started going to the store daily in order to keep up with her food moods.

The baby is due at the very end of Susan's semester, if she (my guess) or he (Susan's) can be a little bit late, Susan will have a perfect summer break off. If the baby comes a little early it'll be smack dab in the middle of final's week.

If the books we are checking out from the library is any indication, we are feverishly preparing and certainly nervous, but we have high hopes that this will be an acclivitous adventure.

Don't Go Smelling My Farts

One thing Susan and I have learned about Houston is that it rains here kinda a lot. But usually it's sporadic. For an hour here, and an hour there. But yesterday we had about 8 hours of non-stop downpour. Since Susan had worked Friday night, we were going to date on Saturday. I had found a local pumpkin patch, but alas neither of us had interest in a muddy tromp. So we replanned on the fly and decided to find a duet and rewrite the lyrics Weird Al style. So for your enjoyment "Don't Go Smelling My Farts" to the tune of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John.

C: Don’t go smelling my farts

S: I couldn’t if I tried.

C: If I get indigestion

S: Maybe don’t get deep fried.

                               

C: Don’t go smelling my farts

S: Here I brought you some tums

C: Oh, Honey, when you walk in the room

S: I just turn round and run

C&S: Ooh Ooh

S: Everyone knows it

C: When I eat bad

S: My nose is sad

C&S: Ooh Ooh

S: Everyone knows it

C: If you are smart

C: don’t smell my farts

S: Ooh Oh, I won’t smell your farts

New Jobs

Susan and I have now been in Houston for a little less than two months. And we're starting to settle in pretty well.

I started by doing tutoring. After less than one month I was one of the top 5 busiest tutors with the company. Since getting tutorees was the most difficult part of the job, getting so many so quickly was quite an accomplishment. In addition I got a job with a local school called, Hua Xia . It is a supplementary Saturday school for ridiculously high achieving kids. I teach 5th grade, 7th grade and SAT prep students. Their original teacher dropped out, and so I was hired on Thursday. I had to develop three entire curriculum and syllabi by Saturday. It was a great adventure. Now I get to teach about setting, and characterization, and grammar diagrams every week. And I couldn't be having more fun.





It's only part time, but combined with the tutoring it was plenty to keep our heads above water. But, and this is the crucial but, I've also been doing a randomly large amount of free work for the More Good Foundation. They run and help support unofficial LDS websites. They help it so that when someone Googles information about Mormons they get accurate information. Gabrielle got a job working with them some time ago, and as I was looking for a full time job, I often talked to her about what she was doing. So I wrote a YouTube sitcom for them, that they are currently looking at getting produced. This was a great chance to meet a lot of people in the company. I've also impressed them with some technical help I did for Gabrielle's presentations. Well they were looking at getting an intern staff writer, so Gabrielle gave me the heads up. I had a great interview, and we were working on getting the internship set up, and they lost one of their regular writers. So now it's turned into the full fledged job of my dreams, and has effectively ended my current job search. Thank you so much to everyone who has helped me as we've looked and who have sent great leads my way. I couldn't have done it without you. I'll be leading a team of writers that create buzzfeed style lists that teach about the church.  Do I feel a little silly writing for a group with a name like "More Good" yeah I do, but at least this wording makes it clear that Good is acting as a noun, so it is grammatically correct.

I've also gotten involved in the local writers group, and have started their first anthology. I'm collecting stories from the writers, and then I'll put it all together using all my mad English major skills. When it's done we're going to sell it print on demand for cost off of Amazon. It's a great project I'm excited to be heading up.

Susan's been no slouch herself. The reason we moved down here was for her to start a Family Therapy program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. She's already a star of the department. She joined the Marriage and Family Therapy student association. We enjoyed attending their opening social a couple weeks ago, where Susan and I totally rocked out on a fun version of speed charades. They also elected/said hey you do this/appointed Susan as their student government rep. So she gets to go to weekly meetings and vote on important issues like whether or not to fund the Vietnamese club party (she voted aye.) The work for her program has also started to swing in. She wrote her first paper this week. I don't know if this is impressive or unimpressive but she wrote her eight page paper in six hours. It helps that she has an in-house proofreader. She also did her first ever practice therapy session. The students in her class roll played. Susan did great and was singled out by the professor afterwards for validating the feelings of a resistant client. I'm happy she's getting to do therapy, she was so geeked out after she did it.

