Seriously?

Today I was pre-flighting the aircraft before my flight. I always check the oil because low oil is one problem I don't need. We had enough oil, thankfully, but as I was pulling out the oil stick it attacked me and flung out of control. I tried to back away so the oil stick wouldn't hit me, but the end of the stick (the part in the oil reservoir) swiped my armpit. And of course I was wearing a dressy white shirt today. How does that happen? This was at noon and I didn't have time to go home and change, so now it looks like I am sweating oil. So gross!

Keys

I have to admit that in the past, I was not good at remembering to take my keys out of the car before I locked it. I'm sure I've locked my keys in the car at least 33.7 times (the last time was a year ago, so I've been doing good!). But since I am so smart I made 4 copies of my car key and placed them in strategic places. For example, one is in my parent's key drawer, one is on my brother's key ring, etc. My family has always mocked me for having so many keys, but really I am smart!

I got a text from my little bro yesterday, and this is what it read: "Jeez, I pulled something like you would do...Locked the keys in the car."

I said: "Oops! Do you have a spare?"

Of course he had a spare, but not anywhere near- and only 1 spare. Who's the smart one now? (ps. The answer is Julie...not Kurt).

Thanks for the laugh Kurt!

I have Old Lady Syndrome!

I've heard people talk about this many times before, but it has become much more apparent in my life the last couple of weeks. You've seen it before-probably at church. That's where I first noticed it. There were a few old ladies in the ward that would pull into the parking spot, but the front of the car would still be at least 1-2 feet away from the curb. I used to wonder why they parked so far away- now I know. Vertically challenged. It's hard to see the curb when you're really short.

This morning I went to pick up my sister, Betsy, to go shopping. There was a scooter in the driveway. I could have sworn that if I pulled forward one more inch I would hit it. Wrong. When I got out of the car I was still 2 feet away. How does this happen? I'm still young!

Last week I was in the car with my boyfriend, Dusty. We were stopping at a red light. The car in front of us was stopped, but Dusty kept moving forward. I didn't want to be a side-seat driver, but I was sweating bullets cuz I was sure we were going to hit the stopped car. We didn't. I got nervous for no reason. Like I said, I think I have Old Lady Syndrome.

If anybody knows of a medication to treat my disease, please let me know!

Nerd Alert!

I saw the funniest thing this morning. I was feeling ambitious so I got up at 5:30 am to go to the gym. There is a TurboJam class there, and I love those workouts. Usually the people that attend are women. I was so surprised to see the exact opposite today. He was a little older (maybe 45ish), had nerd-slicked-parted hair, super tight sweats, and a shirt tucked into the sweats, but he didn't tuck his shirt in very well and it was all bunched. At first I thought it was kind of cool that he came with his wife, but then he left alone. He wasn't there with anyone!

Blond Moment #1

Up until 3 weeks ago I truly wondered why my dad said I was his blond daughter (hello-I'm a brunette). I'm a pretty smart person and usually I think things through. I went through school and got a degree. I'm freaking intelligent, right?

So I wear contacts. I hate it but I have no choice. I started losing my eyesight in Seventh grade- I just thought my teacher had really bad handwriting (maybe that's my real blond moment #1?). I have been wearing contacts for 10 years and have had an eye doctor appointment every year.

A couple of days ago I went to the Sam's Club Optical department for my checkup. She gave me a trial pair of contacts and asked me to put them in my eyes. Before they'll let you leave they want to make sure the lenses fit your eyes okay.

Usually I take out both contacts (left and right) and then put in the two new contacts. So I started by taking out my right contact. It was then that the eye doctor came in and started talking to me. I got distracted. I then opened up my new contact and put it in my right eye; opened up my other new contact and put it in my left eye. Wow- talk about blurry. My first thought, which I voiced- "Wow. This is really blurry. Maybe you gave me the wrong prescription? Maybe I have an air bubble under my contact?" Wrong. I forgot to take the old contact out of my eye before putting in the new contact. The eye doctor had to point this out to me.

I should know how to put in contacts. I've been doing it forever. The one time I decide to forget, the eye doctor is in the room with me. I felt so retarded. Who puts two contacts in the same eye? Blond Moment #1.

Work-A-Holic

Though I'm not near as bad as I used to be, I have a hard time not working. These past few weeks have been a slow time for me. I've had many students cancel for personal reasons, which is fine, but then I have to sit home. Now don't get me wrong; I enjoy the sleeping-in part, the working-out-for-however-long-I-want-to part, and the getting-a-nice-good-breakfast; but when it comes down to it, I get a bit grumpy when I can't work. It just kills me to know that I'm home doing nothing when I could be at work doing something useful and being around people I enjoy spending time with. I like to work!

Thankfully I work in the student support center at UVU as well as flight instruct. That way when flight instructing gets slow, as it always does in the winter time and around finals, I still have some work. The call center is a pretty great job. I've been working here for just over 3 years now and I'm not quite sick of it. Talking on the phone all day isn't my calling in life, but I work around pretty fun people. This week one of the employees on the morning shift left to do some flight training elsewhere, so I got to pick up his shifts. Yes! My work-a-holic self is coming out.

Hopefully in January I will be able to pick up some more students so I won't have to talk on the phone so much. :) I'll keep you posted.

Christmas

I love this time of year. The music is great, the shopping is amazing, and there is junk food everywhere. :) Dusty and I made a ginger bread house over the weekend, and it was so much fun! We made the ginger from scratch, and that was an adventure within itself. I could have sworn we followed the recipe to a "T" but I must have put in an extra cup of flour. The dough was super dry. As with every cooking experience/emergency, mom's assistance is needed. After adding two eggs to the mixture, it finally looked like a dough. I have to admit that even though I don't like ginger, I had to take a teeny bite. It wasn't all bad.

After making the dough we had to roll it out and then cut it into the desired shapes. I must not have enough muscles or something, because that was not working for me. Dusty had to roll out the dough- guys are tough...they can handle stuff like that.

Then came the cooking portion. The recipe said to cook the dough for only 10 minutes. Since Dusty and I are amazing cooks trained in New York, we thought it would be better to cook it for much much longer. We practically burned it. But it did make it easier to make the house because the ginger was very very hard.

The frosting. It still doesn't make sense to me. It looks so good but it is disgusting and it gets hard as a rock. But it makes good glue for the gingerbread house. Dusty handled the frosting, and I handled the candy. I might have tasted a few pieces of candy through the whole process- but I'm sure it wasn't more than a couple of very tiny, minuscule pieces.

Dusty is pretty creative- I have to give it to him. After we got the walls up Dusty thought it would be cool if we covered the sides of the house with Hershey Bars. "Eeew Gross," I thought to myself, "Brown?" I voiced my doubt but let him proceed. As you can see from the pictures, the Hershey Brown walls look freaking amazing. Way to go Dusty!


All in all, the house took 2, almost 3 hours. But it was time well spent. And I got to spend all that time with Dusty. He's an awesome boyfriend!