The Snooze Dream

So my snooze button is my new best friend. For some reason we have serious affinity for each other lately... Apparently my clever little brain has caught on to this trend: it's started a new reoccurring dream. It goes like this:

Alarm goes off. I push snooze. Back to sleep; the dream begins.

While turning off my alarm, I greet the day with the thought of smile (I'm too asleep still to actually make one). I climb out of bed and begin my routine: I hop in a warm, inviting shower, I daftly dress a great outfit, my husband acknowledges my keen sense of style, I actually do my hair, I apply my mak

BEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is that hideous ... THING?!

Oh, my alarm.

Then my fuzzy little brain realizes that I'm not actually ready for the day, and haven't even started! I don't know what my cute outfit is going to be, and I have ten less minutes to figure it out!!

When all that thinking haze becomes clear to my heart, it sinks. What a way to start my day! Dreams are supposed to be happy!!

Is my brain trying to be clever, but just isn't? Is it trying to live my life without my body? Or maybe it's trying to scare me away from the snooze button with this awful dream-to-life experience. Whichever way, my brain is trying to out-wit me, and I'm not sure that I like it.

Cafe Rio Recipes

Last weekend Tyler and I invited a bunch of friends over for some fake Cafe Rio food (popular Mexican restaurant in Utah) and games. I'm so glad they came - Tyler and I had so much fun! I hope you all did too! We played Guesstures, which after this summer, is one of my very favorite group games. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. :( Everyone asked me for the recipes I used, so I thought I'd just post them on our blog!

Disclaimer: I am not trying to take credit for these recipes. I got them from multiple sources: blogs of strangers I found through Google, comments on those blogs, and my sister-in-law, Mary. I would site all of these references more carefully, but they all seemed to get their versions of the recipes from similar ambiguous resources. Additionally, I kind of combined and tweaked them to my liking and time constraints. I therefore find citing my exact references rather futile. I hope that's okay with you!

Note: As mentioned above, there are several versions of these recipes floating around the internet - I have only tried the versions below. I liked them. I don't know if you'd like the other ones better.

Another Note: I don't like very much garlic and I don't like things very spicy. I modified the recipes accordingly. So if you like the opposite of me, you'd probably like someone else's versions better.
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Cafe Rio Chicken
5 lbs chicken breast (boneless, skinless of course)
1 (8 oz) bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing
1 T chili powder
1 T cumin
2 garlic cloves, minced

Put all ingredients together in a large crockpot. Cook on high for 3-4 hours. Remove chicken and have your husband shred with fork. Keep all the juice and combine with shredded chicken to keep moist.

Cafe Rio Pork
3.5 lbs pork roast (boneless)
1 (8 oz) bottle of taco sauce [It really does exist... says, "Taco Sauce" in the bottle - look in the Mexican food section.]
1 T cumin
1 c brown sugar
1 can Coca-Cola (don't use diet)

(1) Cook pork in water in crockpot on high for 4-5 hours. (2) Cut pork into several smaller pieces and dump out water. (3) Add the rest of the ingredients to the crockpot with the pork. Cook on high for 2 more hours or until the pork is shred-able. (4) Shred pork and return to sauce. (5) Serve.

**Because I wanted to serve both kinds of meats and only have one crockpot, I actually made the pork in the morning and refrigerated it in the afternoon. To rewarm it, I just put it in a saucepan on medium for a few minutes and it worked great.

Cafe Rio White-with-Green-Specks Dressing
2 c mayo
2 c sour cream
10 sprigs of cilantro
12 oz salsa verde sauce
2 green onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno pepper (including seeds)
juice of 1 lime
1 t salt

Place all ingredients (except the salsa verde) in a blender (or food processor) and blend until smooth. Pour into large bowl. Add salsa verde and mix by hand. [You could add it in the blender if yours is big enough - mine isn't.] Lasts 2 weeks in the fridge.
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I should also let you know that there are recipes out there for their Pico de Gallo salsa, black beans and their lime rice. I didn't make any of them. I just served plain rice (okay, I browned it in butter before adding the water, but that's it!) and plain black beans, and I still think it tasted fabulous. If you want those recipes, just google it and you'll get some pretty fast. For cheese, I just bought a pre-shredded Mexican mix. Supposedly "cotija" cheese is the one they use, but I couldn't find it here in the Burgh - at least not at Giant Eagle.