Susan also got a new job. She's working for a place called Learning Rx. She'll work one on one with students like she did before we moved. But rather than working on social skills, she's teaching cognitive skills. She found one of their offices about five minutes away from our house. So for this semester while she hasn't started her therapy practicum ,she thought she had the time and it would be a good way to keep using her skills. She's started training and should start actually working in the next couple of weeks. That guy below is their actual mascot. I know I know, so cool.

So we have been very blessed in our move, lucky to be in Houston and finding good ways to be involved in the community.

Moving to Texas, 2nd Wedding Anniversary, etc.

Hey ya'll. This is Susan. So far, Christopher has been in charge of this blog, but since he is preparing a talk for church tomorrow, I thought I would give everyone a much needed update.

Part 1: The 3-Day Move to Texas
First of all, a big shout out to both of our families who joined us on our wonderful trip across the country. They were an ENORMOUS help and I don't think we could have done it without them. Thank you!!

Christopher created itineraries for each of the cars, complete with directions, maps, places we could stop for breaks, and even road-trip games to play in the car. This reminded me of the packets he created for the members of our wedding party. He's awesome, I know. :)
While on the way down, We visited Christopher's sister, Gabrielle, at the company she works for, The More Good Foundation. Christopher presented (with style) his 8-minute Mormon sitcom to the COO of the company. This was a great opportunity for him, and the company might make this sitcom into a YouTube video.
Here are more pictures of the move:

My little brother, Mark, and I waiting to eat at Terra Mia (their gelato was delicious!)

The lovely red mountains of Utah.

Hi Utah.

These were all pictures of the first day. We gave up taking pictures on the rest of the moving days.

Some memorable events of the move were me running over a dead deer late at night and that same car getting a flat tire less than a half hour away from our final destination.

All in all, it was an ok move. We're happy to be in Texas. Some things we like are: the many restaurants, grocery stores, and other shops we are surrounded by; the friendly people, and the pool we have at our apartment complex. Some things we don't like are: the drivers who impatiently zoom around us just to stop at the same traffic light as us, the humidity (I'm still acclimating), and the many car repairs we've had done on our cars to have them pass the safety inspection.

Part 2: Our 2nd Wedding Anniversary

On August 20th we celebrated the accomplishment of being married two years to each other. Our activities revolved around a "2" theme. We read 2 children's books to each other at the library, took a 2 mile walk, got 2 ice-cream cones (2 for $1), and rented 2 movies from Redbox. We had an enjoyable day together and hope to continue to have many more. Christopher's add-note: We celebrated our 2nd Anniversary on a Tuesday (more 2's) and the total cost of our activities was $2.20 because we are, and I quote, "wicked poor". 

Part 3: Christopher's Birthday

Christopher was adamant about not celebrating his birthday. He feels like his birthday doesn't matter. Whatever. We celebrated it anyways. We got two coffee-free frappaccinos from Starbucks (thanks Mark for the giftcard!!) We also watched the movie OZ, which Christopher has been wanting to see for awhile.

One of Christopher's professors from BYU-I thought the movie was very misogynistic, but we thought otherwise. 

We'll talk about Christopher's job search and me trying to get resident-tuition in the next blog post.

Bonus Post: Cars

Cars.

I know I said no post until after the move. But I thought you might find this readable.

In nine days we are driving three vehicles 1700 miles, ten hours a day for three straight days. This concerns me. Susan's car just turned ten. My car could probably apply for social security benefits, and it just passed 160,000 miles. So in preparation for this trip we have been taking our cars to the shop for the last many months.

Here's a basic summary.

May-Replace the belts in Christopher's car, and not finish all the work because there's more than we can afford.

June-Repair Susan's A/C and get a full tune-up. Also save up money so we can finish fixing Christopher's car. Also Christopher's car starts squealing every time it starts.

July-Finish the work on Christopher's car that suddenly appeared last month, and finish all the stuff we couldn't afford before.

So we take mine back in for July, and they give us the estimate and we breathe a ginormous sigh of relief because it is exactly within our precarious budget.

Then on Thursday, Susan decides to go to work, which seems like a good idea at the time and her car is kaputz. My car is still in the shop, so we get our neighbor to help us jump start the car, and jump and jump and nothing. So we had to tow it into the shop. Now lucky of luckies when we get there and I walk in the gal at the desk says, "Oh, we just finished your car, I haven't even called you yet." Phew! So instead of walking home from the shop, we can take my car, which also means Susan can go directly off to work. The next day, Friday, they call us about 30 minutes before they close for the weekend. The trouble with Susan's car was just a starter relay, a relatively cheap piece. I said they could go ahead and do the repair, and the gal at the shop, who I've gotten to be very close with over the last several months, says she knew I'd say that and they had already gotten the piece in. So they installed it and we rushed off to pick up the car before they closed.

