I got tagged...

According to Logan, I'm supposed to list 6 facts/habits about me (Jamie). Here goes nothing...

1. Ya know that fishy smell? It makes me want to HORK!!! I therefore hate seafood. I endure a lot of criticism for my unwillingness to eat something that defecates in its own drinking water, but I just can't bring myself to enjoy it. I will openly admit that 40% of my dislike of seafood is the smell, 58% is mental--I think seafood is slimy, gross and undeserving of becoming a part of me and 2% of it is fear of overcoming my dislike of seafood.

2. I think I'm funny. I often crack myself up and have been known to go so far as to wake up laughing because of a funny dream I've had. Andy can attest to the fact that I think I'm so funny because I tell him how funny I am all the time. I'm just a joy to be around!

3. I respect money. I am an Investment Advisor and have long had the belief that having money will not make you happy, but not having enough money can make you miserable!! I think it's very important for people (especially teenage girls) to learn how to window shop and not feel like they HAVE to have something. I often find myself having to talk myself into making a purchase--even though I know I can afford it. Saving money is very rewarding. There's a certain joy in watching a bank account grow. Wahoo!! Some day this will pay off big time! (At least that's what I tell myself.)

4. My favorite movies/TV shows are: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Office, Oprah, Family Feud, various house flipping/home decorating shows, The Colbert Report, The Big Bang Theory and Carpoolers. As a side note...if anyone has connections to the Colbert Report, I've been trying to warn Stephen that Snapple Fact #123 says that Beavers were once the size of Bears!!! (You have to be a fan to appreciate that one.)

5. I hate meaningless or "heartwarming" forwards that tell me what to do. Whenever I receive a forward that has some kind of warm-fuzzy message and a promise that if I forward it to 20 people then something good will happen to me within 24 hours. I think we all know that promises like that are ridiculous and serve no purpose. I never forward those...and I'm still alive....and happy. Amazing.

6. I love a good coupon!! Someone gave Andy and I a $20 gift card to Cold Stone a few months ago. Normally, I am not a fan of Cold Stone--my feeling is that their ice cream is waaaay over priced just because someone gets to play in it. Anyway, because of coupons, we've been to Cold Stone like three or four times and each time we've gotten a free "Lovin it" Ice Cream bowl. We still have about $4 left on the card. Yarrr! The Entertainment book is my friend.

I'm not going to "tag" anyone specific. Should you feel so inclined to tag yourself, go for it.

DVR

Aside from being a faithful watcher of the Office, two new shows I have been recording this fall are "The Big Bang Theory" (Sheldon is my favorite) and "Carpoolers" (I heart Marmaduke--he has finally replaced my TV-watching need for a 'Buster'--an inexplicably strange character that serves no other purpose than to do and say strange things). I think the shows are very clever--maybe not kid approved, but any show that makes me burst out laughing more than once in a 30-minute time slot gets a gold star in my book.

Has anyone else discovered these tasty morsels? or am I all alone?

Sadly, we gave "Chuck" a chance, but he has been removed from our scheduled recordings. Too many attempts at being funny and the "action" sequences are just plain lame. Not like 24--now that's believable TV I can buy into!

Yay Halloween!

We've had a fun weekend full of Halloween parties. We went to a Halloween Costume Party Friday night. It was a lot of fun. They had a costume contest and while our Bowling Ball and Bowling Pin costumes didn't win, we were pleased that the Slurpee and 7-11 Employee did win. Here's a picture of our costumes-- they're not that great and a lot of people mistook the bowling ball for a domino.
Andy had a basketball game to go to on Saturday evening. It's a stake league and our ward played a Huntington Beach ward that just so happens to be his cousin Dan's ward. I'm proud to report that Andy's team won. We then went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat activity. I think it's a lot of fun to see what costumes people come up with and which costumes crack me up--most of them do.

Tonight, I capped off our weekend by making some festive Halloween Rice Krispy Treats. I made a regular batch of Rice Krispy Treats and added orange food coloring. I shaped them into balls and added a green stem (made from a sour apple "Xtreme Sour Belt" candy) to make pumpkins. They're pretty easy to make and they're pretty darn cute too! Check it out.

Fire Update

This is a picture of the sky I took from our balcony this morning at about 10:00am. It's so dark and hazy outside that it seems like it's 6:00pm. I'm sure you've seen the NASA satellite pictures that show thick clouds of smoke blowing out to the ocean. Well, this is what those clouds look like from the ground.

