Update Central, Population: You

First of all let's just get to my hair. I got a new haircut awhile back, but I'm just now showing you how awesome it is:


Nice, right? I know. I know.

I also promised updates about our trip to PA and I'm going to try to follow through with that. We had a hellish flight out of Cedar Rapids (Eastern Iowa Airport...serving all of Eastern Iowa...that's a lot of area for one super crappy little airport, it's amazing). I'm going to try to recap that for you, but I've told the story a lot now and it's getting old. But I always try to give my public what they want.

We were scheduled to fly out of Cedar Rapids at 11:30 AM on December 27 and arrive in Allentown, PA at 4:00 PM on December 27. We arrived in Philadelphia at 9:30 in the morning on December 28. So I guess that the airline sort of got us to where we kind of wanted to go, sort of around the time we wanted to go there. I mean, thanks guys! I could have driven to Allentown before I got there on the plane, but I wouldn't have spent nearly as much money so thanks for the opportunity to sit in the airport for a day and give you $800 for the privilege. Oh, and the extra $15 charge that you hit us with on the way home (also delayed, but not as much) for checking a bag? Double thanks for that! That was awesome.

So we got to the airport on the 27th at about 9:45 in the morning and had a breakfast sandwich and I took some motion sickness medicine (anti-, not pro-) and then we went through the friendly airport security (I'm being sarcastic, those people are not friendly, they are suspicious and angry and pushy people). We started waiting at the gate for our flight. No problem we thought. This is fine. Everything's fine. So we wait. And wait...and our flight time comes and goes and it then our connection flight time in Chicago comes and goes. So we go up to the desk and get booked on later flights so that when we do get to O'Hare we can get to somewhere else. They book us on a flight from O'hare to Washington Dulles and then from there to Allentown arriving at 11:30 PM. Not ideal. I'm not really digging getting on two planes let alone 3 and we were supposed to get in by 4:00PM, but whatever fine. So we sit down to wait some more. Then, miraculously we board. Ok, great! We're going! We'll get to O'hare and then we'll go to D.C. and then we'll be there. Better than nothing! So we sit. Hm...that's strange. Suddenly the stewardess, who was probably on her second day of the job, says, "Oh, oh no. Oh no, that's not good. Oh, that's very bad." Which is just as bad, if not worse, than when a hairdresser says, "oops". Then, Dingbat, gets on the loudspeaker and says, "Um...yeah, I just wanted to explain why I was acting so unprofessionally there. We were closing the door and it's so cold that a wire on the door snapped and so now the door won't close." Apparently that's bad. I'm no mechanic, but apparently you can't fly with the door to an airplane open. Don't ask me to explain, just trust me. So now the pilot comes out to apologize to the plane full of angry delayed passengers. He says that they don't have a mechanic at this airport because they contract in employees here, so they have to call the mechanic and he'll be there to fix it soon and then we can go. This turns out to be a lie. First of all, this is apparently the same mechanic that delayed us initially because there was something else wrong with the plane when it came in, so that's why we were waiting before. We all get off the plane. Now Zach and I are going to miss our next connection because the roads are now icy and apparently the mechanic lives in the middle of nowhere and can't get in very quickly, so he'll be there in like an hour or something. We get booked on another flight from Chicago to Allentown and we get put on standby for another flight that's leaving from Cedar Rapids to Chicago. We some how get on the other flight to Chicago. This is good because it's the last flight out to Chicago that we could get on until Monday morning. Bad news is, when we get to O'hare our flight to Allentown is cancelled and there are no more flights to Allentown until Monday morning. We wait in line at the customer service counter for 1.5 hours. This is not time well spent. Now we are tired, hungry, angry and disappointed. Some of us more than others...Z, I'm looking at you. We get up to the counter and Zach basically loses the plot*. He doesn't really yell, but he gets pretty pissy. The customer service agent stops speaking to him and only addresses me. We cannot get a flight to Allentown, but we can get a flight to Philadelphia at 6:00 in the morning on Sunday. We decide to go for this option because it is the only option we have. Using what I like to call "Good Cop Bad Cop" Zach and I get a super sweet hotel room for free. They were not giving out free vouchers for hotel rooms, they were giving out discounted room rates, but we were able to get a free room! I think it's because the customer service guy felt sorry that I was going to be dealing with Zach for the rest of the night and took pity on me. We catch a shuttle to the hotel. Here are some pictures of our suite. It was super nice. Really nice room. Too bad we were only in it for a few hours, but still.


