Delayed birthday goodness

So Jake reminded me yesterday that he still owes me my birthday trip to go mini golfing and go to the batting cages.  Except Marley and Me came out today, so he got me that instead!!!  I'm really really excited to watch it, but The Biggest Loser is on tonight, so we're going to have to wait until at least tomorrow to watch it.  Jake is working right now and I am at home, so he made me promise that I won't watch it while I'm at home.  It's really hard, but I told him that I'd leave the plastic wrap around it so that he would know I didn't watch it.  So instead, I watched every movie clip on the internet that I could find.  

I seriously want a dog.  I realize that this comment comes right after a post about how bad I was at taking care of my fish, but come on.  A dog has so many more benefits to it than a fish.  A fish is fun when you decide you want to do the whole follow-my-finger thing, but other than that, what can you do.  With a dog... you can cuddle, you go go outside to the park, you can go on a walk... the possibilities are endless.  I also realize that taking care of a dog is a LOT of work- especially since I want to get a puppy, but they are just so much fun.

So anyway, here is another reason why Jake can believe me that I did not watch the movie today.  I vacuumed the carpet and cleaned the couch/chair (they smell much better now!), I made lots of phone calls about an internship, I worked out and watched Divorce Court where Ted & Gayle Haggard were on (that provided some great conversation with the lady next to me!), and I showered.  See, I was productive today! :)

Bye-bye fish

I have something to share.  My fish, Tiki the 2nd, died.  <Click here> to see my post about why this could potentially be a very big deal...

Have you read my old post?  Ok, read on.  

When we left for our trip to Estes Park, Tiki was jerking around a lot and his coloring was a bit off.  I wondered if he would be ok, but we had to leave.  I didn't even look at him until mid-afternoon yesterday (shows how much I took care of him!) and found him at the bottom of the bowl.  He basically had lost all of his bright blue color and was mostly white.  He didn't move.  At all.

Here's the thing though.  I actually wasn't sad at all.  I high-fived Jake because that meant that I didn't have to clean his bowl again, which I hadn't done in much too long.  I seriously had stopped taking good care of him because I was sick of having him, so it's nice that I don't need to half-hearted take care of him anymore.  I know it sounds awful, but I'm really glad to not have a fish anymore.  

Anyway, I'm kind of happy.  The end.

Blizzards and Estes Park

Jake and I went to Estes Park on Thursday and Friday.  Thursday it decided to snow pretty crazily, including white outs and LOTS of traffic problems.  It took us about 5 hours to get there when it should have been much closer to 1.5 hours.  By the time that we arrived at our hotel, I was just happy to be alive.

We were also really excited to stay in this really cool hotel (Jake has some pictures on his blog of the hotel <click here> , but I posted one of me enjoying the front porch below), but it turns out that the rooms are not anything special.  It felt like a Bed & Breakfast because the walls were so thin and there wasn't much to it.  We woke up around 2am to our neighbors being loud, which was amplified by the fact that the walls were so thin.  However, there was a big screen plasma TV in our room, which was fun, but definitely looked out of place!

We decided to go downtown on Thursday night and walk around, which was ridiculous because no one was open because of the blizzard.  We had the hardest time finding a place to eat!

Friday we got to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, which was absolutely beautiful because of all the snow that came the day before.  We didn't get to go hiking, which is what I was hoping for, but we did get to drive around a bit and check out some amazing views.

We also got to see lots of elk!  We found it funny when a woman asked us if they were moose.  We looked at her license plate, but she was from Colorado.  I don't understand how you can be from Colorado and not know that you are looking at elk.  

Here is some evidence of our car being mad at us for driving in disgusting weather.  Our tires started making lots of noise, so we checked to see if there was ice build-up around them.  The following picture is what fell off after Jake scraped around the tires for a little while (we pulled the car forward to be able to see it all).

We also got a little thirsty, so we ate some snow.

In the end, it seemed like way too short of a trip.  We spent most of our time driving, which was hard for me to get adjusted to since I wanted most of our time to be outside in the park, but we made it.  It also wasn't quite the stress-relieving trip that I was hoping for, but we made do with what we had.  I'm sure glad that Jake was my vacation partner through all of it though because he made it as fun as possible given our circumstances.

Graduation is a only a dream away.

Ok, I gotta be honest.  I'm really ready for this season of life to be over.  I mean, grad school was great for a while, but I think I'm ready to be done.  It's taken me a while to figure out that school is the majority of the stress problem, but I'm pretty sure it is the foundation for time and money problems.  I'm ready to be out in the working world.  I really need something that is stable, cuz I can't take much more chaos in my life.