The conditions here in Fountain Valley are not that bad. You can see the fires on the mountains in Irvine from higher ground in Fountain Valley. It doesn't smell too bad outside until you go further south. I went to the gym this morning and could really tell that there was a difference in how bad it was. We're lucky.

Our office in Vista was closed again yesterday because of all the smoke and power outages. There are a lot of power lines that have been destroyed in the San Diego area. They get power from either the North (San Onofree) or the South (near the border of Mexico) and since the fire took out huge chunks of the middle of San Diego (Rancho Bernardo) and since there is a NEW fire on Camp Pendleton, they're having to deal with rolling blackouts. So who knows how much longer the office will have power.

Fortunately, the winds have subsided and it looks like the firefighters will be able to make more headway. However, they still think that it may be another week or so before they can contain all the fires. It will be interesting to see the aftermath of all the destroyed homes and stuff. At least this will give So-Cal home builders a much-needed boost.

Halloween Party

We had our annual Stake Halloween party last night. It was a combined Young Men/Young Women activity and it was a lot of fun. I must admit, I get a kick out of funny costumes. Here are some pictures I took.

This is Berklee. She always has a very girly reaction to scary or gross things. I'm surprised she managed to dress up in such a frightening costume!


Here are some of my other Mia Maid girls. The girls in black dressed up as the I-pod dancers--the ones on the commercials/posters. Pretty creative.



I used Andy's costume from last year and went as a bowling ball. Without the matching costume--a bowling pin, people thought I was a domino. These are some of the ladies I work with in YW.

The Stake YW leaders dressed up as Peeps--you know, the marshmellow candies you get at Easter time.








This kid in the Sponge Bob Square Pants costume (I don't even know which character from the cartoon he is) was sooo funny. He kept going up on stage to dance around. He cracked me up.

Our Pumpkin

We attended a newly married Family Home Evening group and we carved pumpkins on Monday. It was fun. It's been a long time since I've carved a pumpkin. If you can't tell, it's a spider. We used a template--something I've never done before. It seems like they didn't have templates and special carving tools when I was a kid. Just knives and imagination. We put our pumpkin out on the balcony and I checked it this morning to see if it was still there or had blown away. I don't think it's handling the smoke and wind all that well. It looks like it has maybe one more day of festive-ness left before it turns to mush!

State of Emergency

So last night, as we were driving home from Andy's parent's house, we were on the 73 freeway and noticed that it smelled like there was a fire nearby. There were billows of smoke and as we got closer to the 405 Freeway, we could see the ominous glow of flames off in the distance on the other side of Irvine. As soon as we got home, we turned on the TV to find out what was going on. As it turns out, there were about 12 fires throughout California!! Fortunately, none of them are close to our house.

When we woke up this morning, all the major news stations were broadcasting live coverage from a variety of fires from Malibu to Lake Arrowhead to Irvine. Since I usually go down to the San Diego office on Mondays, I headed out to go to work confident that the freeways were all open. As I was getting closer to San Diego county, I was listening to various radio stations and learned that homes in Rancho Bernardo were being evacuated. Rancho Bernardo is a 20 minute drive from our office in Vista. I felt like an idiot driving TOWARD all the dark billows of smoke. I got to the office and worked on a few things that needed to get done--all the while feeling that what I was working on was relatively meaningless compared to those who were evacuating their homes knowing they would return to a very different, life-changing situation. My boss didn't even come into the office. He decided to stay home and clear debris and dry brush from his yard in case flying embers were to land near his property. At one point, the wind changed and everything in our office went dark. We have a large window and a sun roof and the dark smoke all but blocked out the sun. We finally called it quits around noon as we heard reports of people in Fallbrook and Rancho Bernardo were evacuating.

The picture is a map of the San Diego area that was evacuated. Our office is off of the 78 freeway about half way between the I-5 and I-15 freeways. The areas being evacuated this morning were just north of the 56 Freeway and several miles south of the 78 freeway.

The drive to and from work was depressing, at best. It's usually a very beautiful drive to and from work as I go up and down the coast. Today, it was dark, hazy and billows of smoke were coming from almost every direction. The smell of smoke is everywhere and I have a mild headache from the poor air conditions.

In San Diego, they were using Qualcomm Stadium and the Del Mar Fairgrounds/Racetrack as emergency shelters. As I was driving home, they announced that those locations were full and would no longer be accepting "refugees". It really is bad--probably worse than the Cedar fires 4 years ago.

