Pioneer children sang as they walked

In honor of the pioneers who sweat and toiled coming out to Utah, I got my nails done today. I know many of those women would have loved clean polished, lovely nails,( among other things like food, a nice bed, etc.), so I decided to get my nails done since they couldn't along the dusty trail. If that sounds too sanctimonious, we'll go with me getting my nails done since Juan had to work on this holiday and I was bored.

Now, those of you who have had your nails done, raise your hand. Great. Those of you who have had your hands done by a women. Great. The rest of you who have always had your nails done by a man are with me. Every time I go in to do them, which is not often, a man always does them. I have no problem with that, though I always wonder if it's an aspiration or a back-up or their temp job. I'm leaning towards them really liking it because of the meticulous way they put on my nails. They are very attentive and severly efficent. I see only three problems with the situation, (none of these is the gender of the nail technician)-
1. They get to wear a mask
If there is a reason for them wearing a mask, there must certainly be something harmful that can't be great for me to inhale for thirty minutes
2. The language barrier
The place I frequent does not have anyone with superb english. I don't really care except for the fact that it's a little difficult to know how to hold your hands when someone is pointing with their eyes, wearing a mask and holding a small drill. Luckily, this place does not slap hands when you flinch.
3. Sanitation
How clean is this equipment that is being used on my nails? Any fungus? Strange special nail parasites? I hope not. This is where I take the chance.

All said and done, my nails look fabulous and for lack of conversation there, I'm having a conversation through my blog.

Happy Pioneer Day ya'll. And I don't know why it shows the wrong date. Lame. It's the 24th.

baby will, karlee eating a hot dog and some camping

i've been meaning to post. just like everyone else, i know. however, i will be prolonging it a bit longer since we're going on a family reunion to some place called bruneau state park in lovely idaho for some good starkey fun.
in the mean time, this is a little of what i've been up to.

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.