Christmas Bonus

As I went back through my Christmas pictures, I realized I missed this little gem.

There weren't enough great-granchild participants for the nativity at my Mom's family Christmas party so my uncle, brother-in-law, and brother got in on the action. Aren't they adorable? (Sorry for the blurriness)

I realize that this is is a month and a half late, but I did do some fun/interesting things over Christmas and wanted to share.

First, Bri and I had our annual Christmas party. These are the invites encouraging the participants to wear their ugliest sweaters.

Then, we went to the festival of trees. This was the first time I had been since my days of performing when I was in dance. This was by far the coolest tree.

This was the second coolest; one because it was an awesome ode to Harry Potter, and second, because it was created by one of my former patients and her family.

For our Christmas party, I decided to make some cake pops. I went on Bakerella's website to get ideas for Christmas themed cake pops. There were three suggestions; Christmas trees, Santa hats, and reindeer. The Santa hats looked easiest and I figured she had used a mold of some kind so I could whip up a batch easy peasy. Looking on her website, she simply said form them into cone shapes (like that was going to happen). So I went with the reindeer because I can totally form cake into balls without assistance.

The first few looked pretty decent.....

Then after 4 hours, they started to turn a little... strange.

"My head is too big for my body. And lopsided..."

"Come here, little girl. I have some candy for you."

"I don't talk good 'cause Pop done run my face over with the tractor."

"I'm melting, I'm MELTING!"

"So what if I just got my wisdom teeth out? Momma says I'm still special!"

Remind you of any hyenas featured in a Disney movie about lions?

"I think the black eye makes him look tough, not demented."

"I don't know what's going on, but I'm happy to be here"

After Dasher smashed him between the eyes, Rudolph never looked the same.

The whole creepy group, together at last.

Good times, good times. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas.

"I have a bit of a sweet tooth"

Regardless of how often I get this particular combination of letters on 'Hanging With Friends,' I always think the answer should be 'cake.'

"Sheldor is AFK"

So, I've had a variety of interesting experiences with single wards, especially their fast and testimony meetings. I feel that some of the highlights of the past few need to be shared.

- A twenty-something balding boy compares him sharing his testimony to his character on World of Warcraft killing a dragon as equal celebrations of their gods.
- Another twenty-something boy giving the details of his mother's suicide attempt over the weekend
- Multiple people declaring that this is their last week in the ward because they're getting married "and it will happen for you, too."
- Many "I don't know where I'd be without my roommates"
- Young man telling about how much he loved his girlfriend
- Girl talking about how far away her parents are now that she moved away from home (they live 30 minutes away, at the most)

There are obviously other great ones that I may add later but I just wanted to share the insanity the single LDS people are forced to listen to at least once a month.

"What do you mean you don't know?" "I don't know!"

I am a child of television and movies. This has become more evident as I've gotten older even as I've tried to be a grown up. One of the things I've always wanted to do is to try a wider variety of foods but I never knew what to try. Thanks to my love of television and movies, I had good, solid information on what to try.

First Incidence:

So a couple of years ago, my roommate wanted to go out and try indian food. Not ever having tried it, I wasn't sure what to order until I remembered this movie clip. (Just watch until 5:55, I couldn't find just the clip)

If any of you haven't tried indian food, the chicken tikka masala is a nice dish to try first. It's delicious!

Second Incidence:

At work, we decided to order thai food. Once again, I resorted to my television knowledge to decide what to order.

Pad Thai No Peanut
(Follow the link, I couldn't embed it)

Needless to say, pad thai is my go-to thai food dish.

Thank you for helping me choose, TV. May your guidance continue in the future.

"Did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?"

So, I have had absolutely no motivation to blog, journal, write, etc. but I'm really trying to motivate my self. So you get my snarkiness.

Totally want this dude's job. Awesome!

Because what I'm looking for in a grown man is his dedication to his childhood superheroes expressed in his underwear choices.

So glad they finally put instructions on tissue paper! Because it's always so hard to figure out how to get the paper into the bag.

