I love my X and O

While shopping at the Anthropologie in Portland I came across something that I just HAD to have! Well several things I HAD to have, but this is one that I was able to convince Rob we 'needed'. I didn't have such luck with all the rest of my findings. They are these metal letters with scroll designs on them and the bottoms are slanted so that they sit at an angle. Turns out they are paperweights...I just thought they would look cute sitting on a bookshelf in front of the books. Like I said, I just had to have them. But first, what did I want to spell? Something short. I settled on an X and an O...cute, right? Well, they had several X's and no O's. I was seriously bummed. Once I get my heart (or is it mind) set on something, it's hard to let it go. No worries though, I just ordered them and had them mailed to my office.

Aren't they great!?! Plus they came with the latest catalog...I have already picked out three things that we 'need'. I am sure that all of you 'need' something from them too...check out their site here.

Weekend in Portland

We just returned from spending a couple of days in Portland. The drive down wasn't too bad. I tried to get Rob to play the name game with me (I will have to explain that one in a later post), but he wouldn't give in. Instead he read his LSAT prep book out loud to me and quizzed me on what he had read me. A learning experience for both of us!

Once we arrived the first thing on our agenda was to visit the Oregon Zoo. I felt that it was a little bit of a letdown, Rob thought that a zoo is a zoo, no expectations, no disappointment. They had several exhibits under construction and a lot of the animals were no-shows. It was also so hot! My car said that the temperature got up to 107*! I think that the highlight of the zoo was the birds making out...it really is one of the only pictures we took. How immature, I know...but it was Rob's idea :)

Once we checked in to our hotel we walked over to the Lloyd Center Mall where we people watched and browsed through jewelry magazines over some Cinnabon (Rob's absolute, all time favorite!). When I was younger my Mom and I would played a little game while we looked through the jewelry flyers that would come in the Sunday paper. Page by page we would silently select our favorite piece of jewelery and then share it with each other. Most of the time we would select the same pieces. I try to get Rob to play this game with me, but we just aren't as in sync as my Mom and I. As it turns out, Rob is quite the flashy while I am a little more conservative! We then went and saw the movie Mirrors (NOT my choice). I thought that it was incredibly stupid, but still pretty scary. Rob says he enjoyed it, but I think he just enjoyed watching me gasp and jump throughout the movie. I don't do scary movies well. :)

The next morning we lounged around and watched License to Wed while enjoying a late check out. After grabbing some lunch we headed downtown to do some shopping. I got some great stuff at Anthropologie (one of MY favorites). I definitely could have got some more stuff, but Rob was dying of boredom and blown away by how much I was willing to pay for stuff that I thought would be 'fun' for our house. He just doesn't get it! Then we stopped by Powell's Books. It is a HUGE bookstore that takes up an entire city block. We browsed for an hour or two and left with a bag full of books.

Before heading back home I decided that I wanted to track down the apartments we lived in when I was little (we lived it Portland while my Dad was attending Chiropractic School). It took a little while to find. I kept driving around the block where it was supposed to be, but only saw a couple of smaller complexes. We drove into a complex parking lot and saw a sign that posted the address that we were looking for, but the complex was so small. I have always had a memory of a big apartment complex, but as Rob reminded me, I was only three when we moved, so of course it seemed bigger to me. Even as we drove away I was still amazed that my perception was that off after all of these years. I snapped a couple of pictures to show my family...I thought it would be fun for them to see. It is the one on the bottom left (with the lovely blue drapes). When we lived there the apartments were green. I guess they got a face lift.

On the way home Rob decided to nap a bit, so I popped in the book on CD I had been listening to before the trip (Love the One You're With). About a half an hour or so later I turned it off and Rob startled me by asking me why I turned it off. This whole time I thought he was asleep he was actually listening to the book along with me. He then said that he was into it and wanted to hear what happened. So, for the remainder of the drive home we listened to it together. I was a tad bit embarrassed that he might think this is the kind of book I always read, but oh well...a little chick lit is good for everyone now and then, right?

