FYI

Things that you think will be better than they actually are-

-movie 10,000 b.c.
-wearing your new red heels to preschool for dress up day
-eating pepperidge farm goldfish when you may or may not be sick
-getting the mail
-the valpak coupon thingy in the mail
-your new not so magnificent contacts
-Indiana Jones

Big bucks

So my fabulous sister-in-law is in a singing competition right now. The winner gets $50,000. That's an awesome lot of money for being an awesome singer. Is there any talent that you have that you think someone other than God would pay you for? I'm still thinking. . .

Once upon a time...

My name is Alicia. That is obvious. I didn't think the other parts of my name were that confusing, but as was evidence at graduation, words are hard. Even for college faculty. I understand that foreign names could be difficult, but all parts of my name are pretty standard English, American names.

Graduation was about a week and a half ago. I was less excited because I should have graduated earlier but had to take an online class for my last semester. I decided to walk anyway, and that's where the fun started. My name card said Alicia Manning. I asked the lady if I could change it so it said my full name, with Marie and Starkey also. She said they would be able to read four names. Ha.

We lined up in the Spectrum for this supposed momentous occasion. The instructions were to go up, give them your name, walk and shake some hands, you know all the usual graduation crap. The girl before me got her name pronounced wrong, and I knew I was screwed. Her name was Alicia too. After I gave the dude my tag, he looked at it close, held it back farther, and announced, " Marie Sparky". I'm sure my face looked a little shocked so he looked at the card again and corrected his mistake. "Starkey," he said. Oh that helps.

John was down on the floor to take pictures but I forgot to look at him due to the fact that I didn't graduate. He got some nice back of the head pics of Marie Sparky that I'll be posting.

All in all a very funny day which I, and Marie Sparky of course, will remember.

It's my party. . .

Yesterday we went to Baby Animal Day. For my birthday. And no we did not take any kids there. Just two semi-adults seeing baby animals. It was my birthday, get off my back ;)




I wanted to stuff a little baby duck in my pocket, but John, being the voice of reason, said no.






So, we thought there would only be farm animals. Not so. This is an African millipede. The lady asked John if he wanted to hold it. He said yes.
After it crawled all over his arm, he gave it back. When we walked out he told me that it was creepy and it totally freaked him out. I had no idea. He was too good at playing it cool.




This is John's llama face.


This rabbit weighed something like 11 lbs


I loved that pig. John thought it was ok till he got peed on.


All in all, a super fun birthday. John got me a new camera, hence all the pictures uploaded so quickly. My mom and sis came up for the day and hung out. I finished the night with a yummy Cafe Sabor dinner and John made it through Hairspray. He gave it a good faith effort, even though he may have had fat John Travolta nightmares.

In which I show my frugality

I like ikea. I think it's a great place to get stuff that will last you 3-5 years. Not a place to buy nice things that you can have for the remainder of your life, that will move from house to house as you move. Saying this, Juan and I were out of the valley for the weekend and thought we'd drop by ikea. Juan had never been, so I knew he was in for a treat. In order for it to be a positive experience however, I knew we would need to eat food there to make it through. First stop- hot dogs. For fifty cents a dog, how can you say no? So we got those and started on our way. We ended up needing Swedish meatballs along the way. Very tasty.

The thing about ikea is how I have to be careful when I go there. Basically I want to buy 80% of the stuff in there with little regard to the crappiness or the fact that I have no where to put it or use it. Let alone pronounce it's fancy little Swedish name. I actually did really well and by the time we got to the checkout, the only thing we were buying was a light bulb. A month ago I was there and found a cool little lime green lamp for $3.99, but couldn't find a light bulb to fit it.It was my first time at ikea so i didn't think about needing special light bulb. I figured since we were there last weekend I could grab one and finally get my spunky light working. When Juan scanned the light bulb at the self check out, it came in at $7.99. Yeah freakin' right. I'm not spending double the price of the lamp on the bulb. Yes it might last two years because it's a fancy bulb, but when I live 100 miles away from the store that carries the magical unstandardized bulb, I'm looking at convenience. And it's the principle of the thing. And I'm cheap.