It's like a Hot Wheels car just not as cool. Mostly ridiculous.

Somehow I can see why these were 50% off. (Yes, in fact, they are plastic)

Hate to see what their definition of 'any' is.

I'm feeling some mixed messages. I'm so confused!

If you're taking the time to put something on your window, make sure it's spelled right. Especially when it's a thinly veiled insult for all you 'whimps' out there.

'Dating the Living Prophets?' Sounds awesome!

"Soylent Green is people!"

And now, I leave you with some eye candy.

(As a side note, when I took this, there was still snow on the ground, it was about 20 degrees outside and I had to pull off my gloves in order to catch this guy in all his Spandexed glory)

Enjoy until I get motivated to blog again.

"Don't Put Twinkies on Your Pizza"

Conversation with my mom:

"Hey Sharee. How's it going?"

"Good. Not much going on. You?"

"Pretty good. How have you been eating?"

"Decent you know. Only going out once or twice a week."

"That's good. You know it's tempting to always eat out when you're on you own."

"I know, I'm trying to do better."

"Good. You'll have to show us some of your recipes next time you're home."

"Okay, bye Mom."

"Bye, Sharee."

I'm in big trouble next time I'm home.

"Did you just accuse me of being skillful and delicious?"

So yesterday and today were my first adventures in Christmas candy making without the help of my mother. I did it with a few coworkers and the first day was pretty good, the second, awesome. There were a few things that I learned.

1. You can never have enough Karo syrup

2. Same goes for butter

3. Wooden spoons are your friend

4. The candy thermometer takes FOREVER to get to the 'soft ball' stage or higher

5. And then it shoots up higher than you need ridiculously fast

6. Divinity made in a KitchenAid mixer is AMAZING!

7. Fudge needs marshmallow creme

8. And finally, all candy is easy to make as long as it's not overcast, not too sunny, the barometric pressure is relatively normal, it hasn't rained the day before, it's not going to snow tomorrow, and there aren't any animals within a half a mile.

Yea for Christmas candy!

"I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested"

Sorry for the prolonged absence. I am working on a good post for you three to read but now you see one of the reasons work has been keeping me busy...

Yep, that's just a taste of the crazies of the month.

"You know what the secret ingredient is..." "Love?" "Lard"

So over the weekend, I went to visit my sister and brother-in-law to watch conference and enjoy some of my sister's delicious cooking. My sister reads a lot of food blogs and tries out a lot of different recipes frequently so I usually get to try something new every time I visit them. For the pre-conference food, we had pumpkin cinnamon rolls and quiche (Yum!). Before the first Sunday session started, my sister started working on the evening meal which would include a rabbit. Yes, indeed, we had rabbit stew for the conference follow-up meal. I was a little nervous but dived into the stew with appropriate gusto. I found some things out about rabbit stew:

1 - It really does taste like chicken

2 - It's a lot softer than I expected. For some reason I was picturing almost jerky consistency.

3 - I could definitely eat it again

4 - Apparently a large group of rabbits is called a 'herd'. For some reason I really want to call it a posse.

5 - According to my brother-in-law's book on raising rabbits, you can raise over a hundred good meat rabbits in a year. How have I not yet hopped on that train?!?!

Yea for new food experiences!

"Excuse me, but in what universe are Slurpees Icees?"

Dear Seven-Eleven,

Why have you refused to change your Slurpee flavors for the past 5 months?

Love,

Tired of Pina Colada and Cherry

"You buy 1 tire, I give you 7 snow tires for free. Done, you interested, you call me, you know where I am."