Our bed, very nice, soft and big. I slept about 2 hours in it. Delightful. We had to wake up at 3:30 because we needed to get to the airport to catch the 6 AM flight.





We went to dinner at Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse. It was expensive, but really nice. We felt we deserved it. Then we went back to the hotel, showered and went to bed. I didn't really sleep because apparently whenever I only have a few hours to sleep I wake up every 20 minutes in order to check how much more time I have to sleep. Long story short. We made the flight on Sunday morning and got picked up in Philadelphia. Basically it took us 12 hours to get to Chicago. We could have driven to Chicago, forgotten something, driven back to Iowa City, then driven back to Chicago in the time it took us to get there on Saturday and it wasn't even our final destination. AWESOME!

Anyway, we finally got into PA, got to the in-laws and partied hard. It was a good week. I was going to write out all the notes that Zach took from the time there, but I took way, way too much time to tell this plane story, so I'm going to just say that we had a good time. We visited with friends and family, ate a lot, drank a lot, went on a tour of historical Bethlehem, walked to New Jersey and then back to PA in one day (see pictures below) and had a baby.


We didn't want to say anything, but Zach was pregnant and now we have this beautiful baby. Not really. Although it would explain the weight gain, eh Zach? I can't talk. It looks like I've been pregnant for about 5 years now. Stupid winter weight gain! That's actually Zach's cousin's baby. The first boy born on that side of the family since Zach was born. He's super cute. I'm going to use this picture for our Christmas card next year because it makes us look like we've got a nice little family unit going.

Ok, so anyway, to recap. Flying - sucks. Airports-suck. Traveling- sucks. Seeing family and friends - Awesome. Learning about history- Awesome. Holding babies that you can give back when they get cranky and not having to pay for them and raise them for 18 years - Priceless.

Happy New Year to you all from your favorite couple:


(Taken on New Year's day. Our first New Year as a married couple. GO US!)



*This is a British slang term that means "throws a fit". I love it and want to make it popular across the pond here.

Updates are coming, I promise

Hello Loyal Readers,

Tonight I bring you the promise of updates to come. It's somehow not as satisfying as the actual updates, but it gets you closer- it's like no-calorie sweetener. It sort of does the job, but you miss the actual sugar. Don't lie, you know original Coke is better than Coke Zero. But you know that Coke Zero is better for you. I'm honestly not sure where I am going with this metaphor. I've completely lost control of it. I'm like Bugs Bunny on the way to Pismo Beach, I should have taken the right turn at Albuquerque.*

Anyway, I came back to the "real world" on Sunday, but I haven't been willing to sit down and blog about all our adventures in PA yet. It's coming though, my awesome husband took notes on the trip, so I am totally prepared to give you a blow-by-blow of what we did on our vacation. I'll start with the "Great Airline Fiasco of 2008". It rivals even the "Great Airline Fiasco of 2007". Apparently, the universe does not want me to travel any where for the holidays. There are those that will say, "that's what you get for living in the midwest." To those people I say, "go to hell". The airlines should adopt the policy of the U.S. Postal Service - through rain or shine or dark of night...or snow, or ice or mechanical failure...just get me there! I paid you damn it, hold up your end of the bargain. But wait, I don't want to spoil it for you.

So I will post, and soon, because as many of you know my new year starts in two days on the 10th. That's really when I like to celebrate the new year.