The factor that's making the fires sooo bad is due to the "Santa Ana Winds". Basically, this means that there are high winds (up to 70 miles per hour--hurricane-force winds) that come from the desert (yay Death Valley!) creating dry, dangerous conditions for fires. I am including a picture I took from our balcony and you can see that the palm tree in front of our place has been so battered by the strong winds that two fronds haven given up the ghost. You can see some of the haze in the distance toward Irvine. Fortunately, it's not too bad where we live. The really sad thing is that they're reporting that the fire in Irvine was set by an arson. I hope they catch him/her.

It's amazing to see the news coverage of these massive fires being fueled by the dry dry brush and the fierce winds. All the people who insist on staying near their homes to somehow defend their homes are officially stupid. What on earth do they think they can do?!?!

Given the fact that I was sent home and that the air outside is giving me a headache, I decided to go home and make cheesecake. Last week, I made the "mistake" of buying cream cheese at Sam's club thinking that the large box would contain individually wrapped packages of cream cheese--but no. It was a large (48 oz) block of cream cheese. You know what they say, when life gives you cream cheese, make cheese cake! So that's what I'm doing now.

Stephen, are you sure you want to be a firefighter?? It looks hot out there--not to mention overwhelming.

QUACK!!!!!!

Andy and I went to a hockey game last night at the Honda Center where we saw the Ducks vs. the Nashville Predators!! Andy got the tickets from work. I have never been to a hockey game before and Andy had been to maybe two or three. I must admit, the last time I had even been remotely interested in hockey was when I was roommates with Carmen. She was weaned on hockey in Canada.

I have concluded that hockey games in person are a lot more exciting than watching them on TV. I also like the sound the puck makes when it hits the hockey stick. I'm not too crazy about the body checking and stuff. Andy was pleased that the Ducks won (3 to 1), a fight broke out and the crowd went crazy, and his hand was on the big screen. We had a great time!

YW Standards Night

We had a really fun Young Women's activity last night. For all of you who are in YW, you need to do this. We had a standard's night where we had a speaker who presented ideas on the importance of the way we dress and how we present our bodies. She covered everything from how your appearance changes the way you feel and act as well as how we are responsible for the kinds of thoughts we may put into other's heads depending on how we dress.

Someone also created a slide show of all the girls showing how they can dress modestly in their day-to-day lives. Ever since I first got involved with the Young Women program, I have been so impressed with how well our girls keep their standards high. I know it can't be easy since they live in California and are constantly faced with the pressure to look or dress a certain way. They do a great job at looking good and dressing modestly at the same time.
We then had a fashion show in which the Laurels class (girls ages 16 to 18) modeled some modest prom dresses. A lot of preparation went into the activity. A few weeks ago, they had all the girls go to a leader's house to try on a variety of dresses that they had borrowed from various women in our stake. Each girl chose two dresses to model. Another leader and I narrated each dress as the girls walked down the aisle. We invited the Relief Society and the girl's mothers to attend as well. (We should have invited the Young Men so as to encourage them to ask these girls out on dates!!) Since I was narrating, I had one of the girls in my class take pictures for me. Here are a few of them:



Our Young Women are GORGEOUS!!! I hope they learned that they can be fashionable while keeping the dress standards of the church. I feel bad for anyone who feels like they have to show a ton of skin in order to get attention or to feel like she is beautiful.

Rome...part two

Although we were exhausted from a very long day of being tourists, we wanted to avoid the long lines to get into the Vatican Museum by joining a tour. So we had to be at St. Peter's Square by 9am. Originally, we had wanted to avoid the Vatican on Wednesday because there would be a Papal Audience (the Pope comes out, rides around in his Pope mobile and gives a speech). We thought that the crowds would make it a little too busy. However, the following day (also our last day in Rome) was a free day and there would be no tours available. Anyway, we attended the Papal Audience and there were thousands of people there and I was not tall enough to get more than a couple glimpses at the Pope. Andy did manage to take a few pictures. You'll have to search the pics (Waldo style) to find the Pope. Here we are at the Papal Audience.
The Vatican Museum sure was impressive. The collection is absolutely HUGE!!!! Even the ceilings were ornate. The ceilings of the "Map Room" were particularly impressive.
The highlights of the day were Raphael rooms, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. The Raphael rooms were cool because they were practically empty and the walls were the works of art. We saw the "School of Athens" as well as a fresco with Sylvester Stallone in it. Take a look...here's a hint, he's the guy on the left.
The Sistine Chapel was, of course, a masterpiece! It was so cool to see it in person. We were not allowed to take pictures there because a few years ago a Japanese firm had paid to have the chapel cleaned in return for the rights to any pictures taken there. You'll just have to go there yourself.
St. Peter's Basilica is...huge. It's hard to appreciate the scale of the building until you realize how many people are there and how small everyone is. We did run into some LDS missionaries at St. Peter's, so that was cool. St. Peter's Basilica is the home of Michelangelo's first masterpiece, the Pieta. One thing we were unable to find was something our tour guide said we could find in some of the nearby giftshops. Try as I may, I could not find the coveted Pope Soap on a Rope.

