Magical Michael (Updated)

So, yesterday afternoon, as I was about to print off some tickets for an event we were about to go to, when my computer very suddenly died. Like, first my browser froze, so I tried to ctrl-alt-delete to close the browser...and then Windows froze, so I had to do a hard reset...and then Windows couldn't reboot, so my computer just kept trying to restart over and over again...it was toast. The only harbinger of this misfortunate was that last week, we discovered that there's a short in it somewhere (we noticed when I was using my computer and Michael came up and touched my arm and, unbeknownst to me, my skin was all electrified just from touching the case of the computer).

We decided to just go to our thing with the tickets pulled up on my ipod and worry about the computer later. Then, when we got back, I had to leave pretty quickly to meet some friends for dinner and to watch the RS broadcast. So when I got back from that, I was expecting my computer to be as dead as it ever was, but it turned out Michael had been hard at work on it the whole time. He installed a new hard drive (because...that's a thing you can do to computers? and he just has extra hard drives lying around? I'm down with that.) and installed Linux on my laptop (to make it...work? or something?) and then he figured out how to get Vista back on it (the OS I actually know how to use! and the one that is compatible with my note-taking software!) and probably did a lot of other complicated stuff. All I know is that when I came home, he had taken over half the living room with my laptop, his laptop, and his desktop, all connected with interweaving wires and cords, and a few tool kits open and a pile of special screwdrivers and dissembled screws and assorted computer-y parts out. It looked like an awesome hacker den.

So now things seem to be working again, although we don't know how long it'll be until whatever problem is causing the short and the zebra stripes on the screen and the hard drive dying comes back and kills something non-replaceable. But for now, I can study again! And I can bloop around and procrastinate while pretending to study again! All thanks to my smart, full of magical-seeming knowledge husband!

Update: I also forgot to mention what a blessing the timing was with this. I had a big test on Friday, and since I use my computer to do 95% of my studying, and since I do half my studying the week before the test, having lost my computer and/or my files right before the test (or, horror of horrors, during the test) would have been completely and rightfully panic-inducing. It was so great that this happened on a weekend between blocks, when I had absolutely zero studying to do.

Update the second: Michael fiddled with things some more this morning and somehow, magically, got everything back to exactly how it was, on my original hard drive and everything! Before, my computer was missing some programs/add-ons and my browser settings were back to the default and stuff, but he fixed ALL THE THINGS. This has been a public service announcement letting everyone know that Michael is the best.

The Best Picture I Ever Took?

So, I'm not much of a pro photographer--I don't use external flashes on stands, I use a point-and-shoot because I don't know how to fiddle with aperture and focus and stuff, and I'm always more concerned with getting people to look happy than with getting the lighting just right. But I do like to take pictures of interesting things, and I like trying to make pictures look good. Today I was flipping through my pictures on my computer, looking for a picture of Michael and I for the ward directory, and I found this gem:

I took an animal husbandry class my last semester at BYU, and we went to see an alpaca farm one day. I just love everything about this photo--I love the different colors of the alpacas, I love that they're all doing their own thing (except for the one guy who's looking straight at me), I love the angular outline of the shed in the back, I love that you can look at the background and really see that we were out in the middle of nowhere in Utah. I especially love that furry bro on the left with his little mouf full of hay. So funny! I just think that the composition and subjects in this photo turned out particularly well, and I'm pretty fond of it.

Books Read This Summer

1. My Father's Tears by John Updike
2. Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
3. Perfect Light Desserts by Nick Malgieri
4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
5. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
6. Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (weeird)
7. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
8. The Chosen by Chaim Potok
9. The Wild Life of Our Bodies by Rob Dunn
10. Snuff by Terry Pratchett
11. Every Living Creature by James Herriott

I'm reasonably pleased by that list, especially considering that my summer was only nine weeks long and most of it wasn't a true break from school and work anyway (but it was a very excellent ~60% break).

Fitness test

I just did a fitness test at OSU, and I was very pleased to find that my VO2max (measure of aerobic fitness) is in the 80th percentile for my age and gender. Not bad!