Until we meet again,
Rose


*Serious extra points to those of you keeping score at home for getting that reference.**

**Extra points for enjoying it.***

***Can you footnote a footnote? Is that allowed? It should be if it isn't.

Things that Television Taught Me Tonight

Today/tonight I've been watching television. It's not because I want to. It's because I'm sacrificing my time in order to learn things from television and pass them on to you. No, no, you don't have to thank me. I do it because I care. Here are some lessons that television has taught me tonight, in no particular order:

Arizona is beating BYU, but not the good Arizona school (ASU - GO SUN DEVILS!) The bad Arizona school...the school that thinks it's all awesome, but really we all know the truth.

Lard comes from around the kidney region of the pig.

Bobby Flay does contemporary Southwestern cuisine. Oddly, this is a fact that I've learned on two separate occasions tonight.

It's really crappy weather today. It will be even crappier tomorrow. Apparently some nice 20 to 30 MPH wind is currently occurring which is working to bring the temperature down to -30 with the windchill. Tomorrow the high will be 2 and the low will be -8. It will be 5 on Monday. It's 1 now.

Paula Deen is super crazy, but she seems really happy, so it's hard for me to begrudge her the craziness.

Alton Brown is sort of a pompous ass. I think that's an image he cultivates, so he probably doesn't care if I am saying it about him, but c'mon Alton, lighten up. Oh, and according to Alton most Americans mistakenly think that all of the heat in peppers come from the seeds, but in fact quite a bit is contained in the white membrane that holds the seeds to the pepper flesh. I'm not sure if he took a poll of most Americans or where he gets his information, but you know what Alton? I knew that. So ha!

Will Ferrel is taking over the air waves. I can't blame the networks because he is funny. I used to think that I hated Will Ferrel but then I realized that I own almost all of the movies he's been in and I had to finally admit to myself that, yeah, I do like Will Ferrel.

Ashton Kutcher loves taking pictures.

Saturday night is not the best night for television.

The women on the Rock of Love Charm School are hard core. I would not like to meet any of them on a dark street at night. I'm not sure what happens to people when they get on reality television. Do they feed those people a steady diet of drugs, alcohol and crazy pills? I would never go on reality television because they wouldn't have to cut the footage all that much to make me look like "the bitchy one" and I just don't want that on record for everyone to see. How do people go back to their normal lives after being on reality television? Why can't I turn off these shows??

There's some new natural sweetener that comes from the Stevia plant and doesn't have any calories and is all natural. Why has it taken us this long to find this natural, no calorie sweetener? What else are scientists and botanists working on? Some cure for cancer? Fine, I guess, but no calorie sweetener that won't give you cancer? Seems like something we should have been working harder on.

Never, never, never under any circumstances should you become a drug mule for a man that you barely know and just met in Thailand. I'd think that this would be obvious to anyone, but apparently it bears repeating because I just watched an entire hour long program in which this lesson had to be learned the hard way. Also, I'm 99.9% sure that you shouldn't be a drug mule ever. Just don't do it. Because I also learned where you put the drugs and trust me, it's not pretty.

I didn't like the movie Swordfish the first time and it turns out that hasn't changed. I will tell you this though, just like in the movie, our family's secret password, you know, in case a stranger ever came to pick you up and you had to ask them for the password that your parents told them and they had to tell you the right one? Ok, so our family's password was Swordfish. Um...ok, that's probably not safe. Listen, Andy if you are reading this, don't get in the car with any strangers who tell you that password. I'll ask Mom and Dad to come up with a different one and tell us. OK?

The Big Ten Network wins hands down for "Most Boringest Station on Television" and "Least Likely to Be Watched by Me".

I cannot tell a lie, I want a GT Express 101 Indoor Grill. I'm sorry. The infomercial convinced me. It's got a unique dual cooking chamber. How can anyone resist?

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in over 10 years and I don't regret that decision one little bit.

I find it amazing that there are a ton of shows of which I have seen maybe 2 episodes, but every time I flip through, I somehow have seen that episode of the show? What are the odds?

Ok, I'm gonna go continue my education now. Hopefully these lessons will serve you well.

