Ah, Christmas.

http://www.thethingsiwant.com/curlew/list/christmas 2010/

For now. :)

Recovering Lucy

Lucy got spayed today and is really drugged, poor thing!

Nizhoni likes tickles

10 and a half hours at work and I am the only one left. Let's call it a day!

Pinned

Andrew has been working on homework all day and I have been tackling laundry and watching Taboo (I have no real excuse for watching sensationalistic television except that it is easy to watch) and Lucy spent a good portion of the afternoon happily pinned under Andrew's legs. She was less happy to get up.

Grunt in the snow

This is our king vulture Grunt, whose species is from South America. She isn't hurt by the snow, but is always unsure of it. Here she is during a winter training session taking some time to sun herself despite the clouds, and I can't say I'm not just as hopeful as she is.

Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving all! We were luckily able to see my family in Utah County for Thanksgiving, and then spend the day/evening today with Andrew's family playing board games, eating more food and seeing Harry Potter. Splitting holidays sucks, which makes it all the more wonderful when we are able to see as much of both families as possible.

On an unrelated note, I think both Andrew and I should get these bows for our Christmas ensembles:

And in case anyone is agonizing over Christmas presents, I have one suggestion...despite our tiny kitchen, Andrew and I are pretty enthusiastic amateur cooks. We didn't get a new cookware set for the wedding because we didn't need it, but our 11" and 9" non-stick pans have become incredibly scratched, so we've been admiring these babies, which are on sale:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/all-clad-d5-stainless-steel-french-skillet/?lineid=2&cm_src=E:COOKWARE-SETS

We have a William Sonoma gift card from the wedding, but it covers half the cost of them. And that's all the info I have on the matter.

So, to Rachel and Ben, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Feel better Amanda! It was great seeing some of the Layton family folks, and thank you for coming out, Sue and Will! To all the family we didn't get to see, we hope you had too much turkey just like us, to my family at home, we love you and thank you for the great evening, thanks to my mom for cooking her butt off and cooking one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever, and to all of our friends, we hope you were with friends and family! Lastly, to all, we hope you know that we love you and miss you and that you are, as always, in our thoughts.

Happy Thanksgiving :) I may not eat for the entirety of the next year.

Safe and sound

All wrapped up!

Some random updates:

Andrew keeps telling me not to treat it like it is anything special, but I like to celebrate accomplishments within reasonable bounds, so a mere mention within the blog should suffice. We've been slowly moving into new rituals to help keep the apartment cleaner, and lo and behold it's working! Having a clean, open living space is terribly comfortable. Who knew?

Last week Andrew had a huge presentation due and he totally rocked it. I'm really proud of him for all of the effort and dedication he is putting into school. Shout out to my man Andrew!

I have hand surgery tomorrow to reconstruct the nerve that I severed. I anticipate it will go smoothly and easily, though I'll have to wear a brace for about four weeks. After that, I have yet ANOTHER surgery scheduled to fix my sinus issues, which have made living across the smoggy Wasatch Front difficult for most of my life, and I for one am really excited to get it all fixed. After this, no more surgeries. Hopefully ever.

Lucy now goes to her crate consistently with the command "Kennel", and most of the time with "K-town". That battle is almost won. She also gets spayed on December 3rd, and then she'll be pretty much all set in terms of her health needs.

Holidays are coming up! I'm excited for a break from work and the cold weather is rolling in as if on cue. I've appreciated the fairly warm fall we have had, but hopefully we'll still have a white Christmas.

Lastly, I'm handling a red-tailed hawk at work now. I have huge respect for all of our birds, but you really get a sense of what a deadly predator he is when he is three inches from your face and you have to trust the fact that he really wont take a big old bite out of you. I also got to sit right next to an emu and pet him for about 15 minutes, and similarly I was awed by what a powerful bird he is. Fear of animals is useless when you are handling them, but a healthy respect of them is an important part of building the relationship. Not surprisingly, fear and healthy respect feel sort of similar. It's taking my subconscious, primal mind a little while to figure out how to filter that and leave only the respect. Either way though, it's thrilling.

Photographic evidence:

Best meals of the week

We've been doing a bit of cooking over the past seven days! Here are my favorite three, in no particular order:

1. Pork loin in a whiskey cream sauce with pecans and almonds, served with garlic mashed potatoes
2.Breaded parsley pork loin medallions with white wine and broccoli
3. Tonight's vegetarian dinner, scratch-made spaghetti sauce with carrots and zucchini served over spaghetti squash, garlic bread, and baked apples stuffed with cinnamon oatmeal crumble and drizzled with vanilla sauce for dessert.

