Friday, July 31, 2009

Happy Thursday

First of all, a couple of reasons why I am lovin’ the humidity out here:

1. You don’t have to dry off after taking a shower.
2. It takes 3 minutes (tops!) to blow dry your hair (if your hair is brown, over a foot long, and belongs to my head).
3. You have a warm security blanket around you at all times – it’s like snuggling up with a blanket on the couch, only in summer instead of winter!
4. Soft skin – I haven’t had to use my Curel once yet!5. Raindrops falling outside my window and on the roof…it’s such a lovely sound.
6. I no longer feel the need to drink 15 glasses of water a day! I don’t know if that’s related or not, but I’m pretending I do and that it is.

We had a wonderful day today. Despite staying up pretty late (we’ll just say well past midnight), Daniel and I both got up between 6 and 6:30 am (which is between 5 and 5:30 am in Utah time—so there!). Daniel went with Grandpa and Samson for a morning walk/trash picking excursion, and I went for a 30 min. jog, seeing many beautiful houses, trees, lawns, and a couple of cute squirrels along the way.

Back at home, I took a quick shower and ate breakfast with Grandma and Daniel while Grandpa read the paper. I had orange juice, oatmeal with blueberries and bananas, and a delicious peach—the best I’ve tasted all year!

After breakfast, Daniel and I went upstairs to read our scriptures, and both ended up falling asleep again, but Grandma woke us up before 10:30 to get going with Grandpa to their local rec center. Grandpa bought us some visitor’s passes, and gave us the grand tour of their weight room, swimming pool, tennis courts, yoga room, play room, janitor’s closet, and…well, you get the idea. He seemed to know quite a few people in the gym, and was happy to introduce us to each and every one. I was glad the gym was a small one, as Grandpa seemed determined to introduce us to almost every piece of equipment inside, in a fashion such as I would imagine one would introduce the alphabet to a 5-year old. This despite the fact that—alas—after 3 years of navigating the inner labyrinths of at least 3 gyms, I am well aware of the function and title of almost every pain-provoking machine, and even of the appropriate accompanying amount of emotional adrenaline, fear, resentment, or anticipation.

At last, Grandpa went into the weight room/cardio room (I hate it when they’re combined, but what can one do?), and Daniel and I changed into our swimsuits and went to the indoor pool. The bigger section was about 50 meters long and 25 meters wide, and divided into 8 or so laps. However, only 4/5 of them were open for swimming. The rest were polluted by an ancient spell cast by an underwater demon. Oops, been reading too much Fablehaven. Actually, they were closed because a sign and a lifeguard Daniel asked said so. Anyway, fortunately, the pool was not crowded at all, and eventually Daniel and I both got lanes to ourselves. I swam my usual 18 laps of mixed strokes, and enjoyed doing a few special water-stretches and activities between. I believe this was the first time I’ve gone swimming all year, and I enjoyed it so much that I’ve resolved to go swimming at least once every week when I get back to Utah. It takes a lot of time and can be crowded, but I’d forgotten how much fun it is! Anyway, it’s always good to vary your type of exercise so your body doesn’t get too accustomed to just doing the same thing over and over. Speaking of which, Aunt Shelly is taking me for a bike ride tomorrow, also the first time I’ll have been on a (non-stationary) bike this year! Whoopee for change!

After swimming and showering and fooling around with Grandpa (he came in and told the lifeguard that we were his grandchildren, and not to let us drown…), we drove home. I washed my hair, and then ate lunch—a lovely bacon/tomato/lettuce/cheese sandwich with Grandma’s homemade bread.

After lunch, I did a lot of reading on my bed (I can tell already that I’m going to be pretty depressed between the time that I finish the 4th book in this series and that the 5th book comes out), and watched one of my new Best Picture movies from the collection Dad got me for my birthday. This one was the Best Picture winner from 1954, the year Mom and Dad were born. It’s called On the Waterfront, and was definitely winning material. Great cast, great story, lots of believability and tense situations, some touching bits of tragedy and parallelism, a triumphant ending and love/goodness/decency conquers all. It was especially nice to watch the main character change from an aimless, lazy, irresponsible bum to a courageous, independent, moral freeman. I would definitely watch it again, ideally with Kleenex and ice cream.

