New Year's Resolutions and House Progress

It's been more difficult than usual to post anything because my computer has been in use by The Frog all week. We are still living upstairs and he has come down with an ear infection, conjunctivitis (goopy eyes), and a cold (sore throat, cough, runny nose), so I've been letting him watch movies nearly all day, in hopes of helping him relax. For all you who have Netflix out there, I stumbled upon a clayamation called Pingu that The Frog thinks is hilarious. (I don't really get it.) In fact, this morning he was drinking some milk while watching it and he actually laughed so hard that milk squirted out of his nose and all over my computer! I had never heard of that actually happening (in real life) before!

Well, it's that time again. Time to make New Year's Resolutions. I have a few, but I think the biggest one is that Jay and I are going to learn Japanese together. I have committed to spend 30 minutes every day (except Sunday) studying it. Right now I'm memorizing Hiragana. Jay found an awesome website that is basically digital flashcards for pretty much anything you could possibly want to memorize. I especially like it for this because you can hear what the sounds are supposed to sound like. I'm going to start working on the Katakana next week, and after that I'll do the 2000 most common words. Jay and I both have a Japanese textbook and work book that we are going to try to go through, in addition to memorizing these flashcards, so we can learn actual grammar. We might be crazy to think we can learn a language without knowing anyone who can speak it to us, but I'm really excited to try! I have been wanting to do something like this with Jay since we got married, but he never had any interest until he started wanting to play imported Japanese video games. :) He's going at it a bit more whole-heartedly-- planning to spend 2 hours a day studying, and he's even switched his computer and phone to be in Japanese, as well as his email, etc. He's going to try and read a Japanese comic strip for kids, as well.

I also want to keep my Hungarian going, so I'm going to try to learn 5 Hungarian words a day. (using the same site) I think that picking something to work on memorizing has helped my memory in general, and that's been exciting for me as well. I feel like my memory has really gone downhill since high school, because I haven't had to blatantly memorize large lists of "stuff" (useless or not) since then. Perhaps there was some value to it after all? Maybe next year I'll try to memorize all the countries, or go through all the SAT words or something, just to keep my mind working in that way. :) With my iPhone organizing my life, I have little need to remember many things these days.

Some other goals I have are:

-start exercising again (weekdays) either 30 min of ballet or walking with the stroller (when it warms up again)

-grow out my hair (this might sound like an easy one, but I frequently get strong urges to chop off my hair)

-I helped a neighbor HS kid with his calculus homework the other day and I think I might like to do one math problem every day. I seriously had sooo much fun thinking about related rates again. I still haven't picked which book I will go through though. (I have waaaay to many math textbooks. It's not even funny) I think calculus would be a really fun review, but it might be good for me to do something I was never as good at, like number theory or abstract algebra.

-I am going to be better about labeling my photos as I import them and also RATING the goods ones, so I don't have to sift through them all the time. All you with iPhoto out there know what I'm talking about.

-I also want to get completely caught up on The Frog's photo albums and Start one for Peach. I meet with some girls in my neighborhood once a month to do that, and I'm going to work on it one other night each month.

-I would like to improve my posture, but I'm not really sure how to measure progress with that, or how to consistently work on it. Any ideas?

As for the house- we are still not completely painted, nor will we be until next week-- hopefully Monday, but I'm learning not to get to excited about the deadlines we keep getting from the contractors. Just about everything has taken longer than expected... ran out of moulding, ran out of carpet pad, carpet gets here and is 1 inch too short, forgot to paint the doors, painted one room the wrong color, kitchen cabinets are in, but lost the pegs for a shelf and the garbage pulls in and out veeerrrry stiffly, etc. Once the carpet is all put back (was supposed to happen today, but now they have to get more pad and the right size carpet and come back tomorrow) we should be able to let The Frog play downstairs again!!! I can't wait!

We probably won't be staying up until midnight tonight, as everyone is somewhat sick. (though, The Frog definitely has the worst of it) But we are getting indian food to celebrate!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!

