Hip-Hip-Hooray!

Our top news story this week is that the semester is finally over! (This statement is normally followed by cheering and dancing around the room.) Aaron took his last final Wednesday afternoon and that is when we learned that Aaron has managed to get straight A's this semester! Prior to final's week Aaron and I had made a deal that if he got straight A's this semester we would go out to eat at Olive Garden, which is fairly expensive but also my favorite restaurant. However, if he did not receive straight A's then we would go out to eat at Chili's which is much less expensive and, consequently, Aaron's favorite restaurant. So following his final on Wednesday afternoon we went to Olive Garden and were able to enjoy a lovely meal. We decided we would share the experience with Taber & Rebecca who immediately cleared their schedules when given the opportunity to share our excellent company. But seriously, it was a very good meal and we did enjoy spending a portion of the evening with Taber & Rebecca. Other highlights of this week include Aaron and I going to The Referral Center at The MTC this evening because we are ward missionaries and, in Provo, that means going to the TRC seeing as inactive ward members are far and few between.

Stealing Thunder

Seeing as Rebecca stole my thunder this week with her post about our tandem bike ride I shall refer you all to her blog for this week's adventure. We really should get better at taking our own pictures...

Sdrawkcab Gnippohs

Last night Aaron and I were mooching hot tub privileges from Aaron's old roommate Eric when Eric mentioned that he had a paper to write for one of his classes. To write this paper he was required to break a "social norm" and record the reactions of those around him. We decided that one person breaking a social norm was good but 3 people was better. After some discussion we decided that we would go to the grocery store wearing our clothes backwards and walking backwards the entire time. I was chosen to wear my clothes backwards but walk normally so that I could keep track of the reactions people had when seeing a couple of people walking backwards toward them. (Ha, I was the lucky one!) It turned out to be hilarious and I had trouble not laughing the entire time. Besides drawing every eye in the store, sometimes even for some triple takes, we got a lot of laughs. Some people would try to move up behind us as we stopped so they could follow us away and then be surprised when we began moving the opposite direction. We also learned that carts can be difficult to steer when going backwards...However, the most memorable reaction would have to be one gentleman who walked up to us, asked why we were walking & dressed backwards. We simply said it was backwards day to which he replied, "Ok, but you're really freaking me out." He proceeded to pound our fists and tell us to be ourselves and "Fight the power, man." My second favorite was in the checkout line the folks one lane over kept asking their cashier why we were backwards, they were Hispanic, this was then followed by a conversation all around us speculating as to why we were acting strangely. Aaron told our cashier it was because his birthday was yesterday and he was trying to take off some years...

Festival of Colors

Aaron and I attended the Festival of Colors at a Buddhist Temple in Spanish Fork, UT yesterday. The point of this festival is to stand in an enormous crowd and throw colored powders at each other. The powder is non-toxic but let's just say it took us at least 2 hours of showering etc. before we were completely clean again. We did have fun and I particularly enjoyed showering Aaron in purple powder. Especially the pink on my face is thanks to him.

Couchless-ness

This is a picture of our living room which, as you can see, is couchless. Last Monday when we went to meet with Aaron's previous employer we found out that the couch we thought we would be receiving as payment was already gone. As it turned out Aaron's employer, Chris, was attempting to get out of his lease early without having to pay any penalty fees. So he offered his landlord anything that he had as payment, so when the landlord came by one of the things he chose to take for his payment was the very couch that we had our eye on. So since we couldn't have a couch we took 5 executive, leather office chairs. We decided to give one of them to Taber and Rebecca because Taber was so generous and was willing to help us move the couch (which turned out to be the chairs) back to our apartment with his truck. The other 4 we didn't really know what to do with until Aaron came up with this brilliant idea. We left 2 chairs intact and took the armrests and the backs off of the other 2 chairs. One serves as corner seating with a pillow for a backrest and the other as an ottoman for the remaining 2 chairs. It's definitely not as nice as a couch would have been but the overall goal of offering more seating has been accomplished and I suppose that at this stage of our lives it's okay for our apartment to look ghetto.

Behind The Times

Well there hasn't been much to blog about in the last few weeks. Our lives seem to have fallen into a fairly regular schedule consisting of work and homework. One thing I should mention is that Aaron lost his job 3 weeks ago. He worked for a telemarketing company on behalf of a resort in Park City, called Westgate Resort, calling qualified individuals to invite them to the resort to listen to a presentation about timeshares. Well 3 weeks ago the CEO of Westgate Resort flew into Park City and closed the timeshare division of that resort, all the employees lost their jobs etc. Aaron's company, CMS, had only one client, Westgate Resort. So obviously CMS no longer exists. The kicker about this whole thing is that Westgate Resort owes CMS around $20,000 and CMS owes us 3 weeks worth of pay. Aaron & I have met with and discussed the situation with the owner of CMS who assured us that we would be paid in some way. (That was 2 weeks ago.) After several phone calls Aaron was finally able to get in contact with his employer and let him know that we would be happy accepting some assets of the company as our payment. We are scheduled to meet with him tomorrow evening at 6:00. We are hoping that we can, if not money, get the couch from the office which is a brown, leather 3-seat couch. We're not even really sure if it will exactly fit in our apartment but it would certainly be nice to have some more seating available outside our current little love-seat.

Night Owls Never Get the Worm

Aaron is a night owl and I am not. I am neither a morning person or a night person as I enjoy going to bed "early" (compared to Aaron) and sleeping in late. However, some nights I vainly attempt to stay up with Aaron seeing as most of our time together each day occurs after both he and I return from work, which is sometimes as late as 10pm. Sometimes I am successful in convincing my dear husband to retire to bed "early" but most the time I end up falling asleep watching a movie or waiting for the night owl to settle down next to me. Inevitably the next thing that happens is I wake up at some unnatural hour to find Aaron still awake and in my stupor tell him to stop being ridiculous and go to sleep. Whether or not he goes to sleep at that time I do not know because I roll over and don't remember anything until the alarm. According to Aaron a lot happens while I am asleep, including the development of his new hobby, taking pictures of me while I am asleep. Apparently in this photo I'm praying for him to wake me up so we can both go to bed.