CAMPING!!

I know that camping is not a novelty for plenty of you, but, unfortunately, it is for me. I have some great memories of camping as a child, mostly in Florida playing horseshoes with my dad (except the horseshoes were plastic flowers; I would love to have those again). My happy memories also involve hiking with my high school friends, roasting apples over the campfire, eating blueberry pop-tarts for breakfast, and, of course, listening to Green Day with the Ashcrafts in Lake Texana over Thanksgiving. Not to mention Suzette and I spraying each other down with bug spray at Camp Karankawa.
The only time I've camped in Arizona was at Lake patagonia, which was beautiful and very fun, but was more than two years ago.
So when our ward announced its ward campout, I cleared my schedule. Time to play!!! (I really, really needed to get outside.)
The night before, I went shopping for the essentials. Which included a tent. Because at some point even if a girl doesn't camp all that much, she needs a tent. In this case, she bought a tent for her future family. Which looks like this:

I found this tent earlier online and fell in love with it. And then I went to four different stores until I found it on sale at Sports Authority for $60 off 15 minutes before they closed. Whoo-hoo!!! Also included as camping essentials were: a first aid kit, a camping chair, a flashlight, a hammock, and marshmallow roasting sticks. Perfect, right?
Back to the tent, which received several nicknames during the campout. "Tent house" "Taj Mahal" "Best of Show" and
"The Palace" were my favorites. Mostly, it was just really fun. And it was easy to set up, which made all us girls very cool. And then we helped the guys set up theirs.
I went with 3 girls, 2 of whom are new in my ward. One, Annette, is 30 also. She's the one with short brown hair. And we talked nonstop for 3 1/2 hours all the way there. I've learned fairly recently something about 30-year old single girls. We have a lot of good stories. And we talk a LOT. (There's another girl in my ward that I had the same experience with.) Anyways, Annette is fabulous and I totally love her. Megan (the other blonde) is 29 and also totally cool. She just got back from her mission in Chile and is a nurse. She also always talks like she might just be a little bit high, which might just make me like her even more. And the girl with long brown hair is JoAnn. She moved here from Texas and is Megan's friend and is 33, but likes to say she's 25.
And she is very fun, too.

The thing that you may have noticed is different about this post than other ones is that it involves friends of mine that are GIRLS. I know this is a novelty, but it's something I'm really trying to cultivate. You know, girl friends who don't only live 600+ miles away. And this was such a fun way to get to know each other.
So anyways, we drove a million miles to our campsite, which was beautiful but had only 1 toilet for 100 people and magically did not break. We ate smores and talked and looked at stars with the iphone app that tells you exactly what you're looking at. In the morning, I (of course) slept through breakfast and got up feeling fabulous. Annette, me, and JoAnn went on a hike to a spring that we found out didn't exist, but which was good for working off the Pop-Tarts anyways. This is what Megan did while we hiked:
I also broke out my hammock afterwards and ate Wheat Thins and Easy Cheese like I used to do at girls' camp. It was awesome. This is the view from the hammock:

And then, we packed up and went home. And the tent even fit back in the bag. Which I have to admit, I was a little nervous about.
So the trip...
It was quick. It was fast. It was beautiful. It was perfect. Ahh...

The Importance of Watching TV

I need to watch more TV. I've come to this conclusion only recently, but I'm quite certain it's true. The fact that I've been paying for cable since July and have yet to watch a complete show is starting to get to me. Despite all the negative effects of watching too much TV, I'm quite convinced there are some excellent benefits of watching just enough. For example, it makes you happy. How I Met Your Mother, the Office, and, of course, What Not to Wear. It helps you bond with people. And it makes you smile.

Second, it makes you feel normal. Kind of like laundry. The sound of the washing machine and the sound of the TV is kind of soothing; Being in a house with the TV on makes you feel like you're in a normal-people house. And you know what's going on in the world.

Third, it makes homework less monotonous. Working at night + doing online school = a lot of quiet time & a lot of time in front of the computer. Computers don't talk back unless you're on youtube. The TV does. Some people listen to music while they do their homework. I watch mindless TV. It makes me feel like I'm socializing during the hours I'm spending in front of the computer researching vestibulitis.