Cliffs Notes Version of December to Present

Wow, I feel really bad that it's been so long since I've posted anything of substance. So much has happened, but most of it was so long ago that it seems like old news by now... I'll try to give the abbreviated version of my happenings so that my next post can just revert back to my two cents about unimportant things that invade my mind.

Christmas was great! Jay and I were together, finally, with his family in Mass, and though it is hard to feel like Christmas when you're not with your own family, they did a really great job at making me feel like part of their tradition. It's much more fun to find out what Santa brought when you have a someone around who still believes in him, (Jay's- and now my- little sister is 5) and I got to partake of the annual McCarthy "Yankee Swap", as opposed to our western "white elephant" parties. Though I deeply wish I could make fun of the idea of swapping Yankies, I must admit that our past-time title has nothing to do with elephants, not even the white variety, so I'll hold my peace.

While in New England, I decided to take advantage of Jay's mom's (I think this sounds friendlier than mother-in-law, and she deserves only positive sounding references) mad sewing expertise and dig out the fragments of intended quilt that I started constructing several years ago. I slowly gathered interesting fabrics from JoAnn's scrap fabric bin, until I thought I had enough for a scrap quilt, and got everything cut out and even began sewing some of my patches together, but once school started up again, I flew off to Brown and left all my fabric in the back of my closet in a shoe box, almost forgotten. However, I was reminded of our need for a bed-covering now that we'll actually be sleeping in the same bed, and I knew she would be a valuable resource, so I had Jay take the things to Mass after Thanksgiving in Utah. So during our down time, I frantically worked for many hours and got caught up on many a podcast that went unheard (since I accidentally left my ipod in Utah, most of last quarter). Perhaps I'll comment on some of the really good ones in a later post. Needless to say, I still haven't finished my quilt, despite having worked on it for many hours since arriving in California. But more about that in a bit, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Jay and I flew back to Stanford together (YAY!) on New Year's Eve and arrived at 10pm. We were supposed to be able to get the keys to our new abode in the on-campus "couples' housing", but for some reason they didn't have our key and we ended up sleeping together in the twin bed of my old place. (Was fun for a night, but I'm glad that was no permanent situation.) We found ourself at midnight:05 sitting over a candle-lit frozen pizza dinner from Trader Joe's and realized that our starvation had clouded our memories of the approaching new year. However, I think it was probably the best New Year's Eve yet- finally being with my love and for the first time not having large expectations.

Okay, a quick two cents: For some reason, New Year's Eve is always one of those holidays that I expect to be completely awesome and stupendously exciting- enough so to get all glammed up with glitter and all, and then come the new year, all expectations seem to always be let-down. This year was a nice change. :)

The next morning, our amazing home teacher and wife helped us move into our new tiny place and we finally started to feel like a real life married couple. You know... the kind that lives together and everything! After getting settled, I promptly whipped out my sewing machine and continued the quilt piecing I had started back East. Before we knew it, we were eating meals on the floor because our kitchen table, couch, and bed were covered with fabric and color placement strategies (My husband is the best... have I mentioned that recently?) and I finally finished all my nine-patches before school started. We also make cupcakes and took them around to the neighbors on our floor so we could meet them. (Jay's first time ever, and they turned out quite lovely indeed :D)

The first week of class went as well as can be expected, and I'm very excited that after auditing a ballet class every quarter, I finally have room to take one for credit! I'm hoping with only 2 real classes, I'll have some time to enjoy myself (and my man) too.

My bestest Brown buddy (and old roomie from college) was in town this past weekend, so Jay and I got to be tourists and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and other fun things. I also got to show off the awesomeness of FOPAL booksale and finally found a decent haircutting book (which I've been wanting for some time- ever since I first cut said roomy's hair in college), as well as some quilting ones and a few other cheap treasures. I tell you, I'm dangerous in a store with good deals, and I want to be dangerous in a bookstore... so put them together and watch out!

Ok, that's enough for now. Thanks for hangin' in there everyone!! :)