Christmas with the In-Laws

I make this announcement in case I have not told anyone who happens to read this blog - I will not be going to Phoenix, home of my family, for Christmas this year. It's the first time in 28 years (or 29 years...Zach, I need your help on this one, how many Christmases have I lived? I get so confused about it because there is the zero year...I digress). Anyway, it's been a way long time since I have not spent the holiday with my family...although last year when I was stuck in Crapsville (sorry, Iowa) I wasn't really spending the time with my family either. But this year I will be spending the holiday with my brand-spanking-new-in-laws in Pennsylvania...another place where it snows and is freezing during the winter instead of warm(ish), sunny Arizona. I kid, I kid, I'm not complaining. I'm really not, I think it will be fun to go there. I know that Zach is looking forward to going home more than anything. I am happy to be going and I know that it is likely to become some sort of tradition as I hear that's what married people have to do. They travel for the holidays to both of their family homes. I'm interested to see how that will go. Actually, we aren't going for Christmas, we're going from Dec 27 - Jan 4, so that should be exciting.

The only real thing is that is sadder than missing Jesus' birthday with my family and friends is that I'll be missing MY birthday. I suppose it will all be fine in the end, I'll have a quiet night of single serving cake (read: a whole cake), and I'll sing myself Happy Birthday. No, no, don't pity me. It's fine. I've always wanted to spend the birthday before I'm 30 all by myself. And Zach will be home around midnight or something, so that will be fine. Just go on with your lives. It's all good.

Ok, I'm off now. I just wanted everyone to know that I am not dead. I'm fine. I feel a little bit sick right now, but I think it's just because we went out last night and I almost overindulged and I think I have some sort of snippet of a potential cold, but I also think that I have such an awesome immune system that I'm keeping it at bay. Zach and I would probably have super beautiful babies because we both have really good immune systems.

Also, just so you know, I got my hair cut last week and it is super cute. SUPER CUTE. Not everyone can say that without sounding conceited, but I can, because it's true.

I'm Officially a Shut-In

I've been in bed for the past 24 hours and not in the fun John and Yoko way. In the, "I feel dizzy when I move too much and I think I might die soon way." Well, I always think I might die soon, so that's not really a news flash, but I don't feel this dizzy and unsettled and achy all the time. I just got up and took a shower. The effort has proven to be too much for me, so now I'm back in bed. So far today I have read a book (mystery, of course), played some DS (yep, I went fishing) and listened a bit to my book on tape. Zach, my constant companion has been playing Twisted Metal 4 all day...and waiting on me hand and foot. I cannot tell a lie- having someone to do my bidding while I lay in bed all day is sort of like a dream come true. If only I didn't feel so crappy. Perhaps when I am better I will fake illness so that I can be waited on again. Yes, I think I will definitely do that. Don't tell Zach.

Here are some highlights from the day. We were making breakfast downstairs and Zach started talking about what we should have in our cabin. A quick aside, I decided recently that my new dream in life is to live in a really nice log cabin. Zach is totally on board for that, so we dream about it when we can.

Anyway, he said "We should have a big white board in the kitchen so we can write recipes and things we need from the store and that sort of stuff. And we can do drawings on it. But it can only be used for good, not easel."

I find that to be hilarious. Good, not easel. I love it. That's why I know this whole marriage thing is going to last.

And then later he came upstairs and he had some bacon on his plate (bacon and waffles is the breakfast of champions) and he said, "Do you want some bacon? Oh, wait, is that cannibalism for you?"

See what he did there? He called me a pig. It sounds mean when I write it now, but it was super funny. I find it very amusing. I've been playing it back and laughing all day.

Just thought I'd share. My right eye is twitchy and I feel like laying back down again (instead of being propped up with pillows on the computer...I can't leave this bed apparently). So I'll sign off now.

Turns out Lurch was Right

Back in my youth, well, I'll be charitable to myself...Back in the younger days of my youth we used to hang around with a group of kids from the neighborhood. We were all 17, 18 or in one extreme case 20 at the time and as I could newly drive, my gal pal and I would drive over and watch some of the guys play basketball and generally be show-off guys. A good time was had by all. Ah, the innocence of youth.