It is, of course, how I got through college round 1. And I just realized it's time to watch TV.

Milk Snob No More

Those of you who may have spent some QT with me in my 20's know that I can be kind of a milk snob. Somewhere along the way, in reading all those articles about growth hormones and girls starting puberty at age 10, I decided for the sake of my health that organic milk was worth the cost. (And, unlike organic chicken, I could almost afford it.)
So on my server "salary," I drove about once a week to the Boise Co-op and paid $5.29 for this organic milk. Besides me thinking it was great knowing the names of the cows that it came from, it seriously was the best-tasting milk I have ever had in my life.
Moving to AZ, I have been able to come across some organic milk, but I avoid Horizon because I heard once they aren't "really" organic or something like that, and fresh & easy's milk is cheap and seems just fine if I can't find a good local one.
However. We have reached a new level. A lower one.
See, I've been quite busy lately. And our fridge is pretty crowded, so my roommates and I share milk. And they've been buying it, and I split the cost.
And last month I drank Food City milk. Food City is a good store for buying avocadoes, yucca root, and bell peppers. And for learning Spanish. I don't go there generally because I like to speak the same language as my cashier as a general rule. I don't buy my milk there.
But Gina did.
And I drank it.

Now, a little bit about Great Value. I will buy Target brand iron, paper towels, and even feminine hygiene products. I simply do not think, in general, that the "Great Value," or Wal-mart brand makes a lot of "Great-tasting" food. This is maybe just my stuck up white people-ness. But also I think it's true. And apparently they do to because they just gave it a massive overhaul. Which is good because it makes me feel like it's not all in my head.
And because apparently I now drink their milk. (In my blueberry-pineapple-kale-chocolate protein smoothie as I write this.)
Just for the record. Yes, I can tell the difference. And yes, I'm going to start buying my own stinking milk.

Vegetables Part II- Annoyed

So in my last post I wrote about how much fun it was to eat so many awesome vegetables. And how nice it was to lost 3 pounds in 2 and a half weeks. That seemed like a nice little reward for how good I was feeling.
Then I ate out this weekend. 4 times. Once I ordered a vegetarian meal with a little chicken on top (and ate a little dessert). Next time it was 1/2 a hamburger and 1/2 a milkshake and quite a few zucchini and sweet potato fries (bet your butt I counted them as vegetable #4 and #5). Next was pumpkin bread french toast (amazingly indulgent) and a little bit of omelet. Lastly, I went with seared ahi tuna and a caesar salad.
What do I get for this? Would you like to know?
a) feeling like everything is fitting tighter
b) weird dreams about my nightgown not fitting
and
c) a weight gain of 4 (FOUR!) pounds. It has only lasted 2-ish days, and I did get mad and make chocolate chip cookies and eat a lot of them yesterday, but REALLY? is that fair?
I think it's terrible. And I need to do homework and go work out. But I'm hungry and mad.
So we'll see what I do.
(And yes, I've still been diligently trying to get the veggies in. Really.)
p.s. One nurse I just met (yes, I complain about this to a lot of people) said, "You know what's happening, right? Your body is just holding onto it." Really body? Do you think we're in a famine? We're not. We're doing just fine. You're well-fed! Stop overreacting! You're not going to die! Let it go already!

Vegetables

I don't know what got into me, but the other day I decided I needed to eat more vegetables. Maybe it was not going to the gym very much. Maybe it was trying to calculate if there was ever one day a week where I didn't eat a little too much saturated fat combined with knowing our family heart history. Maybe it was hanging out with single girls who didn't seek out cookies at every opportunity. Or maybe it was something I read from someone in Glamour. Probably all of those.
But I did. I started eating vegetables. A lot.
My goal is 5 servings a day. It's been two weeks, and I've done it almost everyday. There have been a few days of 3 or 4, but that still counts as a massive improvement over my previous routine.
There are three main benefits to this:
1- Things don't go bad. I have always bought a lot of vegetables. I just don't always EAT them. I never throw away my salad anymore. This happened way too much. The carrots and celery from big Sunday dinners don't go bad, and I actually eat my tomatoes while they're still good. AND I eat enough cauliflower and peppers to finish off my hummus for the first time in a year.
2- I've tried lots of new recipes and new foods. Like eggplant in miso sauce (from Brad's garden), pork chops with sauteed kale, and salmon with edamame sauce. And I also put kale in my smoothies, which tastes just fine actually and makes me feel like a rock star. AND I ate a turnip for the first time (with sweet potatoes and turkey sausage for breakfast), which was cool.
3- My health, of course. I feel pretty good eating all this good stuff instead of dessert. It makes me actually look for vegetables everywhere in order to get them all in. One day I was starving at 5pm and hadn't had a single one (this has also happened on more than one occasion.) So I went to Whole Foods and got 3 "salads" from their deli: brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, and kale. And it was delicious! And I've lost a couple pounds, which is, of course, very nice.
Speaking of which, I really need to go to the grocery store!! I'm out of everything!

