lists

8 TV Shows I love to watch:

1. White Collar
2. Suits
3. Project Runway
4. Parks and Recreation
5. Community
6. Downton Abbey
7. Sherlock
8. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

8 Favorite Restaurants:

1. Bombay House
2. Thai Mango
3. Wild Ginger
4. Happy Sumo
5. Terra Mia
6. Cafe Rio
7. Texas Roadhouse
8. Rancheritos

8 Things That Happened Yesterday:

1. I watched The Dark Knight with friends
2. I slept in
3. I was treated to dinner by Amanda
4. I made oatmeal cookies
5. I went on a hunt for BYU's maple bar doughnuts
6. I forgot that EFY has invaded campus, and had to run for my life while searching for my precious doughnuts
7. I went to Costco
8. I wrote a post on my other blog

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. The Dark Knight Rises early showing tonight
2. Eating at Thai Mango before the movie
3. Visiting my family next week 
4. Shopping!
5. Getting far, far away from Provo
6. Having an income
7. Going to Disneyland in October
8. Halloween

8 Things On My WishList:

1. Sherlock on DVD
2. Community seasons one and three 
3. The IT Crowd complete series
4. New black flats
5. A job for John
6. More maple bars
7. Seeing the llamas again
8. More rain

llamas

I finally got to go to Llama Fest yesterday! I have been wanting to go since I first heard about it, back in 2008. And, due to living at home for the summer, then getting married, then other vacations and family events, I wasn't able to go until this summer.

John and I walked through the Krishna temple, perused the gift shop, enjoyed some music, and got to pet some llamas. It was really crowded, so I didn't get to see many llamas, but I really enjoyed being there. I got a Llama Fest t-shirt and little stone llama figurine, and a shoulder bag made from llama wool that has a llama on the front. 

We were going to stay for dinner because there is a great Indian food buffet at the temple, but they didn't have it going during the festival. John and I decided to go back another time and get the buffet and see more llamas when I can have them all to myself. 

Also, I made these from periodic tables of elements today.

I've also been watching a few movies with Rifftrax that I borrowed from Amanda this weekend. I saw Breaking Dawn part I, The Last Airbender, and High School Musical. All terrible movies that were bearable and enjoyable because of Rifftrax. 

family

My brother Drew, his wife Christina, and their one year old son, Asher, came to visit Provo this week. We had four full days with them, and we had a great time!

Drew was able to go fishing with his friend, Jared, we went to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy, toured the City Creek Center mall in Salt Lake, and ate lots of delicious food. My favorite was Bombay House, but we also ate at Cheesecake Factory, it was great, too. We watched a lot of movies, got to eat Creamery ice cream, and I went shopping with Christina a few times. I loved having girl time with her! Asher loved the cats, Suki hid from him all week, and Momo gracefully took some slaps.

I only have a few pictures, most from the aquarium, but I know that Christina has more.

Watching TV with Uncle John

John petting a sting ray

Watching the jelly fish

Moray eel

John poking up in the otter habitat.

Asher loved the otters. They were exactly like giant, swimming ferrets.

He was most taken with the small fish at his height level. I told Drew that next time they just need to take him to PetSmart.

They left this morning and just arrived home. It was sad to see them go, but I get to see them again in a week and a half when I go visit family in Nevada.

As a side note, there is a new post on my other blog up now.

results

I wrote about my HSG test I had done this morning, and the results.

ttp://progressingincircles.blogspot.com/2012/07/results.html

new

I have decided to start a new blog to document and talk about my infertility journey, and keep this one for the rest of the goings-on in our lives. I would just rather keep the two separate, mostly because I don't think everyone who reads this blog wants to know all the details. So, when I write a new post on my other blog, I will post a link to it here if you wish to read it. I just feel like this is a better decision.

http://progressingincircles.blogspot.com/

I also put a tab up above so you can check it whenever you like.

the allies

Somewhere on Gmail, I remember reading that if someone addresses an email to you and messes up by leaving out a dot or underscore, or doesn't put the dot where it's supposed to be, that it will forward that email to addresses that are close to it so you are sure to get it anyway. Did I make sense?

An example:
Someone's email address is johndoe@gmail.com. However, someone tried to send an email to john.doe@gmail.com.
So Gmail, being the good delivery people they are, sent that email to johndoe@gmail.com so that person is sure to get the email.

About two years ago, I started receiving emails from someone, asking me to write news stories in the Salt Lake area. They usually asked me to go to big events in downtown for a story and report on it, or interview some random person. 


The first few emails I received really confused me. I was looking for a job at the time and remember applying as a freelance writer for someone. I didn't hear back from them, but then I started getting all these emails asking me to write news stories, so I thought that they had actually hired me and didn't tell me. I didn't respond to any of the emails because I hadn't met or talked to any of these people, so I thought it could have been a scam. After the third or fourth email, I started writing a response telling them how confused I was, but that I would happily write their stories if they would like to meet me first and find out if they are legitimate. When I was about to click send, I looked at the original email and saw that they had addressed their email to allie.jeppson@gmail.com. Just one dot away from mine.

