Stake Dance

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:07:48 -0700

Two days ago Peter’s phone rang, and he is still regretting answering it. It was a nice man from our new ward, asking us to chaperone the stake dance this weekend. Peter was horrified.

Turns out Peter has NEVER been to a stake dance before. Never, ever in his life. I, on the other hand, have been to a billion stake dances. In fact, I think all my funky moves embarrassed the heck out of my sweet YW in our SLC ward. Tee-hee. :)

So, we are chaperoning the dance. Wish us (and by “us” I mean Peter) luck.

Trash cans

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:45:32 -0700

Last week I called to set up our trash service. These crazy Portland people are going to charge me $27/month for that tiny little trash can and give me those huge recycle and yard clipping cans for free. That little green trash might look like a decent size, but it only holds TWO kitchen trash bags. I am embarrassed to admit that I have never recycled before. Apparently I’m about to start.

I’m crafty!

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:31:03 -0700

Remember how I’m not crafty? Well, look what I did! I made a nice little curtain for our window. It’s held together with about a million pins. Not the best solution in the world, but good enough for a temporary fix.

Flooring

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:44:33 -0700

Do you see this floor? It’s insanely ugly. Like really, really ugly. I made it really big so you could feel my pain. It’s awful. It’s in my kitchen and it ruins my will to bake pie. It’s really sad.

The Pizza Post

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:02:27 -0700

As most of you know, Peter and I tried a different pizza place almost every weekend while we lived in New Jersey. We called it FNPE (Friday Night Pizza Experience). I slacked off in documenting all the places we tried, but here is a list of every place we could remember. I linked them all the their yelp pages.

As a side note, I love yelp (as I’m sure you’ve noticed from my facebook). When you wander as much as Peter and I do, yelp is super helpful.

Ok, back to the pizza...

AWESOME:

1. Dinos
2. Anna Marias
3. Delizas
4. Delizas
5. Carmines
6. Paradiso Pizza & Restaurant
7. Anthony's Pizzeria and Family Restaurant
8. M&S II

VERY GOOD:

1. Franks Trattoria
2. Forte's Pizzeria
3. Nick's Restaurant & Pizzeria
4. Grab & Go Pizza
5. Mario's Famous Pizza

GOOD:

1. Mario's Pizzeria & Restaurant
2. Basset Pizzeria
3. Maria's Pizzeria and Restaurant
4. Prima's Gourmet Pizza
5. Brick House Pizza

DON'T DO IT:

1. M&S I
2. Scalici's Pizza & Restaurant
3. Toscana

Moving Day

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:55:02 -0700

Two weeks ago was packing day. Three guys showed up, I left to run some errands, and when I came back 6 hours later all of my belongs were packed in boxes and on a truck.

Seeing our little place empty reminded me of the first time we walked in, one year earlier. We were in Jersey on a house-hunting trip and had looked at 20+ apartments in our short 3 day trip. We were about to get on a plane to go back to Utah, but thought we’d look at one last place before we did. When we walked in the door I looked at Peter and said, “Please let me live here!” We both fell in love with it and knew it was where we wanted to live. It was the perfect place for us and we will miss it.

The things I won’t miss:

The clear shower door
The demon child who lives 3 doors down
Not having a garbage disposal
Maddie, the neighbor’s dog

Goodbye little condo. I will miss you, and your green door. Goodbye little kitchen. I will miss baking pies in you. Goodbye safety pins in the wall. Peter will miss boasting about how much taller he is than me while pointing to you.

Text Books

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:42:14 -0700

As most of you know, Peter’s first love it school, books, and anything with numbers. We (much to my dismay) have been lugging these books around since his graduation. For some odd reason Peter will NOT part with them. As we were preparing for the move, I approached the subject again.

Our conversation went something like this:

Liz: Peter, I think we should consider getting rid of some of the stuff we don’t need before the move. How about these text books?

Peter: Hmmm, ok. I probably won’t need ALL these in Portland, but I don’t want to get rid of them.

Liz: What do you propose we do?

Peter: Let’s ship them to your Mom’s house and store them there until we have a permanent residence.

Liz: Um...ok. It’s rather expensive to ship heavy items, even via media mail. Are you sure?

Peter: Yes, I’m sure. I need them.

Liz: Ok. Why don’t you make “keep” and “ditch” piles and I’ll go to the post office tomorrow.

Peter spends a significant amount of time caressing each book, deciding if he can live without it for the next couple of years. He ends up with seven books that he wants to keep with him, and about 25 that he wants shipped.

Liz: Ok, nice work. Now, from these 25 that you want shipped, can we go through them and see if there are any here that you can live without...permanently?

Peter gets a very distressed look on his face and ponders my question while staring at the pile.

Peter: I’m not emotionally prepared to make that kind of decision.

There you have it folks. Peter, one of the less-emotional people on the planet, has emotional attachments to math books. I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard the word “emotion” come out of Peter’s mouth while talking about himself.

Caricatures

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:18:53 -0700

I thought it would be fun to have our caricatures drawn in NYC. That’s fun, right?

The guy we chose had two options: portrait or caricature. I was NOT interested in a portrait, that’s not fun at all. I was pretty clear to the man that I wanted a caricature. We ended up with portrait heads and caricature bodies. Lame.

After it was all done, he turned to show us his work. I was wearing a skanky dress and Peter was holding a margarita. Um...we’re Mormon. I told they guy we weren’t paying for it unless he could draw sleeves on my dress and turn the margarita into something else. He was totally confused, but complied. Can you see the remainder of the margarita glass behind the microphone? Also, I look nothing like myself, but more like Alyssa Milano.

Overall, it was a pretty fun experience. But don’t worry, this will not hang in our living room. It was just for kicks.