The Vatican is it's own country and is protected by the Swiss Guard. Apparently they have standards similar to missionaries but are also trained to kill people with practically anything. Be it as it may, they have funny uniforms!!
After the Vatican and St. Peter's, we headed home to rest. We wanted to be somewhat functional for our last day in Italy. All we did the rest of the day was find something to eat and then we ventured out to the Colosseum to get some night pictures. (See the previous entry for those pictures.)

For our last day in Italy, we took the time to walk around to places we had not yet seen like the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. The Trevi Fountain was very cool and very big. The tradition is that if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, you will return someday to Rome. We were certainly down with that!! Of course, I insisted that we use American pennies because they are worth less than euros. :-)

We then went and saw the Spanish Steps. In all honesty, I couldn't tell what the big deal was about the Spanish Steps. There were certainly a lot of tired-looking tourists trying to muster up enough energy to make it to their next destinations. But there was a big advertisement at the top of the steps obstructing the view. In one of the guidebooks I read later on, I found out that the area surrounding the steps is a really expensive shopping area...kind of like a Rodeo Drive. So that explains why our lunch at a nearby restaurant was overly expensive (and skimpy on the portion sizes). They even charged us a 2-euro-per-person cover charge. Lame.
At that point, we had seen everything we really wanted to, so we went to a cathedral in the area where we saw another one of Michelangelo's statues, "Moses". That was very cool. We polished off our day by having our last gelato and doing a little souvenir shopping. That night, when we went out in search of food, it was POURING rain!! We were so fortunate to not have had any rain our whole trip and we never had to change our plans because of the weather. In fact, we had EXCELLENT weather the entire time!! Anyway, we went to a restaurant near our apartment (which is very far from all of the touristy things in Rome). Aside from getting totally drenched, the atmosphere and food were excellent!

We had a WONDERFUL time in Italy and I highly recommend going there. Just going to Italy was educational and very beautiful. This was my first time traveling in Europe and I must admit that I LOVED it!!!

Rome...part one

On Monday morning we set out for Rome. For whatever reason, we had problems purchasing two second-class train tickets and ended up getting two first-class tickets. It was quite a bit more comfortable and a lot cleaner than the other train rides we had been on, but it was significantly more expensive. At least they served us a snack.
The first thing we did after we found our apartment/Bed and Breakfast was to check out the Colosseum. It was really cool to see it. We bought tickets for a tour of the Colosseum and Palentine Hill. We learned so much. I walked away from the Colosseum with similar feelings as when I visit the Great Wall of China. There's such an amazing sense of history! The Colosseum was built in 80 AD and most of it is still standing. Our tour guide told us many interesting things. You're probably aware that the Colosseum was used for competitions between gladiators. Gladiators were typically prisoners and they would compete with one another or against animals like lions, wolves, etc. We learned that the losing bodies of the gladiators were drug off stage where they were quartered and their blood was drained into vials which people would buy and drink thinking that a person's power was in their blood (not their spirit). We also learned that one of the emperors thought to flood the Colosseum so that competitions on boats would take place. The boats would ram into each other and the gladiators would be hanging on for their lives because not only would they be risking their lives by drowning, but there were alligators in the water as well.
While I certainly don't agree with the practices that went on at the Colosseum, it was humbling to stand there and take it all in. How could a civilization take so much delight in the death and slaughter of other people?
We did, however, get some cool pictures of the Colosseum at night.
Our guide mentioned that contrary to popular belief, Christians were not killed at events at the Colosseum, but under the rule of Emperor Nero (he was a crazy little emperor) Christians were executed and burned at Circus Maximus where they would hold horse/chariot races. There's not much left to Circus Maximus now...it just looks like an open field.
Palentine Hill was where some of the emperors lived...quite extravagantly, I might add.
From Palentine Hill we could see the Forum which is where all the political events took place. Here's a picture of the Forum with the Colosseum in the background.
The next day, we started early so we could make it to our Angels and Demons tour. It was really cool. If you don't know, Angels and Demons is a book written by Dan Brown and most of the action takes place in and around Rome. We spent the morning walking around the "Path of Illumination" and learning a variety of things about the area. We saw Andy's all-time favorite statue, the Ecstasy of St. Teresa.
Our tour took us to the Castel Sant' Angelo, the Pantheon, St. Peter's Square and Santa Maria del Popolo.
We had scheduled another tour called "The Dark Heart of Rome" for Tuesday evening, so we just walked around Rome and went in a ton of Cathedrals that I can't remember the names of and tried to save up energy for the tour. I will say this, the cathedrals in Rome sure are ornate!!!
On our night tour, my favorite story was that of Bruno. Bruno was killed/burned at the stake for speaking out against the church. He claimed the Christ was just a magician. He later became a symbol for freedom of speech. I thought his statue was really cool looking with the moon behind it.