Glad we went...good times!

Another fun tag

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Living in UT getting ready to start my senior year of high school. I forget which job I had at the time. Oh, and I was driving all over in my fun little Toyota Tercel, R.I.P.

5 things on my to-do list today

Laundry
Birthday lunch with some girls from work
Watch Will & Grace DVD's that will arrive today from Netflix
Spend some time on the treadmill
Clean out my car

5 snacks I enjoy
Almonds, string cheese, grape popsicles, peanut M & M's, goldfish crackers

5 bad habits

Whenever I cook I spill all over the stove, I don't dust often enough (I think it's because dusting was always my 'weekly job' growing up and now I am proving something by not doing it???), I shop for things that I don't need and will never use, I constantly leave the computer on all day and overnight, apparently I can be too sarcastic and really need to work on it.

5 places I've lived

Clinton, UT
Redmond, WA
Sammamish, WA
Issaquah, WA
Yreka, CA

5 jobs I've had

ERI - Research Specialist
Bank of America - started as a teller, ended as a manager (which is mostly why I quit...I am NOT management material!)
Bath & Body Works - I only worked there long enough to take advantage of the one time 50% employee discount and then I quit. Shameful, I know...but that really wasn't my plan going in, it just happened to work out that way. I had just moved up to Seattle and started applying for jobs. They hired me on the spot and BOA hired me a week later.
Oshman's - Customer service/cashiering/travel to other stores to set them up for opening.
Citigroup - Account Manager, lots of time on the phone...I don't like spending lots of time on the phone.
My favorite high school job was at Dilly Dally's. I know that is six jobs, but I just couldn't leave this one out! I don't remember exactly why, but I LOVED the polo shirts we had to wear there.

5 things people don't know about me

While my regular penmanship is questionable, I am great at writing backwards - as in, if it were held up to a mirror it would be readable. I don't know why we started it, but my friend Erin and I would write notes back and forth to each other like this in Junior High. Amazingly it stuck around.

I do not take naps. Even when I was younger, I didn't nap. While my brothers were napping my Mom would give me a stack of books and I couldn't come out of my room until I read them all. My poor Mom probably never got a break from me!

When I was about 12 or so I would beg my parents to let me do the grocery shopping for our family by myself. They finally gave in. My Dad would drop me off with a list and blank check, I would do the shopping and he would pick me up an hour later. It sounds really weird, I know. To this day, I don't know why I liked to do it so much, but I was good at it.

I have a large jagged scar that spans the width of my left knee. When I was about eight years old I was playing on the Slip and Slide in our front yard with my brothers and we moved the slide to get optimum slip going and just happened to place it over one of our automatic sprinklers. I got a running start, jumped and started sliding...right over the sprinkler head that sliced through my skin right down to the bone. It was quite disgusting. I got about 20 stitches and had to wear a brace the length of my leg all summer long to keep me from bending my knee and popping the gash back open.

I absolutely cannot sleep without my eye mask. I have to have complete darkness and silence in order to fall asleep. Rob laughs at me and calls me Zorro, but there is nothing funny about it to me. I take my sleep very seriously! :)

5 people I would like to tag

How about anyone and everyone...

Thanks for the tag! I look forward to reading it on other blogs...

Not as original as I thought

Since the last post I began to wonder about the uniqueness of my name. Certainly there couldn't possibly be another person with my same first and last name, but there might be some others who share my first name, so...I googled it. And what do you know, there are others...quite a few actually! Some girl used my first name as her website address! There go any plans I had of doing the same thing - which of course I had absolutely no plans to do so, but it is a bummer knowing that now I can't.

Like I didn't already know this...

Janalyn's

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 1 or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

As if I even had a chance!

Rob's

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 10,519 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Can you believe that!?! Rob's name is more common than mine??? :)

This site is fun to play around with...
http://howmanyofme.com/

Am I an addict??