My meal qualifications have been that they need to be fairly cheap, incredibly simple and take as little time as possible between starting prep and eating. Number 1 took about 10 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook after the potatoes had been boiled, Number 2 took about 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook, and Number 3 took about 20 minutes to prep and an hour to cook everything, but the spaghetti squash, sauce and the baking apples all cooked together for that hour so it was just matter of waiting a bit.

In between these meals have been a lot of Mac n Cheez and hot dogs, so we're still keeping it real. ;)

Still busy, holy cow! Andrew has some big papers and projects due in the next week, which coincides with the beginning of my (hopefully permanent for winter) four 10's schedule, so my working late actually helps save him from the distraction that is a bored wife. (Wife, WEIRD).

Unless Andrew has anything else to add, the most interesting thing that happened today is our learning that I sadly need hand surgery to repair the nerve that I sliced in my thumb. Normally the surgeon wouldn't suggest surgery, but my learning falconry for work requires that I have feeling on the portion of my thumb that is numb, allowing me to know if I'm applying enough pressure to keep the bird's jesses in place. In a sense, I guess it's lucky that my current line of work requires feeling in that particular area, because I have a good chance of regaining full sensation to the left top half of my thumb, whereas otherwise I would have just had to adjust to the lack of feeling.

I also learned what a neuroma is, which forms when a nerve is damaged and which I have. My own little neuroma causes these weird shocks to shoot up my thumb whenever I extend my hand, but now that I KNOW what's causing the pain, it doesn't seem half as bad so much as it seems sort of cool. The body totally rocks.

Lastly, did you know that for nerve repair, surgeons use a suture that is 1/3rd the width of a normal human hair? The surgeon alternately described it as being as thick as three blood cells lined end to end. SO. COOL.

Surgery is set for November 23rd, giving me just enough time to not be super loopy for Thanksgiving (avec espoir).

It's been a tremendously busy week. Andrew's been furiously reading books and working on papers while I've been doing stuff at work like Halloween Hoot. Our joint weekend fell on Sunday/Monday this week, and in honor of Halloween we've been watching a lot of scary movies I've never seen before.

Even during our weekend we were productive, though! Today Andrew and I went around to various necessary organizations and I officially changed my name to Waterhouse. I even like my driver's license picture-- woot!

We're going to go buy some salmon to make poached salmon of some sort (we cleaned the apartment today as well and our cookbooks resurfaced, so Andrew is inspired). Perhaps while Andrew works on the poaching, I'll work on studying for the GRE. I've officially decided to apply to the grad program up at the U, just to see if I could get the fellowship. Fingers crossed :)

Andrew just ordered Lucy to 'K-town' (her kennel). We're working pretty hard right now to retrain her to recognize the kennel as K-town. Not teaching her this from the get-go was obviously an oversight on our part.

I feel like posting photos

I've raided Andrew's iPhone! Let's do this.

 First, portraits tonight…

Andrew on geeter.

Roman was eating doritos.

The trouble makers.

And now some older ones! This is Andrew feeding sun conures at the Aviary over the summer:

Here is a picture of 6 of the 10 stitches from the hand slicing:

And this is the original slice incident:

Here is the hand with stitches removed:

Andrew and I in front of Notre Dame on our first day in Paris:

The Eiffel Tower!

 

And that's it for now :)

Andrew's Birthday

(From October 20th)

Hand is healing! Stitches come out in the next couple of days, whenever I can make it back tot he doctor. Andrew has been sick this week with what seems to be a bug that is going around, but he's fighting through it, little trooper.

Andrew's 25th birthday was this past Saturday. "It was great!" Andrew says (or has commented something to that effect sometime within the past five days). The morning of his birthday we went to The Kura Door, our favorite Salt Lake splurge. It's a japanese-style spa that our friend and once-roommate Abbey used to work at. We had an ofuro bath, which is a fantastic 45 minute bath with special aromatherapy salts, freshly brewed tea, cucumbers for your eyes, cold towels for your face, the works. After we were properly pruned, we then went to get an hour-long couple's massage. They have a steam room, sauna and meditation room to use before and after your treatments, so we spent some time in each of those before, inbetween and after the bath and massage. By noon we were totally relaxed and feeling great.