Florence

We left Cinqueterre early Saturday morning to catch a train to Florence so we could make our reservations to the Academia--the museum with Michelangelo's "The David". We were sad to leave Cinqueterre, but anxious to move on to other locations. We arrived in Florence and went straight to our hostel, the Instituto Gould. Not too bad for 62 Euros a night.
On the way to our hostel, we saw something that had made us laugh in Torino. The cars in Italy are significantly smaller than the cars in America. In fact, the Smart Car's ForTwo only seats two people and can literally be parked in a parallel parking spot...vertically. Take a look:
After all the hiking we had done the day before, we were pretty exhausted. We went to the Academia Museum where, among other things, we saw Michelangelo's The David. I was very impressed with how huge the statue is--17 feet high! I was also impressed that Michelangelo completed the statue when he was only 29 years old. We also saw the six unfinished statues, The Prisoners, by Michelangelo. He truly was a talented sculptor.
From the museum, we walked around a little and saw the famous bronze doors of the baptistery (or at least the replicas) by Lorenzo Ghiberti in 1452.
Across from the baptistery is the Duomo of Florence. It is huge. It is also impossible to get a good picture of it because the surrounding buildings are so close to it. We were so worn out from hiking, waiting in lines and walking around that we didn't have the energy to wait in line to go inside or to climb to the top of the Duomo. However, the outside of the Duomo is very unusual because it was built with different colors of marble (or granite or whatever it was).
The green and white contrasts and the designs really make it an impressive building. However, we couldn't help but notice how dirty it was. In fact, most of the larger cities are very dirty and I kept wanting to grab a bucket of cleansers and a scrub brush and start cleaning stuff. Even a pressure sprayer would have done wonders. On our entire trip, we only saw one dude removing graffiti and I wanted to give him an award!! Everywhere we went (except Cinqueterre) there were problems with graffiti. Fortunately, the main attractions were graffiti-free.
Our second day in Florence was a Sunday. We were not close enough to an LDS church, so we walked around to a couple cathedrals to hear some singing and we even found an English-speaking service that we sat in on for a little while. It was interesting.
We then went to the Uffizi Museum for our reserved tour time. The Uffizi Museum is one of the largest museums in Italy. There were soooo many statues and works of art there. The statues are my favorite. We saw a couple famous paintings by Botticelli; The Birth of Venus and Primavera. The Medicci family (a wealthy Italian family back in the day) sure did have an extensive art collection.
We then walked around Florence. There's a piazza, Piazza della Signoria, that has several statues out in the open including a copy of The David. We also walked around to see the famous bridge, Ponte Veccio, which is a bridge with several jewelry stores on it.
We then went to the Boboli Gardens. In all honesty, I was expecting the gardens to be better manicured, but it was cool anyway. The gardens are several acres and there are statues throughout. Here are some of our favorite pictures.
After walking around the Boboli Gardens for quite some time, we took a taxi to Piazzale Michelangelo to see the sunset. I highly recommend doing this. It's a great location to see Florence and especially to see the sun set. We got some great pictures. The large bridge is the Ponte Veccio and off to the right, you can see the Duomo. Here are some more of my favorite pictures from the Piazza.