I am slowly coming to the realization that I may have a slightly addictive personality. Why is that, you say? Well when I finally joined the Blogger World I spent a ridiculous amount of time clicking from page to page trying to find out what everyone was up to and coming across old friends. It was great! But a few days in I realized that I was spending hours, yes literally hours a day doing this. This was made worse by the fact that I was skipping actual homework to do cruise people's blogs...which by the way resulted in my first C since I began school (technically it was a C+, but that still doesn't really make me feel any better). I finally got a grip on myself (or rather I read all that there was to read) and took a step back from my blog stalking. Right when I am getting back on track, I sign up for Facebook. At first I did it just so that I could see another friend's pictures they posted. Then I thought I should add a picture of my own, but that's it. Next thing I know I started to get all of these friend requests from people who found me through the search feature. I never really had any intentions of getting into Facebook but I reasoned that it would be rude not to accept an invitation, right? It all snowballed from there. I got my first piece of flair (thanks Molly!) and became incredibly amused by all of the flair options there are. I would flip through the pages just laughing at some of them and next thing I knew, I had been doing it for an hour! I really thought I had it under control until someone sent me an invitation to an Alias trivia game. I tried it out and of course quickly rose to Ace level. I then find out that they have trivia for Friends, Sex and the City and The Sopranos. Ever since then I have been answering trivia for my favorite TV shows and feeling completely fulfilled in doing so. Addictive much? Yes, I think so! So instead of showing up at work and earning the paycheck they give me, I am holed up in my office playing the Alias trivia game on Facebook and feeling absolutely (well almost absolutely) no shame about it. I barely switch from the screen when someone walks into my office! I think that I need an intervention, but not until tomorrow...I am only 270 points away from the next level! :) Oh how pathetic!!

What a great Monday!

I know that Monday's are usually not the best day of the week for most people, myself included, but today was a really good Monday as far as I am concerned. All day long I was just grinning away...it was really weird. Work just seemed to whiz by today. I just finished a huge project last week so today I just poked around and worked on a few loose ends. Mid morning I talked to Rob and we decided to go away for the weekend. There are a TON of fabulous places to visit around here and we rarely visit any of them. We never drive out of the Seattle area unless we are driving to Utah. The rest of the time we just hang out in our little metropolis, well now it's more of the suburbs, but still, same thing. So we have decided to take advantage of all of the great trips within hours of us. We still haven't decided if we are going to:

A. Visit the Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, OR

B. Check out the Bavarian village of Leavenworth, WA. I really want to save this trip for the Fall. I have heard the drive is beautiful due to all the changing Autumn scenery, plus they have Oktoberfest, but I doubt we would attend.

C. Our next big city to the South, Portland, OR. They are supposed to have a pretty decent zoo. The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle isn't anything to brag about. A zoo could be fun. Plus they are supposed to have this amazingly huge bookstore down there somewhere. That could be fun too.

I guess we still have a few days to decide, but I think I have just voted for Portland. I am sure that Rob will agree. :)

Anyways, back to the greatness that was my Monday. With the weekend already on my mind, work was over in a flash. After work I visited a dear friend, who also happens to be the best massage therapist ever for an amazing massage and some girl talk. About a year ago when we first met we both instantly realized that we would become great friends. She is one of the people that I feel most comfortable with and I am so grateful that she was placed in my life! And with a relaxing smile I headed out for some shopping (my massage friend tipped me to a great sale) and purchased some great going-out-of-town-for-the-weekend-clothes.

One more stop at the grocery store and I was on my way home...all the while, just in the best of moods! Nothing really out of the ordinary happened, but I am still in a terrific mood. I guess I shouldn't keep pointing out how odd that is; it makes me sound like a total downer of a person. Really I am not! Oh, if everyday could be a Monday...

The ABC's of Us

This was passed onto us from another friend's blog. It was fun, but some of them were hard for us to answer. Just to make it easier to read, I color coordinated our answers...Janalyn's answer Rob's answer Combined answer.

We were supposed to 'tag' 5 other people to repeat this on their blog, but we thought it would be funner to just tag everyone! As usual, we think that we are the exception to the rule.