I went over to Aunt Shelly’s in the late afternoon, and talked with her and helped to fix some green beans which Daniel and Andy had picked from their garden. Daniel was teaching Andy some chess strategies, but I believe they had already played MarioKart for the allotted hour of the day. I was not too sad to have missed out, I must say. Eventually Uncle Billy, Grandma, and Grandpa joined us for dinner, which was beyond fabulous. We had sweet potato French fries (which I absolutely loved!), squash and green beans, and what appeared to be giant hot dogs, but were called bratwursts by those-who-knew. I had a big fat turkey one, and it made every hot dog I had ever tasted pale in comparison. By the way, be prepared to read a lot about meals in my account of our vacation—Southern dinners with our relatives in Tennessee are pretty much the stuff of legend in the Miller family.

After dinner, we talked for a long time, as you may expect, and had dessert, which was cold banana bread with chocolate chips—very chewy and yummy, though I had to drink a lot of water to keep from getting thirsty.

After another half hour or so of talking about…whatever, we ended up playing Catchphrase in the Hughes’ living room, with Daniel/me/Uncle Billy/Aunt Shelly on one time, and Gma/Gpa/Andy/Becky on another. We played three games, and our team won all of them, though the last game was close enough to be settled by a matchpoint. Very intense. Julie came home when we were winding up, and we talked for a little bit while the boys played pool. She had to do two presentations in the past two days, and seemed happy to be done with them.

At last, around 9 pm, Daniel and I headed out, and we’re now stalling before bed time by reading, checking our email, watching TV, and writing long blog posts. I’m actually impressed that I finished this in less than half an hour.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow—yoga class with Grandpa at noon, bike ride with Aunt Shelly, and we get to see Edward, Joseph, and Kirsti! Plus another one of those infamous Southern dinners—I’ve heard rumors with the word “pizza” in them, but nothing more…

Thursday, July 30, 2009

And I'm back...EAST!

Hey y’all! So apparently, I only write in my blog when I leave home and have to exert myself to labors beyond staying in my bedroom all day with a book. Anyway, my brother Daniel and I are on vacation at our grandparents’ house in Brentwood, Tennessee for the next week or so, and I will do my best to give you (y’all, I mean – excuuuse me! Try-ain to get back in mah Southern belle dialect heah) daily reports.

My day started out at 6 am, when Mom woke me up to go running on the track. It was cool and dark and kind of fun, except that we found out that one of our neighbor’s houses had been robbed last night – yikes! I made a mental note to not ever leave our door unlocked, even for a short period of time.

After exercising, I took a shower, fixed my hair, ate breakfast, and completed all the last minute packing. We left the house a little after 8 am, and ended up arriving at the airport a little flustered, after Mom took a wrong turn to get to a parking lot, rather than the parking garage, and Daniel and I argued the benefits/disadvantages to the latter option. Anyway, we made it inside without any difficulty, and checked in our bags (and I managed to assure Mom that my rather large—but still within the size limit—carry-on bag would not, in fact, be sufficient cause to weigh the plane down and cause a tragic crash in the vast desert between Salt Lake City and Phoenix). My bag had a lock on it, which I thought nothing of, since both my bags on the flight to D.C. had locks and I had never had my attention drawn to it. However, this time there wasn’t a line at the check-in place and the airport security guys seemed pretty bored, so they decided to have me open my bag and to rifle through everything. I was more than a little embarrassed at having my stuffed purple elephant, Derrick, which Daniel insisted I bring on the trip for the sake of old times, bared to the sight and mockery of all the airport security personnel—particularly since I had purposely put him in my large suitcase for the sake of avoiding such an exposure—but fortunately, no laughs were heard, no jokes were made, and both Derrick and my suitcase were able to continue the rest of the trip without further shame.