Anyway, there was one guy in the neighborhood who was introduced to us as "Lurch". Because of his resemblance to the Addams Family character of the same name. I didn't learn his real name until a few months in. The nickname didn't seem to bother him and it's just what everyone called him. This nickname was not ironic. He was a big, tall, somewhat hefty guy. And nice as he was. He was somewhat s-l-o-w. I'm not trying to be mean, but them's the facts. He was a slow guy. He didn't get animated about much either. So the name fit pretty well.

This is the story of Lurch.

One day I'm over at my friend's house (a boy...a boy I had a crush on) and Lurch comes over too. I am pretty sure that Lurch had a crush on me. Looking back, that's nice. It's always nice to know that people care. Anyway, Lurch comes over and he starts talking to me about this new video game that he got. Video games were the one subject that got Lurch animated. So he's talking away about how awesome it is because you get to kill all these people and it's really awesome, etc., etc. So after a bit of this story he sort of turns to me and says, "Yeah, it's a really cool game, but you probably wouldn't like it. It moves pretty fast. You probably would like something more slow, like fishing or something." To which I had no reply. And with that little gem, he awkwardly left. As soon as the door clicked shut I turned to my friend, "I'm sorry, I'm confused, did Lurch just call ME slow?" And he did. He called me slow, which was awesome.

I say all that to say this: Lurch, it turns out you were totally right. I do like fishing! I've been playing Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS and you can fish in the game and damned if I don't spend most of time doing that. So Lurch, I apologize for taking offense at being called slow by you. You were right. Fishing rules!

Now It's Christmas Time

I know we just had Thanksgiving, but apparently, we've left Fall and are now in the grips of Winter's icy, deathly fingertips of doom, ice, snow, sleet, wetness, cold, horror, overeating and shame. Just me?

Yesterday Zach and I did ALL THINGS CHRISTMAS:

We mailed out the Christmas cards.
Bought a real live Christmas tree.
Decorated the house with tons of awesome Christmas stuff that my lovely Aunt Marybeth and my awesome Grandma gave us.
Listened to Christmas music.
Sat in the dark and admired all the pretty lights.
Hated the snow (oh, wait, that was just me).

Anyway, here's a photo essay of our endeavours. The pictures just really don't do it justice. I swear it's super beautiful and so nice in the house now. It's all decorated and it looks like an actual family lives there. It's official.

This is our Welcome sign. It hangs, very handily, on the peephole of our door. Fantastic and easy.


This is the Christmas tree. As you can see, we used a net to capture it in the wild. It was hard, but if you have two people, it's a lot easier. Zach stood on one side and I stood on the other and we held the net taught and then when the Christmas trees were running by, we jumped one and caught it.

Even though we caught our our tree by ourselves, the man at the Christmas tree ranch said we had to pay for it. This is Zach being excited by the price:


In case you didn't catch that he's happy because it's a $27.00 tree:
It's a Scotch Pine. I'm pretty sure there are some stereotypes about Scottish people and being cheap or what have you. I will let you put in your own joke here. Enjoy.

This is the most delicate part of the tree trimming - getting the skirt on the tree.

Now that the tree is dressed, it looks awesome:


More tree because it's super pretty, but hard to capture. Also notice how nice our plants look on their new table and plant stands. Going to my Aunt's house is like mining for gold. Or getting handed gold without all that pesky shifting and digging.


We tried to capture the feel of the lights, and by we, I mean, Zach:


This is a picture of our super cute holiday village in which I placed some snowmen. I like to think of the snowmen as the villagers, hanging out, buying some antiques, visiting the crazy sequined tree on the outskirts of town:


Here's a close-up version of the village with a snowman in the foreground. It's a pretty arty pic. That's how Zach is though. I don't even want to tell you how many different versions of the same picture I had to sort through.

One side of the tv/entertainment area:


The other side:


A shelf in the bookcase, which holds movies, not books, but I digress:


These pictures don't even really do it justice. Just trust me that our house is super beautiful. SUPER! I think that Zach finished the outside decorations today, so I'll get him to take one billion photos of that which I will then have to narrow down to a few so that I can post them here. I kid, I love that Zach takes pictures for me because I hate doing it by myself.

I leave you with this awesome artistic piece.

Happy Holiday Season!