Our spa morning was followed up by Mazza for lunch--hummus, loobia, lamb sfiha and shwarma. Then we baked German chocolate cupcakes with chocolate mousse filling for our friend Loni, whose birthday was on the 17th. After baking we caught a bit of sushi for an early dinner (2 for 1 rolls at Tokai Sushi on Fridays and Saturdays! Naturally, we picked our favorite, most expensive rolls) and then met up with our friends Loni, Eric and Nick at the Desert Edge Brewery for a snack before heading over to Loni and Eric's abode to play Killer Bunnies and soak in their hot tub.

All in all, it was a long day and I think Andrew really enjoyed himself. If he was here right now, I'd poll him, but that will have to happen later.

Warning: Gore ahead

WARNING: This is a gory post, so don't look if you are squeamish.

Andrew and I had an adventure last night! Our Cutco knives are really sharp. A few photos below:

I was making quesadillas for Andrew and I and the Cutco knife slipped while cutting Ikea fontina cheese. Right after it happened, I dropped the knife, looked at Andrew and said "I need to go to the hospital." I nicked a blood vessel and got 9 stitches, but don't need hand surgery. Wahoo! :)

And with that, Andrew is the best husband ever! He was so calm and immediate in his reaction. We drove right to the ER and he stopped me from panicking the whole line. He wasn't even totally grossed out by the slightly spurting blood, which I wasn't allowed to look at but felt.

Dinner time!

Quickly! Before you read this, carefully set down all drinks and food. Don't you dare put them back toward your mouth. Good. Now sit down--but not too fast! You have to be prepared for this joke Andrew just told me.

Ok. Here it is:

A linguistics professor, doing a grammatical survey to a newly discovered indigenous tribe in the Amazon, encounters a peculiar phenomenon. During his survey, he discovers that the natives use the same word to refer both to green items and blue items. Thus, the linguistics professor came to the metaphysical conclusion that Color MUST be relative. His proof? When he would ask the natives what color the sky or grass was, they would use the same word!!!

Oh lord! What an absurd kerfuffle of logic!

Rambling: I want to build our own house.

First: While Sue, Will, Andrew, Lois and I were at the Greek Festival this weekend (which was essentially a large gymnasium filled with Greek food vendors. . .who can complain about that? Yummm), Will mentioned that we had comments on our blog and I TOTALLY missed them. So sorry, Amanda and Ben :) Your advice was very, very wise. I've been thinking a lot more about school recently and it's been really helpful.

Next:

Fall seems to always give way to contemplation and hope about the future within just a few weeks. Perhaps it's a process of accepting that nature as you know it will drastically change, but that you can look forward to something new. . .eventually. As seems to be the case for many people/couples after getting married, I've been thinking a lot about houses recently. This is an inopportune time to think about houses, what with their rental rates being so high around here and Andrew just starting grad school, but that doesn't stop me from scheming about them. I call this scheming 'planning', because planning sounds more adult.

Why a house? The idea of a house might be more exciting than an ACTUAL house. Or my excitement toward ACTUAL houses may stem directly from the idea of what a house can mean, as opposed to from the financial investment, physical structure or social stature. There is measurable convenience that comes with them, but more so than that a house seems to encapsulate the concept of being rooted. They could be considered a monetary burden, but I conceive of that burden as being more of an anchor. You have a place. You have a base. It's your personal island and castle surrounded by a sea of shared spaces and compromise and in some cases estrangement from the results of your creative output.

I've been looking at blueprints for Tumbleweed Tiny Houses for a while now (~two years) and my love for them has not diminished with time. TTHs is run by a guy named Jay Shafer who designed, built and lives in his own 89 square foot home. He has two sorts of homes he designs--tiny homes and small homes. His tiny homes are mobile and range from 65-140 square feet. I'm honest enough with myself to know that we could never live in a space that small, but his small homes are more to my liking. They range from 261 to about 900 square feet and are designed with small-space living in mind.

Some of the people I have mentioned it to in the past have said that we would get tired of living in such a small space, but I disagree. Andrew and I currently live in a tiny apartment (my guess would be about 600 square feet?) and my only complaints about it are that the kitchen is too small and that we don't have a yard. I think Andrew feels similarly. Otherwise, I feel like we fit really comfortably into the space we currently have, which consists of one bathroom, one office, one living room and one bedroom. It prevents us from compiling too much crap, it encourages us to physically spend time in the same spaces (not that this is a difficulty), it encourages us to spend more time outside of the apartment.