Sorry to those 3 people out there who have been anxiously awaiting a new post on my blog, I've been distracted (see also: lazy/out of ideas to blog about) but now, I have a story. So I was driving to my sister's house yesterday to hang out with her and her husband and to enjoy some of her delicious cooking. As I was pulling off the interstate, I turned down my radio and I heard a flapping noise as I was slowing down at the stoplight. I figured that something had gotten stuck on the rim of my tire and I would take a look at it when I got to my sister's house or check it at a gas station if the sound got louder. As I went through the next few intersections, my tire pressure monitor came on so I pulled off at the next gas station. When I was getting out of my car, I heard a ridiculously loud hissing sound coming from my rear driver's side tire. I pumped up the tire and drove to a tire place to get it checked out. As I was talking to the mechanic about the problem, I could visibly see the back of my car sinking with the rim almost hitting the ground. When the mechanic showed me the tire, it looked like a key was wedged in it. I had to get a new tire.

There are a couple of things about this that I am grateful for:

1) That I was pulling off the interstate when it happened so I didn't have the tire pop when I was going 70.

2) That I was by my sister's so she was able to direct me to a nearby repair shop.

3) That I had some bones to pay for a new tire.

After this incident, I've also decided that the rear driver's side tire of any car I drive hates me. When I first moved to Salt Lake and I was driving Morris the Taurus, I got a nail in the rear driver's side tire. Last year, I got an nail in the same tire on my Rav4. Apparently, that tire has it in for me and one day, it will ruin my life.

Seriously....seriously?

Earlier this evening when I was driving home from the grocery store, I saw a man riding his bike in the dark. Now normally to me, this just means I need to be a little more cautious especially because he was dressed in black. I noticed that he kept swerving into my lane so I got a little closer to the middle of the road. I glanced over as I passed the guy and noticed that he was texting on his phone with both hands. First of all, I didn't realize that it required both hands to send a text message. Secondly, I think this takes distracted driving to a whole new level. Redonkulous. I would have taken a picture but I didn't have a camera with a flash on it with me. Sad day.

"It should be something... wonderfully random"

Because that's definitely the best place to put your helmet when you're on your motorcycle

Is there a point to have this be pink when all it does is carry stuff through tubes at the bank?

Limited edition. Is that just a fancy way of saying that there's an expiration date?

Because I know that I need 2 license plates on the back of my car just to make sure that people really know where I'm from

I'm glad I trust my car to this 'buisess'

I don't know if I want to try this juice, it sounds dangerous

Last time I checked, it is NOT a good marketing choice to arrange your boots like the bodies of so many dead people. Shame Wal-Mart, shame.

Do you think we eat out enough at work?

And last but not least, I'm a little offended that "chances are low that someone has this combination of names."

I hope you enjoyed this "wonderfully random" post

"I love you a bag of Swedish Fish"

As some of you may or may not know, I love movies (As evidenced by many of my blog titles being movie quotes). I also happen to have a roommate that shares in this love of movies and we frequently go on outings to purchase movies to add to our vast collection. One of the things we pride ourselves on is rarely buying movies at full price. I'm talking there are maybe three times in a year that we purchase any movie at full price and those usually have some sort of extenuating circumstance attached to them. So, while we were browsing the movies at a store earlier this evening, we arrived at the whole, "I like this movie, but I don't like it __ dollars worth." This frequently comes up when we have discussions about whether or not to buy movies. Granted, we usually end up buying more than we planned and we faithfully browse online ads to see who has the best deal on new releases but only if we like it __ dollars worth. Example: We were checking out and my roommate had picked up a 5 dollar movie but when it was rung up, it showed that it was 9 dollars. My roommate asked them to check the price. As the lady got on the phone to check with the department, I asked my roommate "Don't you still want it if it's 9 bucks?" and she replied "No, I like it, but I don't like it 9 bucks worth." We ended up getting it for 5 bucks but it made me wonder, do you ever have conversations with yourself or your shopping companions that involve "I like it, but I don't like it __ dollars worth?" Share.

"Always when I'm eating..."

I hate it when stuff comes out to make my life easier right after I do something similar to make my life easier. Example: I download a lot of random free stuff for my iPhone especially games just to try them out and then get rid of them if they suck. Finally a little over a month ago I was tired of trying to look for stuff and I decided to arrange my apps. Probably took about an hour but I was completely satisfied with the results. Not more than a week later I get a text from my fellow iPhone user brother telling me that the new iPhones will have folders that you can put stuff in to arrange your apps and it will also be available to those who currently have iPhones as a software update. 1 hour of my life wasted.

