we're expecting!

...to sneak our own popcorn into the movie theater!
bahaha!
no, really, we did, and it was so sinful. a couple days ago we saw We Bought a Zoo. it was good, i'd recommend it. at the end of the movie, there is a touching scene about when matt damon first meets his wife. it's totally quiet, and i bet you some people were crying, and a little girl a few rows behind us shouts, "she doesn't look very modest" because the actress is wearing a tank top. oh... rexburg.

the 5-year plan

do you know where you'll be in 5 years from now? i do. i have it all figured out.

so i don't know where i'll be living or what i'll be doing, but on August 21, 2017, i will be at a total solar eclipse party, and you're invited.

we'll either go to rexburg or to the oregon coast. but idaho really has the best chance of clear skies.

mark your calendars!

my favorite photos from a kid's birthday party

hello, darlin'

the other night we went to a lovely wedding

then we came home and laughed at ourselves in photo booth

then we made popcorn and watched a movie outside on the grass

slide show with robert and laura

hi, this is robert and laura. we're making a blog post together.

laura: "here we are waiting for the bus in the morning."

robert: "delete that. we don't need a narration."

robert: "how ironic, this blog is putting me to sleep, too. get rid of 'ironic', is there a word for 'art imitating life'?"

laura: "in french, i think."

[robert insists we delete two pictures]

laura: "after checking out the lego exhibit at the building museum, we went to the art gallery to see the gauguin exhibit."

robert: silence

laura: "do you want to say anything about the exhibit, or about your experience, or about how i look...?"

robert: "i liked the exhibit. i like riding on the moving walkway because it feels like we're in star wars."

laura: "i've never been a big fan of gauguin."

robert: "i thought you were going to say, 'not a big fan of star wars'."

laura: "i'm not."

robert: "you look good here. you have andy warhol hair in this picture (and glasses)."

laura: "what!?" trying to type. "ok. you want it in parenthesis? where does the period go?"

laura: "blossoms in foggy bottom today. my dad always ended slide shows with pictures of pretty flowers."

new adventures of gumby

I made my first stop motion movie last night. music's the black keys.

Today, I'd rather be there

I keep catching myself daydreaming today.

{more of these memories here}

Do you ever look up and see an airplane in the sky and think, I wish I were on that plane headed somewhere, anywhere else?

{there}

I love the days when I see that plane and I think to myself, I am so glad I'm not on it, I am so glad to be right where I am. But not every day can be like that.

It's been one of those days.

{from days like this}

Thank goodness for happy memories and pictures that I can look back on and dream.

{that}

There's a good french word that we don't seem to have quite an english equivalent for. It's Songer, it means to think, ponder, contemplate, and dream.

{here}

aujourd'hui, je songe

Best and Worst Burgers of the Pacific Northwest

(The Short List)

We're not connoisseurs by any stretch of the imagination, but we do eat a lot of cheeseburgers. Here's what we found.

The Best: Red Mill Burgers

Listed as one of the 20 best burger joints in the country by Oprah and GQ. Their onion rings were voted best in the country. Seattle Weekly lists them as the best burger joint in Seattle 20 years running. (No cell phones and no credit cards allowed). Go here.

The other really good one: Burgerville

The Oregonian In-N-Out. This place is so good that you ought to eat here after your next Oregon wedding, too. Burgerville's menu is seasonal, so you can be sure the food is fresh and locally grown. Unfortunately that also means you can only get onion rings when the Walla Walla sweets are being harvested. They have great sweet potato fries in the fall, though.

Awesome in its Own Way: Dick's Drive-In

Cheap, no-nonsense, tasty burgers. Nothing special, but they're quirky and distinctively Seattle. The signs aren't retro by the way, because they haven't really changed them since they put them up. We used to go to Dick's Drive-In every time we went to Seattle. Like going to Ivar's, or the donut shop in Pike's Place, it was just one of the food places that makes Seattle, Seattle.

Worst: Airplane Cheeseburger

Comically bad.

Grammar Snobbery

This morning I received the following note from my boss:

"#2 – okay, fine, change it."

This was in reference to the following note I wrote:

"I still hate that these prepositions aren’t capitalized in the abbreviations"




I threw my arms up in the air and said, “YES!”. You see, I’m a technical writing intern at a company that works in abbreviations the same way plumbers work in toilets: we’re constantly up to our elbows in . . . them. (I should warn you now that this post is about punctuation).