So I'm not sure if I should feel cursed: two new car problems in the two months before we're trying to make an expensive move with said cars, or if I should feel blessed: all our car problems have so far occurred before the trip and none have destroyed our finances yet.

I pick blessed because I don't want to think about the things I would be getting cursed for.

Susan's Birthday

When we were first married I misguessed Susan's birthday on a couple of occasions and learned that this bothered her to no end. So even when I learned the correct date, I would incessantly refer to July 19th as her birthday, one week late. Susan insisted this was the worst thing I could do to her. Then at the end of last summer (a couple months after we celebrated Susan's birthday on the correct date) Susan and I were driving home from Denver after a whirlwind trip to see our dear friend Tasia get married. About as soon as we got home Susan's heart began racing. Literally. And it wouldn't slow down. It was sort of terrifying. So we rushed her to the hospital. We sat Susan down on a chair in the waiting area as I gave her important information to the office staff. Name. Social Security Number. Birthday. And in my fluster and nervousness I said the wrong birthday.

"I told you that joke would bite you in the butt one day," Susan shouted from her chair. And she and the receptionists had a little laugh at my expense.

So this year we celebrated Susan's birthday on her birthday, with no mention of any other dates. But in memory of Susan's not birthday, July 19th. I am posting this blog all about her birthday.

Susan's job has no reliable schedule, and so we had expected Susan to come home about nine o'clock on her birthday, so we were going to do a little cake and ice cream and that was all. But about five we learned she'd be home for dinner. So there went the cake idea (which I had intended to surprise her with). Instead we went down to Olive Garden which is Susan's favorite of all the restaurants.

The highlight of our conversation was convincing Susan that we had been to Olive Garden ten times together. She found this nearly impossible to believe, but we managed to remember every one of the occasions.

In our haste to get down to Olive Garden, though, we forgot to get our movie gift card which we were going to use to see Despicable Me 2. But we decided to return to Rexburg, and go back for the movie on Saturday.

I had every intention of taking this picture in front of a big yellow poster with a fat bald Steve Carrel doppelganger, but even though the movie had been out only one week we could not find a single piece of promotional material for Despicable Me 2. This was shocking. So instead of taking a nice picture with the scenery we could find we took the one above. Despicable Me 2 is an inoffensive movie. This is the nicest compliment I can work up. Although at the end the minions make fun of Boyz II Men which is hilarious . I guess that's a nicer compliment than inoffensive. I stand corrected. But it has only a small portion of it's predecessor's charm.

Then we went home, and I delivered the promised cake. Not wanting to dirty the egg beaters because washing them is a chore, I decided to hand mix the cake. The directions said 450 turns. So I counted. And you know what? The cake was delectable. Very light. Of course I still can't decide if the 450 turns was more of a chore than washing the beaters. I'm still on the side of probably. Cleaning those beaters is really obnoxious. 

This is Susan with her cake, and the flowers her parents sent her for her birthday. Also Susan is not 221, but we didn't feel like buying a number three. Besides this way there were more candles for Susan to blow out. And in the single greatest act of theft I have personally experienced, the dress I bought for Susan was delivered by the Post Office and then swiped off of our porch. At least as best as we can figure, since the Post Office did an investigation and everything and said it was definitely delivered. So no present for her birthday, but it did come the next Tuesday. It looks better on Susan, but here's a picture of it anyway.

I made Susan go dress shopping with me at the mall and I took notes on all the things she liked and then nailed a nearly perfect dress. It doesn't have a princess neckline. We can live with that.

So happy birthday to Susan, who now feels like she is old. (I don't understand this if anyone else can please let me know in the comments.) And we are a week closer to our Houston move. Our house has descended into a series of little more than piles. So probably no post next week, and the next one will be a bunch of pictures from our cross country trip.

Moving to Houston

We're moving. This is kind of sad. Lots of happy. And definitely lots of pain. We are blessed to have a regular moving crew descending on us. Both Susan's mom and brother and my mom and brother are coming up, and we're driving from Rexburg, ID all the way to Houston, TX. Susan is starting school in Houston about halfway through August. The big day is July 31, and so I've added a countdown widget, that should help you glimpse a wee bit of our excitement. The trip will take three days, and we'll get to see gobs of Utah, a corner of Colorado, just about all of New Mexico, and parts of Texas I had so far successfully avoided. It's a little bit like a vacation. A very little bit. We have already packed 10 boxes I think, and it's starting to affect the walls. 