We look forward to everyones answers posted on their blogs. Enjoy! :)

A- Attached or single: Very attached
B- Best Friend: Rob Janalyn
C- Cake or Pie: Cheesecake Yellow cake w/chocolate frosting
D- Day of Choice: Saturday
E- Essential Item: (Video) iPod
F- Favorite Color: Green Blue
G- Greatest Decision Ever Made: Moving to Seattle Going back to school
H- Hometown: Clinton, UT Seattle, WA
I- Indulgence: Designer handbags Traveling
J- January or July: January July
K-Kids: None yet, give us few years
L-Life is Incomplete Without: The Internet Cable TV
M- Mode of Transportation: VW Passat VW Touareg
N- Number of Siblings: 5 brothers 1 brother, 1 sister
O- Oranges or Apples: Oranges Apples
P- Phobias or Fears: Rodents Sharing drinks with others
Q- Quiet house or busy house: It's just the three of us (including Sox), so it's pretty quiet.
R - Radio or CD: CD (book on CD) Neither - iPod
S- Season: Fall Summer
T- Travel by airplane or car: Airplane Car
U- Unknown Fact About Me: The clothing in my closet is organized by color Was an extra in the movie Disclosure
V- Vacation Location: NYC California
W- Worst Habit: We are both messy
X- XBox or Playstation: I want a Wii PS2
Y- Your Favorite Food: French Dip Chicken Teriyaki with Rice
Z- Zodiac: Aries Taurus

I am so MAD at myself!

On a whim I thought that I would change the background of the blog and in the process I lost all of my stuff along the sidebar! I don't care so much about all of the little widget things because those are easy to fix, but I lost all of my links to everyone elses blogs! I think that I can remember everyone that I had on there and can find their info somewhere, but for anyone who really knows me will verify this...my memory is crap! I hope that I can remember to put everyone's links back up. If I have forgotten to put your link up, please remind me!!

Serves me right for messing around with my blog when I should be working!

Trip to the Tah

The trip to Utah was a lot of fun and it went by way too fast. Luckily I was able to see a lot of my family while I was there. I went camping up Logan Canyon with my parents, my brother Ryan, his wife Melanie and their two cute daughters Erika and Bailey. My Grandma and Grandpa came up for an afternoon as well. My brothers Chase and Jordan were 'too busy' to make an appearance. Actually Jordan did come up for a few hours...he spent most of it fishing, but it was great to see him.

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On the way to the airport I got to stop in and see my cousin Alisha, her husband Ben and their brand new baby Ender that was born on Wednesday. He was so, so, so cute. I could have held him all day long! He almost made me want to throw my 'wait until I am 30 to have kids' rule right out the window. It's OK Rob...I said almost, you can relax now.

Jord is quite the fisherman! He caught a fish or two and even cooked it in the fire and ate it for dinner. Quite the yuck if you ask me, but hey, I guess nobody did! Check out digs in the background...yeah, that was my pad. It's too bad nobody wanted to share with me so I got my own tent. My Dad even put it up for me. Gosh, I am spoiled!

The girls were in time-out and naturally, when camping, the cooler is an ideal stand in for the time-out seat. I am fairly certain the time-out guidelines do not permit photo ops, but since I am not a parent I could pretend not to know that. This shot was just too cute to pass up. Even their Mom couldn't resist snapping a quick picture of them.

I was trying to take a picture of Bailey in the tent and she kept trying to close the door on me. She hasn't quite mastered the zipper.

Ryan, Bailey, Mom, Erika and half of Melanie's face. Yes, I am a great photographer!

Another cute one of the girls

While it is great to visit back home, I alway enjoy returning to my home, especially when I travel without Rob. He definitely isn't a camper and my family is trying to get him to come camping next year. He has agreed to go as long as we rent a little motor home or trailer type something. Some may say that's high maintenance, but I don't care because where he goes, I go and I would never turn down a bed, shower and bathroom over a tent and outhouse. Crazy!