December cannot come soon enough.

$10 is sufficient

First off, Jake wrote a blog yesterday where he mentioned me.  After he wrote it, he pointed out that there was a point in his blog where he typed my first name and my maiden name, "Elizabeth heard..." which he thought was funny.  I just kind of shrugged it off, but then just now I checked his blog and saw my maiden name and it was odd.  So Jake, I officially think it's funny now.

Second off, Jake celebrated his 25th birthday today.  We both had a limit of $20 to buy presents for each other (except I kind of overspent- $10 happened that wasn't originally expected).  As we chatted about both of our birthdays, we talked about how both of us felt loved halfway through the day.  For Jake, he felt appreciated before we went to the improv comedy show, and for me, well, I feel loved even though we haven't made our trip down to the Springs to go miniature golfing and go to the batting cages.  So we both felt cared for after spending about $10 on each other.  That's pretty impressive.  It's also evidence that you can really care for someone for not very much money.  Which reminds me of a case on The People's Court where a woman spent over $600 on her child for Christmas when she was in debt and couldn't pay it back.  Stupid.  She should have tried $10; I bet that would have done the trick.

It's here.

It's officially spring break,  although it doesn't really feel like a break.  I think it's weird how spring break can fill up so quickly before it even starts.

Except I'm really excited about going to Rocky Mountain National Park for a couple of days next week and staying in a super sweet old hotel.  That'll rock bananas.

That's all.

24. (Not the show)

Today is the day of my birth.  Apparently I'm having a hard time remembering how old I am.  The other day I wrote a blog and said something about me being almost 25.  Jake read it and reminded me that HE is the one that will be 25; not me.  I quickly changed my blog and felt very silly. 

So here's to me: already extremely forgetful at 24 years of age. :)

Jacob G.

Jake and I have been registering to win a trip to Italy every day on the Olive Garden website (you also have the chance of winning a $25 gift card to Olive Garden each time you enter).  I really want to win the trip, but mostly I'd be fine with the gift card.  There's a way that you can track who has won and where they are from, and I've been keeping my eye on it.  As long as no one had won in Colorado, I was feeling good about my chances.  Someone won today from Littleton, Colorado.

His name is Jacob G.  I want to find him and steal his gift card.

Shifting gears.

Sometimes I make Jake rub my neck on accident.  I just put his hand on my neck and then move my body around so that it's almost as if he's rubbing it.  Don't worry; it's not that he doesn't give me enough neck massages.  I just think it's fun.

Gross.

I just had to kill a centipede in my apartment.  It was odd and disgusting.  I've been researching about them on the internet, and as I started to get a lot more worried about it than I should have been, I decided to stop.  (Although I did learn that they bleed purple and I kind of wish I could go back and see if that's really true.)  I'm pretty sure it happened when I opened the sliding glass door to our patio and the sneaky little devil wanted to come inside.  That's it.  It just grosses me out- especially since he was heading toward our bedroom.

The list-checker-off-er

So I was just feeling very ambitious.  I have a heck of a lot of reading to do in the next few weeks, and a few days ago I sectioned it off into amounts of reading each day so that I can accomplish my task.  I've fallen behind already, but feeling the need to check something off my list (that really does great things for my control issues I am working on this semester), I decided to catch up.  The words that came out of my mouth were something like this.

"Ok, so I have to read... 123 pages.  Tonight.  Before bed.  In ONE book."  Then I decided to blog about my not-so-possible situation instead.  But I'm really going to try to at least get my Sunday's reading done before bed so I can check at least one thing off the list. :)

No, I'm not a mom.

This morning at church I was mistaken to be a mom.  Not that someone guessed I was pregnant and was wrong (that would be horrible), but that they thought I already had kids.  

As I was leaving the sanctuary I saw a guy holding a child and he dropped something.  Figuring it would be difficult for him to pick it up, I picked it up for him and gave it back.  He laughed and said, "I bet you know what that's like."  

It took me a minute, but then I realized he was implying that I was a mother.  Weird.  Usually people think I'm even younger than I am, but to have someone assume that I am not only married but also have kids... weird.  I wonder how many times that will happen before I am actually a mom someday.  I'm sure as I get older it will happen, but I certainly didn't think it would happen this early.

I suppose on the up-side of this is that I look mature enough to be a mom.  And a darn good one at that. ;)