With that in mind, my scheme for the future is as such: Buy a decent plot of land (half acre? Acre?) near enough to the city of our choice to satisfy our need for convenience. Get the plans for the B-53 house. This is their largest house at about 860 square feet. Next, build said B-53 house with Andrew and the aid of  consulting contractors as needed, using sustainable materials and environmentally friendly appliances/electronics/what have you. Put up fence. Move stuff in. Eak out a garden plot. Build chicken coop. Release dogs into the yard and Roman into the wild (only joking). Sit on porch sipping lemonade.

Obviously this plan wouldn't be more seriously explored until both Andrew and I have worked through grad school and we've found a place to settle down that works for us, but the general concept is really exciting. I would love to learn how to build my own house and take the time and energy to create it just the way we want it. That way it's really OURS. We know what effort went into it because it's our own effort, we know the consequences of the materials through research and have lovingly shaped each space with intention and thought. I'll look at that corner and remember the process that went into creating it, look at the sink and value how it functions so well despite the struggle I went through to install the bugger.

One of the parts I relish most is figuring out where we need to be financially to make that sort of investment of funds and time. It's like scratching a mosquito bite or peeling sunburn skin--strangely satisfying. Building a little house like that costs a lot less than building a large house, but you'd need the plot of land as well as wiggle room for the inevitable extra costs that would sneak in. Still, though, looking at building it in Utah, a half-acre to an acre lot would be about $50,000, and building the house with our own two hands would end up costing $75-90,000. Add in yearly maintenance costs, taxes and the like, and if we prioritize this enough as the choice we actually want to make, when we reach the point of making about $60,000 a year total (which I know is VERY little between the two of us, but Andrew is in philosophy and I'm currently slated to work for non-profits, so I'm trying to be realistic) we could potentially make it work. That's pretty cool.

Dreaming about the future is awesome. It makes that nebulous mass of time-yet-to-come seem both full of possibilities and slightly less uncertain, as though when we get there all of the thought we have put into possible outcomes will open up the doors to a sum greater and more fulfilling than the pieces we have imagined.

From the mouth of Andrew, as scribed by Jenn:

Grad school has been a totally new experience. More than anything else, I think it made me realize just how easy I had it in undergrad. I spend so much time during the day thinking of arguments, breaking down arguments, exploding arguments, decimating arguments and arguing arguments that when I come home I am thoroughly pacified. (That's a lie, Jenn adds). I haven't had an existential crisis yet but my longest paper due so far has been about four pages, so. That will come in its own time.

Classes take place on the fourth floor of the C (something, Catharine, Cristiana, Catharine?) Irish Tanner Humanities Building. I trek about a mile across campus to get to it and have gotten a couple of comments so far about how much weight I have lost, which I assume is from this. It's weird having so many people I recognize as customers from Liberty Heights in the stairwells of the building or in line for coffee, but I guess that is something I'll have to get used to. My classmates are cool. About a 6-1 female ratio. That's not true--9-1 ratio. It's good, stimulating fun! A++.

I am taking four classes right now. Actually, I'm taking three classes right now and one will be meeting for two weeks. Pragmatism, Metaethics and Modality, A ProSeminar (wherein we discuss different topics covering a range of fields and learn how to be a philosopher), and I will be taking Metaphysics in a couple of weeks. For the most part, the classes cover material I have never had exposure to, particularly at this degree of professional. . .osity.

I have to go read. . .and read. . .and read tonight and consider what to make for dinner! I'm thinking sausage.

--

And there it is! Andrew's first post on the blog! We have decided on sausage for dinner.

On a slightly different note, when do you decide to change jobs? When do you decide to go back to school? How do you know the choice you are making is a smart one? Real life, you are a vague, impish minx.

Ok! It has been long enough since a post has been added to this blog.

I will definitely be going back and adding specific posts about these two things, but obviously two large things happened in the past month:

1) Andrew and I got married! Saying it this way requires greater explanation, but being married is surprisingly awesome. Not that it wouldn't be awesome, but I don't know that either of us expected it to actually feel great--as in different than being not married and different in a better way. Of course I can't be content just saying the wedding was fantastic. It was a huge learning experience. We've come away from our wedding day with a lot. I feel lucky.