I was also very amused at my results of the strength tests: I scored well above the 90th percentile for lower body strength (woohoo!), but for upper body strength, I didn't even crack the 10th percentile. Talk about lopsided. Clearly, I am a circus freak.

Gingerbread House

We just barely found a gingerbread house kit that one of us had gotten for Christmas...

We didn't really feel like leaving a gingerbread house on display for weeks in the middle of summer but we also didn't want to lose out on the fun of making it by eating everything straight out of the box, so we decided to make it as fast as we could and then immediately devour it. Isn't it beautiful? I'm sure you can tell that in the front yard, there's a scared ghost and a very well-decorated Christmas tree. Also, there were supposed to be gumdrops but I just ate them all. Also, the manufacturers were lazy about the nutrition facts, and instead of listing it for the different elements separately, they just listed the nutrition for 1/36 of the whole box. Silly.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Strawberries

Last week Michael and I went strawberry picking. I've always wanted to go—I've enjoyed the fresh-picked bounties of side-of-the-road farm stands many times, but I've never actually picked my own. Farm strawberries are always amazing: tender, bright red all the way through, gently warmed by the sun, bursting with juiciness and true strawberry flavor, and sweet sweet sweet. Basically all the things that grocery store strawberries are not. I can't get enough of them.

Such a wholesome view, right? When we arrived, an old lady greeted us, gave us some collecting baskets, and told us, "Make sure you try plenty! Gotta make sure they're delicious!" There was also a sign hanging up that said "Please eat as you go!" Fine by me! I was of course going to eat one or two before we weighed our baskets, but since you pay for what you harvest by the pound, I would have felt too guilty about more than that. Fortunately for us, we apparently got free rein to eat as many as we wanted.

And once we actually walked out to the rows of strawberry plants, the aroma was suddenly incredibly strong. It was sweet and fruity and oh-so-strawberry. It was seriously making me giddy before I picked a single berry. Have I mentioned how much I love farm strawberries?

Beautiful!

And then we just picked a bunch of berries, each of us on one side of the row of plants. I think pleasant is the best word for the morning. Really, really pleasant. It was sunny and in the low seventies, the smell was amazing, plus we were pretty much alone in our little sector of the field, so it was really fun to just chat and enjoy each other's company in the warm, strawberry-scented air, snacking as we went. We forgot to have someone take a picture of both of us with our loot, so...here's a picture of just Michael!

He would make a cute migrant worker.

Anyway, we ended up with five quarts of fresh strawberries for twelve bucks, which is an awesome deal compared to roadside stand/farmer's market prices but a pretty bad deal when you consider that we were basically migrant workers for an hour. It's an important part of the strawberry picking experience, though!

Yum. We probably ate about half of the berries out of hand over the next week (which is absolutely the best way to enjoy fresh berries), and then I made strawberry vanilla jam with one of the last quarts. It was my first experience with making jam or canning anything, so it was an adventure in and of itself. But the jars all sealed properly and there was enough left over after filling the prepared jars to keep a little half-full jar in the fridge...which meant that we got to try some right away, hooray! The flavor was awesome. Steeping the berries with sugar and vanilla beans before cooking them was absolutely inspired. The only thing that turned out funky was the texture (and this was probably a result of my own inexperience). Instead of being a homogenous, spreadable jam, it turned out more like a bunch of sliced strawberries in some delicious syrup. Oh well. It was still the bomb on toast.

 It'll be hard not to bust these open before the winter...

And then yesterday, when the remaining berries were on their last legs, I made a quick flummery, which I usually use as an ice cream topping (it was half strawberries and half blueberries, which is why it looks so purple). It was a great way to say goodbye to those amazing strawberries.

See you next year, strawberries!

Call Me Maybe

I just realized that I've been mixing up Carly Rae Jepsen (singer of the infamous "Call Me Maybe") with Christy Carlson Romano (former Disney Channel star). Sooo...every time I've ever heard that song (up until now), I've been envisioning the girl from Even Stevens singing it. In my defense, it wouldn't be that surprising if it was from Ren Stevens, considering it really does sound like those cheeseball wrote-it-in-five-minutes pop songs that got played on the Disney Channel during commercial breaks (you know, the ones sung by actors who were trying to make it really big by "crossing genres").