Hope you enjoy!!

My Father's Pen

Dear Dad,

I know you've been waiting to hear this for a long time, and I'm finally ready to say it, whole-heartedly. You are right. I was wrong. Ooooh so wrong.

You knew what was best for me all along, but I didn't believe you. You had already lived so much longer than me, but somehow I thought I could be smarter. I tried every other path, determined I would find one better than yours. Your choice was so old-fashioned; I thought my generation's inventions were better and more useful.

I even convinced myself for short periods of time that I was happy. I thought I had found my path, and that it was the best to be found. But these always disappointed eventually. After years of discouragement, I started trying anything and everything in search of it. I nearly gave up hope that I would ever find it...


but then I did.

The Pen of My Dreams.

The pen I can always count on to write. The pen that makes a beautifully full line without gucking all over the page. The pen that's not too fat and not too thin. The pen that has a cap, but doesn't make annoying clicking noises. The pen.

THE. PEN.

The pen that was, and still is, your pen. The only pen you buy and the only pen you use. The pen I should have trusted all along.

Now I think of the years I lost trying to believe in less-than-worthy pens. If I only had believed in your experience and your desire for my welfare. You have once again proven your great fatherness. Thanks Dad; I wish I had listened sooner. Thank you for showing me the best pen ever!

Love,

Nicole

P.S. True to the picture above, I actually use the black one, even though your pen is the blue one. I hope we can agree that I have actually found the light, despite our difference in color choice. The majority of my writing is done on plain white paper. If I did the editing on already black-heavy texts that you do, I would use the blue too. I hope you understand.

Happiest place on earth

So I want to talk about a little place that is perhaps the most magical place on earth. I know this is going to offend some of you who think that Disneyland is indeed that place. I'm sorry, but anywhere where a Mouse, even if his name is Mickey, rules the roost, can't be THE most magical. No, the place that I am talking about is where dreams really do come true. It is a little place that entices the masses to get up off their gluteus maximus and actually be active. It is a little place where bigger, better, faster, is the codeword, and winning is the mantra. A place that is never satisfied with what it has done, but rather, only wants to do better, and make the people it represents better as well. At this point, already risking sounding like a corporate spokesman, I present to you NIKE campus.

This is where the magic happens...(No name, just a symbol)

Why is such a place so magical you might ask? Well for me, there are 3 reasons:

1st: Anyone who knows me, knows that I am obsessed with sports. Whether it be playing them, watching them, or simply following them, I love sports. Why you might ask? Because for as long as I could remember, it has been an outlet for me. An outlet for my energy, for my frustrations, and it has come to be an outlet for my happiness as well. They are one of the few places where life's real one true lesson: "If you want something, you have to work for it" is entirely and completely true. There have been many athletic people who did not work and therefore, didn't get ahead. Anyways, I digress.

In front of The Airness' building...

2nd: I love Nike apparel. Why you might ask? Some may claim that many of their products are overpriced, or what have you, and I may agree with you about 50% of the time. But you can always find things on sale. The reason I like Nike apparel so much is the look, the feel, the quality, and the durability.

3rd: This is the place where so many legends (to me anyways) have tread the hallowed halls. People like Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi, Mia Hamm, Jerry Rice. So to be someplace where so many of my sports idols have walked, well, that's pretty cool. And they even name their buildings after them!

Better than a statue of a cartoon...A statue of one of the greatest World Cup soccer players in history...Ronaldo!

This is the workout center (How fitting! haha) We snuck in last year...

I think that Nike Campus would be a cool place to work as well. They have intramural sports. (I mean, there is a soccer field right in the middle of it!!! How cool is that!) They have a full gym, with what appeared to include: a swimming pool, a rock climbing wall, a fully lined weight lifting area and cardio equipment, and a place for spin classes. They also have a beach volleyball court, a putting green, basketball courts, and who knows what else hidden behind the trees and walls. They also have a man-made lake! And did I mention how beautiful of a city it is located in as well? (Beaverton, OR)

This is the soccer field...I'm morose it's closed, what can I say?

