There's a Reason I Don't Cook

I'm not a great cook. It's a fact of life. I never have been. I can remember burning rice in our apartment in SLC, filling it with smoke and Carl coming home to an open door and windows and asking "What's for dinner?"

Another memorable moment was when I spilled half of the stir fry onto the carpet here in Kentucky. Luckily, it was as I was putting dinner away, not putting it onto the table.

These are just a couple of examples of my kitchen disasters. For more evidence, see the following pictures.

These are some lovely cookies I baked today. Don't they look nice? Oh, and aren't those cookie racks awesome? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they stack on top of each other. Saves a lot of room in counter-challenged-apartments.

However, upon looking at a close-up of the cookies, you notice something peculiar. What could it be? Yes, it is my reject pile. Those are the cookies I refuse to take to my friends house tonight either because they broke in half as I was getting them off the cookie sheet or because they fell on the floor after I knocked the cookie rack off the counter...

Most of them are the second reason. And that's what left after Carl said "You mopped the floor this week, right?" and ate some of them.

Yes, you read that right. Carl was putting cookies onto the second tier of the cookie racks and I knocked the cookie rack off the counter. Luckily, Carl managed to grab the second tier and save most of the cookies. The rest, however, we're doomed.

I guess know we know why my older sister called me "Klutz" growing up.

Free Date...and other odds and ends

A few Saturday's ago, we went on an activity with some young women in the branch. I guess the branch had some extra money and decided to do a special activity with the youth and the branch presidency. The first and second counselor in the presidency couldn't go, so Carl and Brian (the elders quoram president) got to go. Because young women were going, I got to go along to help chaperone. We went to a farm that a corn maze, and a hay ride. After that, we went to Dairy Queen and got dinner and ice cream. It was a lot of fun to have free date!

This is Carl and Brian by an old car they had at the farm. It was one you had to crank to start. That's Micayla (I didn't spell that right) in the background. She's not in the branch, she's in the ward that we combine with for YM/YW and primary. She came with her friends.
Here's the girls Micayla, Whitney, and Daniella on the hayride. That's our tour guide. They gave us a tour of the farm that's been in the family for generations. You can see Skye on the left. She's the branch president's wife. She brought her cute little girl and her mom who was visiting from Canada.
They had us feed the cows on our hayride. They ate corn on the cob whole! They would wrap their tongue around the corn and inhale it. It was kind of fun.

Somebody was actually brave enough to to touch the cow. It took some encouragement from Carl, though.This was a view from the road of the farm. It was very picturesque.

They also had a little petting zoo, with farm animals. They had a llama that was just born the day before. It was cute, for a llama.

In some other news, they finally disconnected our cable last Friday. We had the impression we wouldn't have TV at all, but we still have basic channels. We had get the home shopping channels, HBO, the Soap Network and some free channels. Nice, huh?

Oh! And I finally started working for Kaplan. For those that don't know, I got hired to work for Kaplan back at the end of July. They kept telling me "Training will start soon" and stuff like that. About six weeks ago, they finally gave me the dates for a training session. Two days later, they cancelled it. Finally, I started a training session yesterday. I'm excited to start working and get some money coming in.

Change your password

I hate mandatory password changes. Especially the ones where you can't use the same password for another 2 years or so. I only have so many variations of the same password!

Well, my school makes us change our password every 3 months or so. Not a big deal, but I have to come up with a new password and remember it. What I also hate is that it changes the password across the board. So, I change the password to log on to the school computers and it changes the password for my email and blackboard. Once again, not a big deal, I just make it difficult.

I forward my school email to my gmail account. One less email I have to check. It's really easy to do: you just give gmail your email address and the password and they take care of it for you. However, whenever my password to my NKU email changes, I have to go into gmail and change the password. And I have a habit of forgetting to this step.

Usually I remember in about one or two days. This time, it was two weeks before I caught on. I missed a bunch of junk mail, but also missed emails informing me of canceled study sessions, canceled classes, and training schedules for work. Oops.

You think I would learn my lesson after doing this once. Or twice. Or how many times I've done this. But no. Every time I do this and for some reason, the sudden stop of emails into my account doesn't catch my attention.


We'll blame it on school, genetics, and my medication.

Friends?

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about friends. In high school, I had a lot of friends. I had a big group of friends and there was always something to do on the weekends. As I look back on it now, I realize that I was very linked to my best friends, Alyssa and Krysta. While I loved all of my friends, if Alyssa and Krysta weren't going to a party, I didn't want to go. It wasn't that I didn't like my friends, for some reason that I can't explain, I didn't want to go. I guess I was a hidden introvert. I was more comfortable staying at home, reading my book, or spending time with my best friends, then with a huge group.

When I went off to college, I was determined to change. I could start over, with a new group of friends, in a new town. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. My roommates can attest to that! I mostly just wanted to stay at home, watch movies by myself or with my roommates, or read a book. I didn't make any friends other than my roommates.

After I got married, I wanted it to be different. I wanted to have friends, to go out as couples, and have fun. Unfortunately, Carl is too much like me. Both of us are too comfortable staying at home, watching a movie together than going out.

I also think that I don't make enough of an effort. I wait for people to come to me instead of going to them. By the time I begin to make an effort, it's too late. When we moved out here, we made some friends and were proud of us for being social. Now, we just stay at home, watching a movie. Friday, I fell asleep on the coach at 8:30.

I would like to be social, but both Carl and I have a hard time with it. We have friends at church and at school, but we rarely go out and do anything. Sometimes I just feel like we're doomed to not being social.

Sorry this post was confusing, I just had to get some things off my chest.