Enjoy the countdown.

The Fourth

Most of Susan's clients are out of town for the fourth of July, and so she mostly had the day off. She managed to squeeze one client in during the morning, and then we were going to go off to Idaho Falls for the day.

This was kind of a relief for us. We are moving at the end of the month, so when I weed whacked our internet connection I decided it wasn't worth getting a new one. Then our entire computer died. So for two computer bums like Susan and I, anything to do this week is great!

Stop one was the Idaho Falls Zoo.

We spent about two hours looking at their exhibits. The weather has finally broken so it was a more Idaho like 85 degrees, so we thoroughly enjoyed our time. If you're curious, behind us there is a demoiselle crane. It looks like this:



Lowlights of the trip included the kookaburra which was not making it's rollicking laughter that you can usually hear all the way across the zoo. Also the otter exhibit was closed. Definitely lame. But mostly  the red squirrels. Why? Because red squirrels look mostly exactly like gray squirrels. Except they look awesome because they're red! So every time I see them I think, man why do we have gray squirrels and not cool squirrels.

Highlights. The goeldi's monkeys.


These little guys jumped like four feet across their cage from one tiny little branch to the next. The coolest is was when it looked like they were doing parkour zapping back and forth across five or six branches. Also there was a red panda that always looked like it was smiling. And a mama and baby lemur. The baby lemur was hanging onto the mother, as baby lemurs do, I learned from the very helpful zoo sign. Well while we watched mama lemur decided it was time for baby lemur to get going. So while baby lemur is hanging on, mama lemur is scraping baby lemur off her fur. Well she finally wins, and then baby lemur all wobbly-and-cute-baby-like takes two or three steps, looking ready to fall off the branch, and then jumps back into the fur of mama lemur who seemed happy to have baby lemur back. Lemur walking lessons. That's totally what I saw at the zoo.

Then we were off to BBQ.

The zoo is actually inside a giant park, so Susan and I drove around until we found an empty grill under some shade and set up camp. Did I forget the paper plates, utensils, spatula, and hot pad. Yes. Did we figure out how to make hot dogs on a grill anyways. Yep. We mostly just sat around and enjoyed the nice day. We started reading Fablehaven, which is okay as a book, but Susan and I went to go see the author on our first date, so we always meant to get around to reading it. About six we moved to an adjacent park where we thought we could see the Idaho Falls firework show.

We found a perfect spot, and enjoyed the rest of the evening reading and playing rummy. Then it was time for the show. Now this is the biggest firework show west of the Mississippi, in terms of most fireworks exploded, so legit. And 150,000 people go to it, which is why we stayed at a park a little ways away. So it got dark and we couldn't really see the show, and we were bummed because we figured our view just stunk. But the church next to the park started setting off their own fireworks. Over the next half hour they must have set off fifty or more. It was a small, but really nice low key show, for our really nice low key day. And we left. Turns out the big show hadn't started yet, because there was a search and rescue on the river delaying it. Oh well.

Why a Blog?

Well that's a silly question. I write like five blogs on and off, because I love writing and I'm awesome at it.  So why a blog with pictures and little quips about what's going on in my life. Ah! A more apt question, because this blog seems quaint, and Christopher is not often quaint.

This blog is a testament to the power of guilt trips. Not just any guilt trips will do the trick, because mostly I'm immune, but mother guilt trips are an entirely different beast. So I was talking to my mother about putting together my brother Nathan's scrapbook. And mentioned that once she was done she had to just wait and see if we ever started taking our own pictures. After which she lamented, "So I guess we'll just miss several years of your life."

My mother, of course, would deny that this was a guilt trip directed at me. She worded it ever so carefully that she would have plausible deniability. Because she's a genius. j

Point Two. I expect that I will one day have a baby because while I generally dislike children until they can talk, I am a major fan of progenitors. And those all start out as babies. Now, we have already test-run what a grand baby would look like in my family, and of course the demand for Cadance pictures was insatiable. Carolyn has aptly stepped up to provide those pictures via a blog, and this method seems very effective.

Because I am an indomitable egomaniac, I have to trick myself into thinking that when my family knocks down the door of my future blog to see pictures of this baby, they are also interested in me. So, if I start this blog now, and people read it occasionally I can use those data points to fool my future self's ego.

I hope that answers your question.