The man made lake with the magic in the background

I'm still trying to figure out a way to work at Nike, as a dentist. Nicole and I are working on a pitch to them, so hopefully by the time my stint with the Navy is up, we can move there and I can enjoy all the perks of being a dentist, and being a Nike employee, working at one of the most magical places I've visited. I would go into more details about it, but I don't want anyone with a similar affinity for all things sports related, who happens to be a dentist, or going to dental school, to steal my idea.

Since my first time there, one year ago, I also have worked up a line of my own for the health professions. Luckily, Nicole has some good friends who work there, and I think we can get it listened to. So as you can see, I am obsessed. I don't know whether Nicole knew about all this before or after she agreed to marry me, but I'm glad she puts up with it all the same.

A picture for all you female readers out there...You're not forgotten, by me or by Nike...

Manliness

My husband is such a peach. Except he's manly. Is there anything more wonderful than true manliness? In my eyes, few things, if any, are more attractive. What do I mean by manliness, you might ask? I mean doing tough things without being wimpy or complaining - just understanding that it's part of being a real man. Examples:

• Pumping the gas in negative temperatures while your wife sits inside the car.
• Finding the stinky diaper in nursery.
• Agreeing to have guests rather than watch the big game while quietly taping it for future reference - never informing your wife of the great sacrifice you made.
• Listening to your wife tell her story even when you're not done reading the article.
• Shoveling snow without being asked so you can drive to church later. (See below.)

The list could go on, but you would probably stop reading this poorly-masked ode to my Tyler. Yes, he does all these things (and more). He's so manly. I love it.

My Office

I'm not sure if this is going to be interesting to anyone; I took these pictures for my mom to send to my brother who's serving a mission right now. So if you want to know a little bit about my job, keep reading!

I work for the University of Pittsburgh in the newly established Center for Simulation and Modeling. (The website is www.sam.pitt.edu if you want to check it out.) There are 6 men and me. Countries of origin for these men are China, Hungry, Scotland, India, and the US. It's quite the party. Almost all of them have a secret language when their spouses call; I wish I spoke Russian or Tyler spoke German. Nevertheless, they are all very smart and pretty good co-workers.

The picture below is my view 37.5 hours each week. (Yes, full time for Pitt employees is 37.5 h/w.) The extra monitor and big keyboard for the laptop is pretty sweet. My job responsibilities include everything administrative (like purchasing, event planning and budgeting) as well as website upkeep and marketing, which are the activities that I prefer. I don't have enough to do to keep me busy all 37.5 hours, which I both love and hate. With my extra time I've acquired this new addiction (blogging), have fallen in love with Pandora, and am finally spending time on my independent study course.


Overall I'm very grateful for my job as it allows me to commute with Tyler to and from school/work, get a serious tuition reduction for the rest of my MPA classes, meet new people, earn money, work, be at an university, and isn't really stressful. I am pretty convinced, however, that my optimum job satisfaction will never be found in at a desk job. I've passed all the certification requirements to teach both elementary school and high school German in the state of Pennsylvania, so once my MPA courses are done, I hope to be back in front of a class.


Here is the virtual tour.

The Floor is Done.

When Tyler and I decided to jump into our first real home-improvement project, we didn't really know what we were getting into. Hardwood floors sounded so glamorous somehow.

Big Step One: Removal. Just hours after finishing his first round of dental school finals, Tyler took to the carpet with all kinds of finals flurry. It was up and in pieces in no time. Our friend Adam shared with us one reason Pittsburgh is often named one of the best places to live: the garbage men take everything. That's right (except large cement slabs - I was a little disappointed about that one). So Tyler rolled up the carpet, and set it in front of our house the night before garbage day and vwa-la! It was gone.



Next came the padding... it created extremely permeating red dust. Yuck. Picture to come...

Apparently carpet is attached to wood floors by these strips of nail-covered wood along the edges. So Tyler did the main work of pulling them up; I followed, pulling up the leftover nails.



They look more like something that belongs in a torture chamber rather than in a family home.



The large nail on the right-hand side goes into the wood and all the little nails go into the carpet. Scary huh?


You can see the wood stain color - basically it was orange. You could call it amber, but that's just a nicer way of saying orange. We were very happy to find the floor in pretty good condition, although we were quite certain that we wanted to stain it another color.