Well, all our acronyms are fully capitalized, except two. Two of our acronyms, RoTR (Record of temporary Revisions) and RoR (Record of Revisions) drop the preposition—this despite the fact that the LOEP (List of Effective Pages), the TOC (Table of Contents), and numerous other abbreviations either ignore the preposition or capitalize it. Generally I’m not a stickler for house styles like this, particularly when everyone is consistent with it (“It’s more important to be consistent than correct”), but I’ve been spending all day fixing grammar and punctuation, and I could never get this one systemic rock-in-my-shoe out from under my arches.




Well, this morning when I got her note I thought I had been all alone in the office. I arrive around 6:00 AM and most people don’t arrive until 8:00 or later. Unfortunately some Johny-come-early snuck in without me noticing and gave me a really, weird look.




I thought I could say something like “Go Mariners,” and that would make me look like a delinquent-sports-watching employee, but also a less-socially-awkward employee, and that was a tempting tradeoff, but since the Mariners generally suck I didn’t think he would buy it. I considered saying “Excuse me” and sitting down, but instead I just made eye contact with him for an awkward second or two, and said nothing and sat down.

So, to get to my point: sorry, technical writers. I know I just increased the ridiculous angles on the caricature that is “Editor” and “Writer,” but, it was worth it.

And I’d do it again.

Tomfoolery

(my favorite type of foolery)

We played around with some LED lights and a flashlight last night and got this:

We hung the camera from the ceiling with yarn. It was very precarious and I was nervous the whole time. It looked like this, only we turned the lights off before we took any pictures.

Lunch hour is the second-best part of my whole day

Coming home is the first-best part. (Especially when Robert meets me at the bus stop.)

cheese

-I love the blossoms on the trees.

-I love that we can hear the trumpeter at Ft. Meyer loud and clear now that it's warm enough to keep the windows open. At 6:30 am, and 5:00, 10:00, and 11:00 pm.

-I wore a skirts without stockings this week.

-I am going to cut my hair.

-I love art projects, and sales, and free cupcakes.

Found on Google

I googled "Robert and Laura" (parenthesis included) in Google Images, and I found the wedding picture to the right of this post on page 3, and then on page five I found the picture above this. At first I was kind of creeped out, but then I got over it. Below is another picture we pulled off of Google Images of ourselves.

yep, I actually wore my hair like that in public

to work. all day.

it's extra crazy here. it's after a long day of work and coming home and getting into pajamas.

patty cake

Half Asleep and Too Much Homework create this sort of madness

poppy

Saturday was a lovely day. We went out to lunch with my sister for restaurant week and for my birthday. We went to Jackson 20 in old-town Alexandria. Then we decided to go to a little photo shoot with my sister's friend. And I do love getting my picture taken.

Essay Time

When I'm editing my essays I ask Laura to listen to me read them aloud so she can tell me if it makes no sense and because it's easier to edit critically when you have a real audience. Well after twelve pages of my last essay Laura got understandably bored and took a picture of herself listening attentively and walked off.

Just a little glimpse into the marriage of an English graduate student.

Good news is I'm almost done. I have three of my four essays finished thanks partially to two straight all-nighters (you can see the wreckage of those nights on my face in this picture) but we're on the home stretch.

i am a christmas angel

and robert is sonic the hedgehog

Our Moment of Zen

Surprise Robert

(like Attack Dog)

it is a nice video

I'm a finalist!

remember that little video I made?
well, I showed it to Team Boo
and it kinda caught on.

You can vote for my movie right here

{and you can watch it again here}

or you should vote for Megan's
cause her video is actually really good.

enjoying the summer

I've been trying to avoid my homework.

We went to the drive-in movie theatre the other night.

We saw Up and Ice Age

and I teared up a little,

but then, even Wall-e made me cry... and Ratatouille! 

I guess I'm soft. 

But first we played a few games. 

In these pictures we're playing Ninja Attack!

We found out about it from one of our tenants last year. 

It's a fun game but too hard to explain. sorry.

I think the game is especially fun 

when it gets down to the last two people

unfortunately I don't usually make it that far

my reflexes= too slow