We Have A House!

Waiting

Yesterday was suppose to be the closing date on our house and today we were going to be out there making our Home Depot shopping list. Sadly, instead we will be spending our Saturday sitting back in Mar Vista wishing we could be making our Home Depot list. Our little hang up was a few broken windows. It wasn't even the full window that was broken, just a couple small sections of glass. But our bank wouldn't approve the loan until the other bank fixed the windows because it was a hazard. So then we had to wait a few days for WaMu (the bank that owns "our" house) to talk to everyone involved to approve fixing the windows. Working with a bank owned property can get frustrating because every decision has to go through many different people. So that hung us up just enough to push our closing past the weekend. Maybe Tuesday?

Oh yeah, and Wednesday when Robert went out for our final walk through he found the pool overflowing! Someone had taken the thingamabob that regulates the water level and left the water on. Everything around the pool was flooded. Luckily most of it was concrete, except one section of now very muddy dirt and a storage closet that needed major work anyway.

Les Mis!

Robert and I went to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see Les Mis. in concert. It was so awesome! I knew the music and knew the story from the music and the movie, but since I had never seen the play I don't think I ever really appreciated the story. This wasn't the full play, just the music with actors playing out the scene with basic sets. I really loved the final scene because I had never really gotten what was going on in the final song. It really brought the whole story together for me.

Dreams

I have had a couple really vivid dreams in the past couple weeks that I just want to get down on writing before I forget. They were the kind that I kept thinking about all day the next day...Last night I dreamt that I was at a big conference with a lot of college students and professors. I was scheduled to give a presentation at the conference, along with most all the other students there. The first major disaster of the day was when I couldn’t find anything to wear. I had oddly planned on wearing a prom dress, but then decided last minute that it was too fancy and I should go for professional dress, not pretty princess dress. So I had to rummage around at the convention center for something to wear that would look okay. Then, I went and got in line for lunch and left my big rainstick somewhere along the line because I was too distracted with the food and people. I was in a panic because it was, evidently, a vital part of my presentation. A few minutes before I was set to present I was in a panic thinking about it, and then I woke up. Yeah!

Unfortunately, that excitement was short lived because I then remembered exactly why I was having this dream. I actually will be giving a presentation in a setting like this in the not too distant future. I found out last week that I am going to give a 15 minute presentation at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November. My first reaction was, “I’m going to die!” I am not a great public speaker, but somehow I keep convincing myself that I should extend myself and try, so I applied with most of the other students who went to Guatemala with me in 2004. And we got accepted (as a group) to each give a 15 presentation. After Robert told me I wasn’t going to die, I thought, well, maybe it will be like giving a talk in church. I can handle that. I’ve had lots of practice with that in the past few years.

My second dream was last week. In the dream I had gotten out of school, high school, for the day and decided to walk home. I walked up a canyon road and was joined by a lot of my classmates. We all went to a mountain cabin that was overlooking a beautiful harbor. It started to rain, and a lot of the kids got nervous that we would be stuck there, so they left before it got too bad. I went to grab my shoes, but there were piles and piles of shoes everywhere and I couldn’t find mine. I finally realized that someone must have moved them. I silently seethed that someone would do something like that to me. One of few girls who was still at the cabin commented how calm I looked, and that if it was her in the same situation she would be really really mad. A little while later the same girl announced that she was ready to make her decision and award a prize to the person she thought deserved it. She gave it to me, because I had been so calm when someone had obviously played a joke on me by moving my shoes. The prize was $15,000. I was so happy and exclaimed, “Now I can pay for grad school!” Hmmm...dreams are fun, they make me think.

P.S. Found out today our escrow closing date is August 15!

Moving Day

Yesterday we moved out of our apartment, but not into our new house. We are still in escrow, but wanted to save some money on rent this month and avoid having a rent and a mortgage payment in the same month. Steve and Wendy have kindly let us stay with them for the next few weeks until we officially own a house and have made enough repairs to move in. It was an exhausting day! Luckily we had a lot of help from people in our ward, which we are very thankful for. It would have taken us forever if we did not have the help. We had to move out (and since we are on the second floor and pretty far from the street, it took a while) and then move all our stuff into a storage unit. The storage unit was pretty fun looking, it was three stories and was huge! It would have been awesome for playing night games. Anway, then we cleaned until 9:00 pm. We had orignally told our apartment manager that we would be ready sometime in the afternoon, then we told her five, then we just told her we had no idea. Luckily she was cool about it. Finally at 9:00 we got the last of our stuff out and over the Steve and Wendy's. We were so tired. Now we get to do it all again in three to four weeks.