After kissing Mama good-bye and making it through security extraordinarily quickly, Daniel and I had a 2-hour wait until our flight. We used a good part of the first hour reading our scriptures, and took a long walk around the airport during the second hour. There were a lot of art displays, and I particularly liked a series of photographs showcasing ballet dancers in exotic locations. Daniel didn’t much like looking at any of them, but did say that his favorite was the only picture which didn’t have any females in it (it had, instead, three males in Russian dancing costumes and poses).

Finally we settled down to wait out the last half-hour before our flight, and Daniel struck up a conversation with a guy named Matthew, who told us he had converted to the Church 3 years ago because of his wife, who was Peruvian, and that he lived in Mexico, and that he had done a session in the Salt Lake Temple, and that he used to be pretty wild before he joined the church, among other things. He also thought Daniel and I were married, and asked how long we had been with each other – ha ha ha!!! We thought about saying “Oh, 21 years or so,” but ended up telling him the truth, which seemed to surprise him a good deal. I guess it’s a pretty natural assumption, given that we’re together and the same age, but you’d think more people would check to see if the girl was wearing a wedding ring, at least!

After chatting with Matthew, we rushed to board our plane, which was already boarding “B” passengers (we were “A”), and then Daniel suddenly decided he had to go to the bathroom. I tried to talk him out of it, but only succeeded in making him hesitate for 20 seconds or so before racing off, leaving me with his bag at the end of the line of passengers, which was rapidly moving up. Result? We ended up being the last people to get on—so much for our one chance at boarding first with “A” tickets. However, I was grateful that we made the flight, and it was actually very nice—as in “not crowded.” We both got window seats and a whole aisle to ourselves, and the staff were fun and pleasant. All the flight attendants were men, which surprised me a little. But they were all nice guys, and seemed to be capable of knocking down any passengers who tried to cause any trouble, so I was okay with it.

I didn’t do much on the flight—just read the magazine, which had changed since my trip home from D.C., ate my peanuts, drank my orange juice, and read a little bit in my new favorite book of all time, Fablehaven. I liked the first one, LOOOOOOOVED the second one, and am immensely enjoying the third one.

In Phoenix, we called Mom, ate our sack lunches, and figured out that we could get free Internet. That made the time pass rather quickly, and soon we were ready to board our next flight to Nashville. This flight actually was very crowded, but we still managed to find two seats together, almost at the very back of the plane. I sat in the middle seat, Daniel sat in the aisle seat, and across the aisle sat two teenage girls with two tiny dogs in a carrier. I guess you can now flight pets with Southwest…for a fee of $75, as we overheard. They seemed to be very well behaved dogs, at least, and small enough to fit in a regular sized purse. I was impressed at the lack of messiness and smelliness.


The flight wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I was very tired and couldn’t get in a comfortable position to fall asleep. I read a lot in my book, which helped to pass the time, and they gave us quite a few snacks (more peanuts, crackers with cheese, those Oreo crackers which are NOT in the least bit like Oreos, and bland, dry, sandy animal crackers), which helped since I had only eaten half my lunch in Phoenix. The flight attendant who did all the talking was also a bit of a character – he cracked a lot of the usual jokes, about us being on a flight to New Orleans instead of Nashville, and thanked “all 15 of you who paid attention” to the safety instructions. He also got a loud round of laughter when he introduced the lifejacket bit with “Should we happen to fall into one of the vast oceans between Phoenix and Nashville…” Good stuff! All in all, it didn’t seem like it had been that long when we landed in Nashville 20 min. ahead of schedule. Oddly enough, the 10 minutes or so we had to wait before we could leave the airplane seemed INTERMINABLE! But once out, things were good. We found Aunt Shelly, picked up our baggage, met a tall, handsome stranger and a taller, white-haired giant who claimed to be Andy Hughes and Uncle Billy, and drove to Grandma and Grandpa’s, where we were treated with a dinner of vegetable soup, homemade bread, tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, and zucchini bread with ice cream for dessert. Delicious!