2) Andrew and I went to Paris! This should really be 1.a, I guess. We spent a week there for our honeymoon (lune de miel) and it was indeed sweet. My suspicions were confirmed-- Andrew and I are an unstoppable travel team and Paris is SUBERB. While we were there, Andrew was horrified to learn that I've never read the Da Vinci Code. Now that we're back, we're reading it together. (That really shouldn't be the one fact I share about going to Paris. Hmm. . .)

So both of those will get their own posts with pictures.

On Saturday, Andrew and I participated in a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt race called CitySolve. Being not-entirely-spontaneous people who tend to decide to stay home at the last minute, it was pretty brave of us to go in the first place, but boy am I glad that we did! It was so fun!

We arrived at Acme Burger downtown at 11:00am to sign in and got to see all of the other teams. Teams are typically of two, though you can have more if you want (this alters your eligibility for certain things, though). There is an optional costume contest, which, despite being called the Penn and Tellers, we decided not to participate in. Highlights were the Where's Waldos, who were dressed like. . .well, you get it, and then the In-Cred-Ables, a family of three dressed like the Incredibles with the surname of Able.

At noon, we went outside and were given our first clue. It was a multiple choice question, with different answers leading you to different intersections in the general area. Let me tell you, the iPhone gave us a huge edge. In fact, there was a pretty clear divide between participants with smart phones and participants with normal phones. After choosing Donny Osmond, we ran off to the intersection and were given our envelope of the rest of the clues.

The next two hours featured us running, jogging, walking and (me) gasping around Salt Lake, from downtown all the way up to the U campus. We had to solve 9 of the 10 clues on our list and after solving them go to the location in the answer and take a picture of both of us in front of it. We had to dig through recycling bins to get plastic bottles to spell out TRAX, ask families to dress their children in U t-shirts in the U of U Bookstore to get a big group photo of us and them wearing U shirts, and find obscure buildings like the Belvedere and obscure modern artwork near Broadway Theater that we never knew existed. It's three days later and I can still barely move my legs because we ran a good deal of it. It takes a seriously fun and distracting game to get me to literally run around for 2 hours in 90 degree heat.

The best part is we were the third group back! We didn't officially place third, sadly, because there were two extra challenges that could give you 10 minutes of extra time if you completed them and we decided to bypass them, but still, we got fourth in actual placement. They have a national competition in a select city in the US every year as well, this year in New Orleans. If you do well enough in your home town competition, you can compete at the national competition. We are TOTALLY there next year!

Otherwise, life is just trucking along. I am working on new programs for the Aviary. Boy scouts, girl scouts, home schooling, community centers, after school programming, onsite tours for elementary schools and more (seriously, that's not the entire list). Andrew is starting into his second week of grad school and is pouring over an immense amount of reading. He has some real characters in class this semester. You should ask him about it. My quest to make Andrew also want a purple living room continues. Lucy is getting huge and smart. She has officially learned 'Spin' and does it with MUCH gusto and enthusiasm.

And later tonight, our CitySolve pictures will be posted. Perhaps later after that, recaps of the wedding and honeymoon shall be posted. All in due time. Yeeeees.

28 days!

28 days until the wedding!

I'm currently laid up on the couch with reasonable-to-immense levels of Percocet in my system after a pretty easy knee surgery yesterday morning. It went very well and Andrew has, as always, been such a wonderful nurse. Poor guy, he was up at 6:30 this morning making sure I took my meds and had enough water.

We've both had raises at work recently (yay!) and have been keeping ourselves nice and busy. Lucy is growing up quickly and we're pretty positive she is an English Setter:

Megan, my best friend from high school, threw me a bridal shower last Saturday and it was SO wonderful! I am so lucky to have such loving, caring friends and family. Sue and Will came all the way up from Grand Junction for the day to bridal shower and suit shop, Andrew's grandmother came up, and my mom, sisters and grandmother all came as well.

I think my favorite part of the shower was my mom, Sue and Lois all working together to make a toilet paper wedding dress on Loni during the TP wedding dress competition. Sue was wrapping the bodice while Lois was making toilet paper rosettes and my mom had paper clips in her mouth measuring out the TP for the skirt. Hilarious! It turned out looking fabulous, as would be expected ;)

Also, I finished our wedding info blog:
http://curlewandgudolph.wordpress.com

Everything is a little hazy right now, so I'm trying my best to remember all of the details of recent events. I'm starting to come up dry, mainly because I'm starting to fall asleep, so I'll see about updating more later.