"As opposed to Planet Look At Me, Look At Me"

So overall I usually hate reality television and my position on hating it was cemented the other day when I watched an episode of "Toddlers and Tiaras." A little background on how I even got to watching this show; iTunes often has free stuff you can download and a couple of weeks ago, they had a couple of season premiers for free. Although most of them were things I don't watch, I saw the season premier for season 3 of "Toddlers and Tiaras" and I randomly decided to download it. I watched it earlier this week and holy crap, I couldn't believe the drama. Since I was in such shock at how crazy everyone on the show was, I hurriedly started to watch the first season as well. I almost died of shock. One of the moms had a two-year old daughter that she started putting in pageants when she was 6 months old. The mom put her daughter in pageants because the mom was in pageants before she got married. She was spray-tanning this little girl and spending 800 dollars on her evening wear dress. I never even spent that much on a prom dress!!! And how many times do you think that this little girl can actually wear this dress before she grows out of it?

There were some older girls that seemed to be having a good time but one of the 6 year-old's comments was awesome. When they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, "I want to be a cheerleader because they show their bellies and I like showing my belly." One of the moms didn't like going out to get her daughter spray-tanned so they bought a spray tanning gun (for lack of a better description) to do it at home. These girls have fake teeth that they regularly get refitted and more hairpieces than I think any one person should have.

Then my favorite part of all the episodes, the parents. Talk about trying to accomplish your unfulfilled dreams through your children. The mother of the two-year old was disappointed because her daughter only got second-runner up and said she should have gone to a football game with her husband instead of her daughter being so disappointed. This is the same mother who said she thought that all these pageants she was putting her daughter in would help her to build character (a.k.a. as long as she wins, she's learning something). Then there was this dad who had a two year-old that had basically done all the things the previous mother mentioned did and when his two-year old got first-runner up in her division, he said "She didn't win anything. Now I need to go and comfort my girl." Since the two-year old is concerned because her crown is slightly smaller than the girl who won the division. And then, there is my favorite parent of all the episodes that I've watched. The mother of a four-year old girl who said at the beginning of the episode that "We basically let her do what she want when she wants so that she doesn't feel forced into these pageants." The whole episode the girl is running around like a crazy person, screaming and yelling and refusing to do anything but once she gets on the stage, she actually performs rather well. And by the end of the episode, the mom says "I'm really hoping that doing these pageants will teach her discipline." Right, because that's definitely not your job as her mother, right?

But the overall favorite recurring theme from these episodes expressed by pretty much every parent is "As soon as (insert name with horrendously difficult spelling here) tells me she doesn't want to do pageants anymore, we'll stop." Because two-year olds can tell you 'no' when you drag them to these pageants and what 5 to 7 year-old is going to say 'no' when you put them in pretty dresses, let them go tanning, and give into their every whim as long as they do these pageants? I just love how real reality TV is.

"I would not say such things if I were you!"

So I've come to the conclusion that my nursing career encourages/makes me cuss much more than I ever have before. Examples:

Patient was convinced that we had moved him out of his room when he was sleeping and proceeded to call the hospital operator and hospital security to come rescue him #!@*

Had to start new IVs on the same patient 2 shifts in a row because people wouldn't take care of the IV that the patient had %*#$

Patient's mother hovering over me when I washed my hands because the hand sanitizer "Just isn't good enough." *&#@

Not being able to get enough staff %*@#

Patients constantly pooping or being obsessed with needing to poop *#$@

People not helping out $!@*

Patients crashing for no apparent reason #@*$

Patients leaving the hospital and not being able to find them for hours and then finding out that they went home because they didn't feel like staying another night *@$#

Patients dying for no reason #$%*

Patients trying to punch, kick, and bite you and other staff members $#@!

I love my job, most days...