We talked after dinner for a good long time about everything from what Dad’s favorite food was as a kid (strawberries) to what Grandma’s father did in Germany in World War II, to what riding a camel in Australia was like. It felt a bit like time travel, but was fun all the same, and I look forward to having more conversations around the table. Well, time for bed, and to read some more in my new favorite book! Goodnight!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Eat your Apples to Apples

Out of duty to time-honored traditions of the past, Sunday nights in our family are reserved for spiritual songs, thoughts, scriptures, and lessons in the way of "Family Home Evening." In contrast, Monday nights are a time for riotous frivolity and tomfoolery, mayhem and untainted wantonness: The main event usually consists of a contest to see who can drop the greatest number of masked insults before someone decides that the usual fail-safe - a swift smirk, followed by an innocent face and "Just kidding!" - no longer applies. Hilarity (also known on occasion as complex and/or illogical verbal battles, tears, slamming doors, and the occasional parental threat) ensues. However, in between and sometimes during rounds of this, we usually watch a movie or do the dishes or play a game.

Speaking of games, one of our favorites is "Apples to Apples." We play this game so often that we have acquired our own family traditions within the context of playing the game. For example, it is practically a rite to pick out random green (adjectival) cards after the game to describe "the way [insert family member's name] feels at Christmas," or red (nominal) cards to describe "what [X] will get [X] for Christmas." (By the way, I'm not sure why all the Christmas references come to mind...something about the red/green element of the game? Fact that we got it as a Christmas gift?)

Another thing we like to do is have our dog, Teddy, play.


This practice developed when there were only two of us willing and wanting to play the game at a certain time. And as we all know, the game requires at least three players (or two players and a stuffed animal, I suppose). Now, Apples to Apples being designed for humans, and Teddy being a dog, the results are quite funny, pitiful, and occasionally unpredictable. As none of us could be allowed to knowingly "choose" Teddy's card, we developed random methods to "select" red cards for him to play (i.e. number of licks, licks to a particular finger, sniffs of a particular card, completely and totally random, etc). The same rules apply to Teddy's choosing the winning red card, should he happen to be the judge.

I love it when Teddy plays. He's such a good sport - he never complains about getting a rotten draw or losing a round which he deserved to win - and creates such comedy for the rest of us by choosing the oddest of cards, like "Earthquakes" for "Cute," or "The 21st Century" for "Delicious." If you're the judge, and a particularly ridiculous card comes up ("The Eiffel Tower" for "Frazzled," say), it's a good bet the card is Teddy's. And when he manages to astonish us all by winning a round or two, it's a great opportunity to get rid of your worst red card, since he assumedly has no idea which one he's choosing ("Lenin's Tomb" is "Dainty"? Sure, why not!?).


But in all the years that we've played Apples to Apples, Teddy never actually won a game until last week. I mean, it's not exactly a game of luck! Witness the serious and lengthy amount of time, energy, and effort often required to select these cards and to agonize about which one deserves to win. Witness also the heated arguments and debates which take place in defense or attack of a particular decision. Even luck with good cards isn't enough to help you if a particular judge disagrees with your interpretation of a certain adjective.

Be this as it may, whether by inordinate good luck on his part or bad luck on ours, and with all the odds against him, Teddy officially won his first game of Apples to Apples last week. I didn't know whether to be proud (Attaboy! The classic story of the underdog win!) or embarrassed (Yeah, I lost the game...to our dog.). I may have to reconsider all that stuff about it not being a game of luck...cause that's what is was, right? RIGHT!? Whatever the secret is, Teddy's not talkin'. And if he can win Apples to Apples, what's to stop him from winning ANY game based on the luck of the die? What will happen to reputations established over years on the continual winning of board games such as Yahtzee and Sorry?

Anyway, another one of our family traditions is that the winner has to put up the game. Naturally, this one fell by the wayside that day, which just goes to show that you can't rely on anything anymore.