Big Step Two: Sanding. To prepare for sanding, all the little holes (from the nails and the natural gaps from time) had to be filled with some brown junk. Tyler is so thorough! Look at that.


We were warned about the dust explosion from sanding, so we covered everything with towels.


Then the sanding began. We rented this great machine from Lowe's for only $35/day (Home Depot cost twice that much) and went at it. As it was Saturday and I wasn't at work, I did a good couple of hours in the morning, but again, Tyler really did most of the work.



The sanding was frequently paused to pick off the build-up on the sandpaper.



After three different kinds of sandpaper and about 12 hours, the sanding was done. The light color was kind of pretty. I should mention that we tried to used the liquid stripper to help us with the edges (since that big sander couldn't get to the edges), but it really didn't work - at least not for us. Sandpaper by hand was the best way.


When I went back to work on Monday, Tyler spent the whole day on his hands and knees smoothing scratches from the sanding process and taking up excess dust with mineral spirits. He really has been so careful about every step of this process - I'm very impressed by him.

Big Step Three: Stain. We debated colors forever - really. Finally we choose.... Brown Mahogany.



Starting the stain after so much sanding was a little scary, but it was beautiful as it went on. Unfortunately we (ie Tyler) had to go back over it soaking up the excess with a cloth.


So you can see here, after two coats of staining.



Big Step Four: Sealant. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of this one! We chose the water-based (as opposed to oil-based) again after much discussion. It took four coats and a whole Saturday. We could walk on it for a while so we lived downstairs and slept on the couches in sleeping bags. Tyler is so sweet - he took the small couch - and it was actually kind of fun!



Overall we are very happy with how it turned out! We like the color a lot - we feel like it adds a lot of richness to the room. It's good to know that we can learn and accomplish a big home-improvement project together. Painting the walls should be sinch after this...

Chopsticks

Why are they called chopsticks? They're sticks for sure, but there's no way you could do any chopping with them. Ideas?

Anyways, during the holidays my parents treated all who could come to P.F. Chang's! It was a great treat, especially for Tyler whose been wanted to try it for as long as I can remember. Of course our cute niece came. Upon seeing others eat with these very intriguing sticks, she decided she needed to try. She was (as usual) our much loved entertainment for the evening.

She got the right idea in the beginning. (Notice the food on her plate.)

Her first attempt didn't actually get any food in her mouth (look at the plate).
Wait, how do you hold these?

Help Daddy?

Trying on her own again.

Do they work like straws?


Maybe you just chew on the sticks...
(Same food on the plate.)

We have so much fun playing with Bridget when we get to see her! So to continue this ode to our little niece, a couple more pictures from the holidays.

Reading with Uncle Tyler

At OMSI with Aunt Nicole

Riding out of OMSI on Uncle Tyler

Look at those faces!! Are they happy? Tyler definitely won Bridget over this time... and I think she got to him too. :)

Our First Nephew!

Introducing Cole Newton! Isn't he adorable?! I love his little button nose! I wish I could fly back to Portland to go see him right away. Congratulations Nick and Mary!! We are so happy for you!

My Surprise!

There has been some clamoring from certain circles about how I actually responded upon opening my gift on Christmas morning and finding out that there was a blog involving me, written by my beautiful, but incredibly sneaky wife. How do you think I felt? Surprised of course.

I had furiously tried to convince Nicole that we had been needing a blog for quite some time now, but I had been making little headway in the endeavor. It wasn't until school kicked into overdrive for me, and Nicole had an inordinate amount of free time on her hands that the idea finally started to drive it's way into her little heart. (Because anyone who knows Nicole, knows thats what it takes.) I think that she did a fabulous job at getting us started and setting a rather good tone for us to take.

I hope that I am a better blogger this time around, than my previous attempt. It's not that I don't enjoy writing, or telling people my feelings/opinion about things, because, let's be serious here, I really do. It's that I didn't have someone else to fill in the gaps when my own desire was left, shall we say wanting? So here's to our new blog, of which I am an official member/writer of. There shall be a flurry of postings here in the next few days I suspect as we attempt to catch up on all our Holiday activities. Ce La Vie!