weekend overview

This last weekend Sarah and I took a trip to Salt Lake. The premise was pretty simple—get away for the weekend & celebrate six months of marriage on Sunday. The execution was perfect. We got some amazing sushi at Takashi and watched The Empire Strikes Back on Friday. We watched Return of the Jedi, ate salmon and other delights at Market Street Grill, picked up cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, walked through Temple Square for the lights, enjoyed The Force Awakens in luxury seats at The Gateway, and ordered pizza while watching TV (the last part of Legally Blonde and a couple episodes of Fresh Prince) on Saturday. We slept in, ate leftover pizza, and drove home on Sunday. We'd saved up for a while to afford a luxurious weekend away, and it was fantastic.

The Force Awakens is great.

Thanksgiving

Well, we're nearing the end of November. It's crazy how the month—and year—have flown by.

Thanksgiving is approaching. We'll be spending the day with my family (which means turkey, cranberry sauce, way too many mashed potatoes, a nap or three, several hours of Risk, probably a movie, and maybe some backyard football if the weather's good). Really looking forward to it.

Food items that will not be seen this Thursday but which in an ideal world would definitely be on the table:

turducken
gooducken
turduckenailailenailailduckenailailenailail
rôti sans pareil (a bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan bunting, and a garden warbler)

. . . I'm going to rename this list: ballotines (see also here) that will not be seen this Thursday and should probably never be eaten:

Well, all of them.

But especially not the famed Indian dish: sparrow in a quail in a grouse in a chicken in a turkey in a goat in a whole camel.



Anyway, the point of this post is: ballotines fascinate me and I'm really excited for Thanksgiving.

October Wrap-up

Well, it's been a while, so we're going into quick update mode:

• Movies: Mama (one of my favorites), The Bride of the Gorilla (pretty funny), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I (rewatching the series, only one left!). We need to finish the Harry Potter series and then we can start in on Star Wars to prep for Episode VII. Also, we've got a bunch of Halloween/horror movies we didn't get to in October that we'll be catching up on over the next couple months.
• We ate dinner at the Food Truck Roundup last week. Cuban sandwich from The Mouse Trap Truck for Sarah; half-Greek half-Italian calzone from Mama Z's Café for me; a wookie (waffle cookie with ice cream) from Mama Z's Café to split; and salted caramel cider, hazelnut cocoa, a mint truffle cookie, and a cookie sandwich (all from Soda Bus) to split. Pretty delicious all around.
• I'm working on rewriting my first novel, The Servant. It's going pretty well—I should be finished before the end of the year, if all goes well. I've also been working on some short stories and other novels; hopefully I can update about those soon.
• Just finished season 1 of Legends and season 2 of The Blacklist. Very good shows. Looking to catch up on Gotham and Sword Art Online and then maybe start Supergirl or Arrow or something.

Overall, it's a good time to be alive, and life is good.

Who you calling dummy, dummy?

Last night Sarah and I went to see Goosebumps.

Well, let me back up. Last night Sarah and I went on a date. First we went to Pho Plus. It was absolutely delicious. We ordered an appetizer of gyōza and we each had a regular bowl of pho, which was huge and more than either of us could finish (yay for leftovers for lunch). I ordered the steak and brisket pho and it was delicious. I'd definitely recommend Pho Plus to anyone.

Then we went to Goosebumps. It was really good. I read all the books growing up and loved them. I'm not sure I ever really saw the TV movies, though I was definitely aware of them. This movie, though, was fantastic. Very well acted (especially Jack Black, of course), cool special effects, and a solid-enough storyline that it was a fun romp with some cool monsters and some humor. I'm glad we saw it on Discount Tuesday, but it was well worth that price and a fun date night.

"There's just one thing we need to do..."

Last night Sarah and I watched Coraline. Neither of us had ever seen it before, which in retrospect is crazy, because it was super good. I really, really liked it. I thought it was amazing and I think I'll be watching it again pretty soon. Clever story, great animation, wonderful music. Loved it.

Last weekend we also watched Hocus Pocus and What Lies Beneath with some friends over, and that was a blast. Great movies.

Tonight we might go see Goosebumps, which I'm looking forward to. I'm also looking forward to the next week of movies—we'll get to see some really scary stuff.

"Do you really believe someone moves these figures one frame at a time? I'm not a masochist."

Sarah and I have been back at the Halloween movies. We've been pretty busy lately, but have still made the time for a few good ones, and the coming 11 days should see us really delve into the catalogue of true horror films.