P.S. Yesterday we were moving, last night I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep, and this morning I was preparing a Y.W. lesson. Now I can finally start Breaking Dawn!

My First California Earthquake

Today at 11:42 a.m. I was sitting behind the receptionist's desk at work. The receptionist was on her lunch break and I was scheduled to cover for another 15 minutes. I was staring absently out the front door, through the glass, at all the cars backed up on 9th street. Then, I saw the walls start to shake. I thought "is there a really big truck coming down the street?" A second later I thought, "no, no way, that is too long and too strong for a truck to do that, I think it's an earthquake." I felt the earth beneath me shake and considered for a moment getting under the desk, but it was already getting softer, so I figured I was fine just sitting where I was and enjoying my little ride. It all lasted about twenty seconds. Afterwards I felt like you do after you get off a roller coaster-granted, not so extreme- when you feel like you are still moving around on the ride.

I looked at the other room where the other case manager was meeting with a homeless man. They had both stood up and were talking excitedly. The homeless man was asking what our address was because he had never felt an earthquake before (they are harder to feel when you sleep outside all the time, I guess the building shaking is the biggest giveaway) and he wanted to remember where he was when he felt his first earthquake. Afterwards everyone kept asking if we were all okay. Robert called my desk phone to check on me (oops, I hadn't even considered calling anyone. Umm, I wanted to keep the phone lines open for emergencies. That's right, yeah, keeping the phone lines open) and I told him I was fine.

It really didn't even feel like much of a shaking. The people who walked in the front doors minutes later had no idea there even was an earthquake, and from the looks of it, neither did all the people who were stuck in traffic in front of our building. But it was still cool to feel the earth shaking like that, weird, almost unnatural. The earth just is suppose to do that.

Robert's Reaction: "It was an interesting experience. The building shook a little and then started swaying back and forth and all the window shades started banging against the window. The event seems rather fun thinking about it now but in the brief moment that it occurred I was a little scared."

Melabert

In the process of packing, I came upon our wedding video, so I popped it into the computer to entertain me while I packed. For the first time I noticed the videographer had named the disc Melabert, which I really liked. Robert wasn't too keen on that, he preferred the other option, with his name first. I agree with the videographer, who wants to pay for a video named Robarie?

Happy Pioneer Day!

I used to love going to the Days of 47 parade every July 24th. We would wake up early, stake out our spot along the parade route, and lounge around for hours as the sun came up and the thermostat shot up, waiting for the parade to start. Ahh, memories. Now it's weird, no one here thinks it's a holiday today! In Utah the 24th was just as big a holiday as the 4th of July. I miss it!So, I am taking a minute to personally remember the pioneers and their trip to the Salt Lake Valley. I am grateful for the sacrifices they made so that I could live in Utah. I am grateful for the sacrifices they made so the church could survive and I could be a member. Happy Pioneer Day everyone!

P.S. Pictures of this year's parade at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=491&sid=1527069

What If?

Lately I've been wondering what it would have been like if Robert and I had known each other in high school. Would we have been friends? Dated? Barely even known each other? Robert and I discussed it and agreed that we probably would have known each other and maybe have been friends, but probably not dated. There are two scenarios, one is if we had known each other in Idaho where Robert went to school, the other if we had known each other in Utah where I went to school.

In Idaho we would have been two of like five LDS kids in the entire school. So we probably would have gone to seminary together, been in the same ward, gone on activities etc. We definitely would have spent a lot of time together, and I think we would have gotten along well as teenagers. In Utah we would have been two of hundreds of LDS kids in the school. However, we both did cross-country in high school, and the cross country team had less than 15 people on it. I knew all the cross-country team members and we spent a lot time together at practices.

So we would have known each other. Probably would have been friends, but not dated. That is because Robert is two years older than me. So when I was a sophomore, he was a senior! How cool would I have been dating a senior as a sophomore. He he. Yeah, it wouldn't have happened. I'm very glad that we both decided to go to BYU and were able to meet each other. =)

(This is Robert and I on a night hike up to the Y when we were dating)