Then a lightbulb went off in my head- There is another Allie Jeppson in the Salt Lake area who is a news writer, and I was getting her emails. Sometimes they call her Alexandra, but she must usually go by Allie.

Most recently, I got one from some guy named Rhett who asked me to go to the Kansas concert in Logan, and then do a phone interview with the band. I was really tempted to reply and get some tickets and their phone number. If they asked if I was Allie Jeppson, I could say that yes, I am. Now give me some freaking free Kansas tickets.

EDIT: My brother corrected me to say that the dot does not make a difference. He said, "You are the owner of all combinations of your email with periods. No one has the same email as you with different periods." So, I guess the sender of emails I get just plain have the wrong address. Luckily, I always see the emails addressed to both my email and another one, so the real Allie Jeppson must be getting the emails, too.

birthdays

I had two friends who had birthdays within a week of each other, Craig and Victoria. I was lucky to be able to make cakes for them and celebrate with both of them.

Last weekend, for Craig's birthday, me and John, Craig, and Amanda and Victoria all went to Malawi's for dinner, then to the Provo Beach resort for the ropes course (John and I guarded their stuff and cheered while they did it) and arcade games, and then to my apartment for cake and games. It was so much fun! I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. I won on Deal or No Deal, and we collectively guessed the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. Plus, I got to play Skee-ball, so it was automatically a good night.

I didn't take a picture of Craig's cake because I forgot, but I made him a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting. It was delicious! I had not made raspberry filling before. It was surprisingly really easy and super yummy!

We celebrated Victoria's birthday tonight with Rock Band and watching Thor, and having more cake. Victoria requested white cake with white frosting, which was easy enough. I just filled the cake with the same buttercream I put on top, and decorated with a basket weave on the side. It was also a huge hit!

Now I want to brave making a tiered cake. I will have to do some research to know how to put one together.

pillow

For Suki's whole life, she has found a comfortable bed at night by sharing my pillow. As a tiny kitten, she snuggled up in my hair and would stay with me all night.

It's sweet, and I love having her so close to me at night, but she still tries to do it.

As you can see, the Suki to pillow ratio runs about 1:2.

And the Allie to pillow ratio is about 35:1.

To illustrate better, I have made a graph.

How do I sleep at night?

in honor of three years

I was scanning through some of my old blog posts from before I was married because mine and John's three year anniversary is coming up in a few days, and I came across this little jewel. I was talking about how excited I was to be moving in with John and not having roomates and having my own kitchen.

"No more mystery messes, no more dishes disappearing, no more stuffed refrigerators with food that isn't mine, no more cleaning up after multiple people, no more sharing cupboard space."

None of that is true. There are mystery messes all the time. Sometimes I will clean the kitchen and come back a half an hour later and find some mystery splotch on the counter that I have to clean again.

My dishes are still disappearing. John and I just did a quick inventory of our kitchen and made a list of the utensils and things that are missing. I used to have three 9x13 pans and now I have none. Measuring cups and spoons are gone to the abyss all the time, and I am missing a large metal mixing bowl. I used to be missing the base to the blender, but that randomly turned up in the cupboard one day.

It's amazing how many times I will open my fridge and find mystery food in there. If go out to dinner with friends, sometimes they will leave their leftovers in the fridge, and I can't count how many times Jacob has left food behind. I'm not complaining about this one, though. The food always gets eaten.

I clean up after multiple people all the time. Whenever we have people over, there is always clean up to do.

I also share the cupboard with John. I know that isn't a big deal, but sometimes I'll peek in the cupboards to find some weird looking food that he's bought.

I just think it's funny to look back and see how naive I was before getting married. It's quite funny.

this weekend

I have a few photos to describe my weekend.

My animals sure were funny. 

Momo took a nap next to me on the couch and made this funny face.

Suki brought me a present to the doorstep. She wouldn't leave me alone until I gave her sufficient praise. Sorry if the dead mouse makes you sad. I didn't care much until I saw it was a baby mouse. Then I was a little sad. But, I'd rather have it dead than eating my food storage.

I walked by Obi-Wan's cage and found him in this sexy pose. I think he must be listening to LMFAO while we are out of the house.

My favorite thing to order at Chinese food restaurants are Crab Rangoon, or cream cheese wontons. They aren't always that cheap, so we tried making some ourselves. We got wonton wrappers at the Korean market on University, and I made a cream cheese and green onion filling, and John fried them up. They were delicious! We'll never order them again when we can just make our own. The cost to make two dozen for ourselves was about $4. At the restaurants, they usually charge $6 for 8 wontons.

Today, I was watching Cake Boss, and got a huge hankering for some cake. So I just randomly decided to make a cake. The cake got overdone, which annoyed me because I know my oven well enough to know it shouldn't have burned. I guess the temperature was off just a little bit this time. But it was still fun to make. I haven't baked in a really long time. I didn't know how much I missed it. I didn't feel much like decorating it because I just wanted to eat it as soon as possible, so I just took a few seconds and topped it with a bunch of rosettes. So, if you want some slightly overdone cake smothered in frosting that just tastes like pure sugar  (I didn't have flavoring and couldn't go buy any because it was Sunday), please come eat some of this cake.