Vampires ate my weekend...

It's been a while-- oops.  It's been a crazy time at work, so the last thing I've wanted to do in the evenings was getting on the computer to blog.

We just moved offices from the Jesse Knight Building to the McDonald Building.  Instead of having one big office for the whole lab management staff, we have a series of smaller offices, so the OCs (Office Coordinators) have an office, the SAMs (Student Assistant Managers) have an office, and the technicians have an office and an equipment storage room.  We love it.  We have a nice big window, which we didn't have before because we were in a basement.  We have a door that we can close if we need to discuss confidential things, which we definitely didn't have before, since we shared a big office with IT Training.  And we have more desk space for all the random things we have to take care of.  It's great.

I finished The Lightning Thief and it was pretty good.  I'm excited to read the rest of the series, since this one kind of begged for a sequel.  I was actually surprised how much I remembered about the Greeks and their gods... We studied them in my 6th grade Social Studies class and I didn't think I remembered all that much from 10 years ago...

Also, this weekend I read Twilight.  Sorry Mom.  I just had to know what this craze is all about.  I have so much I could say about this book, but I won't bore you with everything... just the highlights.  Why can Bella smell blood when most normal people can't?  This was never explained, but she kind of made a big deal about it.  And I get it that vampires' natural human abilities are heightened when they become a vampire, but that doesn't really explain why Edward can read minds... was he a psychic back when he was a human?  And why can't he read Bella's mind?  And I'm sorry Stephanie Meyer, but you don't need to describe Edward's marble chest and bands of muscle every time he comes in a room.  I found though that if I read quickly, I was able to look over those ridiculous descriptions and hilarious phrases and was actually intrigued by the story.  As soon as I slowed down though, I couldn't help but laugh.  And even though I haven't seen the movies, I can't help but think that they should have casted very differently than they did.

So on to more Summer Reading.  I've already started Wicked and I'm planning on reading the rest of the Twilight series and the Percy Jackson series soon.

On a completely different topic, our weekend trip to Park City with Rebecca and Trevor was super fun!  We stayed at a family condo, walked around on Main Street, did some shopping at the outlet mall, and watched some fun movies.  And I got a perm!  Rebecca did it for me and... well...  it didn't quite work out...  The curls fell out, so we tried again later that week and it worked MUCH better!  I don't really know what went wrong the first time, but it doesn't really matter now because I have my wavy/curly hair and I love it!

Spring term is over, and Aaron did great!  But summer term has begun, and our plans have changed significantly.  Aaron was planning on just taking one class so he could work close to full time so we could get more money in savings.  But he found out that two of the classes he was planning on taking during fall are actually prerequisites for his capstone class which he has to take in the fall, even though he knows someone who took one of those "prerequisites" in their last semester a little while ago.  I guess they're actually enforcing things like that now, which they weren't when Aaron was making his plans for when to take his last classes.  So basically, he had the choice of taking those additional two classes now so he can take the capstone class in the fall and winter (it's a two semester class) or postpone graduation until the next April.  Well, I don't want to stick around in Provo for another year, so he's going to take 9 credits this summer so he can graduate on time.  Yikes.  This means I won't see him much during the week, since he'll stay on campus to work on homework and projects in the evenings if he needs to, since he focuses better on campus.  Oh well.  I'd rather sacrifice some time with him now so he can graduate and we can move on out of Provo.  But this means he'll only have 6 credits to take during winter semester, leaving him lots of time to work, apply for real jobs, and hopefully do interviews for those real jobs.

Our flowers are doing great!  So far they haven't bloomed, but they're getting big!  We started them as seeds:

And how they're huge!

As soon as we put our box out, people in the complex started copying us.  I rarely saw flowers in the complex until we put out ours when it was just dirt and seeds, and more started appearing.

Wow.  Long post, so congrats if you made it to the end.  Go get yourself some ice cream or something.

Diplomas and Dementors

Exciting news!  My diploma came in the mail last night!

It took a month and a half after graduation to actually get it, but I replaced the Sample diploma with the real one in the frame and boy, it looks beautiful!

We also finished the whole Harry Potter series this week.  This was exciting for me, not only because I finally get to cross something off my Summer Reading List, but because I have loved the Harry Potter books for many years and now Aaron can finally appreciate them for himself.  We listened to them instead of reading them, but it was a great way for us to do it together.  He was so funny when we were getting close to the end.  I would just sit there and watch the looks on his face change as characters he's grown to love died, hidden secrets were revealed, and everything came to a close.  Thank you, Aaron, for agreeing to listen to them even when you thought the movies were good enough, and you're welcome for proving that there's so much more to these stories than the things the movies show you.

Really, I'm glad we're done, because I was starting to have really weird dreams about Harry Potter, polyjuice potion, and the imperius curse.  Strange.  Now I'm just going to have dreams about Greek gods and their love children (I'm reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians now).

Side note:  I think we've decided to stay in our current apartment.  We've always known that our apartment is more/just as expensive than larger ones in Provo, but we blamed it on the location close to campus, the pool, and the furniture.  We did some searching, and we did find some furnished places with a second bedroom for significantly less rent per month.  However, most of them were further from campus than we want to be while Aaron's still in school, and we just don't want to deal with apartment searching and moving.  It's only 8 months right?

Uh, another side note.  Sorry.  I was just voted employee of the month at work!  Whoo hoo!  Free movie tickets for me!

Also, we're taking another weekend trip this week!  My coworker's family has a condo in Park City, so she, her husband, Aaron, and I are going up there for a few days.  I know we just had a long weekend but I'm still super excited to go.  I've never been there, and I've heard awesome things about it.  I'll put pictures up when we get back, because I'm sure we'll take lots on our adventures.