Things I Want To Punch In The Face

So, when I was last visiting my parental units, I was reading the Reader's Digest and they had a "Best of America" section that I think they do once a year. Anyway, they had a list of four or five favorite websites/blogs and there was one called Things I Want To Punch In the Face. (If you go looking for the site, be warned that there is some swearing. Just a FYI) The author of the blog had some friends write in and make a list of 10 things that they want to punch in the face. I know I have used this phrase so I am going to steal her idea and make my own list. (So the original idea was only to make this 10 things long, but I have recently felt the need to add to it)

Things Sharee Wants To Punch In The Face:

1. People who make up parking spaces. I'm talking to you man in the big white pickup that I had to do a 20 point turn around to get out of the parking lot last weekend because apparently it was too hard to park on the other side of me.

2. People who don't make space for you when you turn on your blinker. There's a reason I'm turning on my blinker so I don't have to cut you off later so I can make my turn.

3. People constantly talking about their latest dieting venture. I'm glad that you're interested in self improvement but I simply don't care about the details. If this is your idea of a conversation starter, hurry and take some remedial courses because you're making me want to punch you in the face.

4. People who can't check their text/e-mail/poster/etc. without checking their spelling and/or grammar. Yes, spell check does do a lot to help you but for the love of all that is good and holy, read over it and think it through before you send or post that information for others.

5. The people who smoke right outside my apartment door. You made the decision to smoke, not me, so please don't share with me or I will punch you in the face.

6. Dryer lint. Seriously, you would think that your clothes would eventually run out of lint or fall apart when you pulled them out of the dryer. It's ridiculous.

7. People calling everything that's not a car a 'truck.' For the love people, they are Range Rovers, Jeeps, SUVs, etc. Just because it is bigger than a car does not make it a truck.

8. Telemarketers. I understand that you're just doing your job and in this economy, you take what you can get but when I say "I'm not interested" the first time, I mean it. When I get to the fourth and fifth time, I want to a) Hang up on you, b) Let out a string of swear words a sailor would be proud of, or c) punch you in the face

9. People calling me "ma'am." I have been told that I look older than I am but for the love, I'm 23 years old. Calling me "ma'am" makes me instantly feel 30 years older and want to show you how hard a 53 year old can punch you in the face.

10. People who never complain. I appreciate that you are trying to be the bigger person but you can't be that happy all the time. I want to punch you in the face simply to give you something to complain about.

11. Cricket Wireless. Apparently, in an effort to make their wireless plans cheaper, you can opt not to pay for voicemail. And if you're like me, you don't pick up unknown numbers unless someone leaves me a voicemail. So why on earth would you not pay for voicemail and not pick up numbers you don't recognize? Spring for the voicemail so I can leave you a message when I'm trying to get ahold of you!

12. Random people trying to sell me tamales in parking lots. This is an especially heinous offense when I randomly go to the store later in the evening. I'm not interested in your freaking tamales especially when you hover around my car waiting for me to get out or you follow me out of the store. I will punch you in the face.

Ah, I feel better. There are things on this list that may come or go but enjoyed sharing this punch list. Enjoy.

Ice Cream anyone?

I feel the need to rant a smidgen. So I live in a relatively large apartment complex with at least 20 buildings. And there are quite a few children who live here. After I moved here last summer, I noticed that a man drove around in an ice cream truck in the mid to late afternoon. Well, a couple of weeks ago he started up again and I remembered why I hate the ice cream man. I work night shifts and so I'm usually taking a nap until about 5 pm when i have to get up to go to work. I swear this ice cream truck man comes by EVERY time right before I go to sleep or in the last few minutes of my nap when I'm trying desperately to sleep just a little longer. Now, it wouldn't be annoying if he just drove by and then left but he ALWAYS sits in the parking lot waiting for at least 10 minutes with his music on. Now I'm not one to yell at people about their choice of music but how can he sit there and listen to a high-pitched version of "Go Tell Aunt Roady" and "It's a Small World" over and over again? If I can get a picture of him, I'll post it so you can see just how creepy he looks.