Chase Field

A few weeks ago I got invited spur of the moment to go to a baseball game. Now, I really like baseball live, but the Diamondbacks aren't having a great season, and, well, I've never really been asked to go. So me and the roommates and a few other people went. Absolutely nothing happened for four innings and then with two people on base, 2 strikes, and 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, the D-backs scored two runs to tie the game. I went crazy; it was so great. And then we won in the bottom of the 10th (against the Colorado Rockies.)
It felt so good to be there. Afterwards, there was a fireworks show (the stadium is pretty sweet; it's air conditioned and the roof opens up) and I ate Cracker Jacks while Brad Paisley played on the PA system.
What a great Friday night.

Do colors make you feel friendlier?

My roommate Vanie wears a lot of black. I mean a LOT of black. And she knows it. And jokes about it.
This is her closet:

The picture might seem a little dark, but that's just all the black.
Now, Vanie is not a depressed or "goth" individual. She actually is pretty happy, and laughs more easily than pretty much anyone I know. But, being a convert, she likes to feel like she "fits in" to this whole mormon culture thing, and wearing all black doesn't always seem to help. So on Sunday, she pulled out her only pink skirt and wore it for the first time. This is her with our other roommate Laura. From Provo. Who has no trouble fitting in to the whole mormon culture thing. (Vanie is not in stripes.)

Vanie was so impressed with herself and so excited to wear her white shoes and white purse for the first time.
But the best part was the quote that came from down the hall.
"Christin, I feel friendlier. Do colors make you feel friendlier?"
I almost died.

New House Pictures

Bridget's been on me forever to do this, but between having Brad's stuff in the "bonus room," school, and, really, a ton of other things. It didn't happen. Until now. Today my house is pretty much as clean as it's going to get, so here you go!!
The front:

(no, those are not my windchimes)

The living room (view from the door)



The kitchen: The best part of the house, I would say.


The "Bonus Room" aka the room with no air conditioning. Try that in 115 degree weather. Want to guess what our power bill was this month? (The "office" is on the left"; the "dining room" is to the right")



The laundry room/storage room. It's a little cramped, but at least I found a place for all my ancient kissing pictures! (p.s. Brad and I installed that shelf last night. We got it from IKEA. I love it, and it makes a big difference.


The hallway


One tiny bathroom


My bedroom!!! It's on the right at the very end of the hall. The little nightstand with the fan on it was also a last night IKEA purchase. It is basically the reason we now have these pictures. Because my hair dryer and the fan that keeps me alive while I get ready are no longer on the floor posing a tripping hazard for everyone who walks by. I also finally found my extension cords so all my lamps can work from the area of the room that I want them to. It finally feels finished!


The view from my bed:


The bathroom. I know I complain about this more than I should. Really. I do. But I finally measured it. Because I feel claustrophobic in it every single morning. It is 49.5 inches wide and 100 inches deep. It has two tiny drawers. And it is hot. But at least I have company.

This is Squeakers, the gecko that lives on my bathroom window at night. He likes the little moths that like the little light.
And this is my bathroom. I do love the tile.


I almost forgot our backyard!! Someday it will have "decorative rocks" and a storage shed. I'm not sure what my landlord's definition of someday is. Note the solar powered lamp courtesy of IKEA as well. It was on clearance for $10, and come on, everybody needs a solar powered lamp. Right? right?


It's more like a solar-powered night light, but I'm thinking it might be good for the ward camping trip!