Over the past few days, we've watched The Nightmare Before Christmas (which we'd seen before, but only piecemeal, so it was good to watch all at once), The Corpse Bride (which neither of us had seen before—it was great), and ParaNorman (Sarah'd seen it; I hadn't; I really, really liked it). We've got Coraline left to round out our stop-motion animation films, and after that we'll get into really good live-action stuff. I'm super excited.

(I also highly recommend the "Little Gift Shop of Horrors" episode of Gravity Falls, which has a nice segment on claymation.)

A bit of a break, but we're back at it

Sarah and I took a little break from our horror movie month. There were a couple reasons—some days we didn't feel like something suspenseful/gripping/scary (so we watched The Office instead, which is only one of those things at most) and some days we didn't have a lot of time for a movie and so we ended up either not watching anything or, again, watching TV or at least something shorter. (We also went to THE VOID and watched some Scooby-Doo and did a bunch of other cool things, so that contributed.)

I think starting today we'll be back on track with trying to watch a movie a day—we've half the month left and we're just getting to the really good stuff on our list. Before we dive into the deluge once more and I have to update every day, though, I thought I'd catch up to the present.

We've started Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, but we had to stop halfway through and we haven't finished it yet. Maybe we'll get to do that over the weekend. It's a pretty funny movie; we watched Excellent Adventure a couple months back and really enjoyed it. I'd seen Excellent Adventure a few times before and remembered it okay, but I've only seen Bogus Journey once and it's been forever, so it's fun to hear many of the jokes as though they're new to me.

We watched I, Frankenstein earlier this week—I think Sunday/Monday. That's a movie Sarah missed while on her mission (I kept a list, and we're slowly whittling away at them). It's one of my favorites, though I know it didn't do so well and was critically panned. I don't think it's a cinematic masterpiece, I guess, but it's 90 minutes of solid fantasy entertainment and pretty good acting/storyline—that's enough for me. It was fun to watch again, and Sarah really liked it too.

Well. That about covers it for now, I think. Here's to the halfway point—it should get scarier from here on out.

Brrrrraaaaaiiiiiiiinssssssssssss

Last night (October 7) Sarah and I watched Warm Bodies. (And the tiki episode of Scooby-Doo, which was great. 47 luaus?!) Neither of us had seen Warm Bodies before, which was kind of surprising, at least on my end—I tend to watch a lot of movies, I love theaters, I really like zombie movies, and this one came highly recommended by friends and family, especially Miranda: so I'm not sure why I missed it, but I did.

And it was great. Really funny, lots of good zombie action, and a solid storyline. I liked the twist on zombie tropes; it never felt like the movie was making fun of zombie movies, just exploring the genre itself. The mythology of the world and the interactions between zombies were both very well done. And the acting; oh man. Everyone had solid performances, but Nicholas Hoult's R was so well done. He pulled off so many emotions while still just looking like a zombie—I could hardly believe it. Really impressed with his work here.

Anyway, I won't harp on too long, but I really liked Warm Bodies, I'm surprised I'd never seen it before, and I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Who you gonna call?

Last night (October 6th)'s movie was Ghostbusters. I feel like I don't really need to say anything about this one; it's a classic, it's great, and it holds up after 31 years.

Sarah had never seen it before, though, so that was fun. She liked it too. :)

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together—mass hysteria!

The Tingler

Last night, on October 5th, Sarah and I watched The Tingler, the belovèd (ha) 1959 classic from William Castle. I'd seen it before, with Lisa and Laura and my cousins last year at their Halloween party, but Sarah hadn't. She quite enjoyed it, and I liked the second viewing. It's pretty melodramatic, and the wires connected to the Tingler are pretty obvious, but overall it's an interesting movie with some good plot development and a nice use of color when it's there. Overall, definitely recommended if you can snag it.

Looking forward to Ghostbusters tonight!

Lotus Garden

Definitely still playing catchup with restaurant posts, but here's a go at our trip to Lotus Garden last Friday, October 2.

I'd been there a couple times before, but it was Sarah's first. The storefront, though not flashy, boasts Chinese, Mongolian, and Japanese food, in addition to soda, ice cream, and other treats. Their takeout/delivery menu is pretty extensive, but we went primarily for the all-you-can-eat buffet. None of the dishes are delicious, but none of them are terrible either, and there's a pretty wide selection for what you're paying ($9/dinner or $6/lunch). Highlights were the gyōza, the coconut chicken, the beef & onion stir-fry, staples like orange chicken and chow mein, the egg flower soup, and, naturally, the ice cream.

We both ate our fill and enjoyed it. I don't think we'll be rushing back anytime soon, but that's perfectly okay. We'll probably get a craving for lots of Far Eastern food in the next couple months and head back to stuff ourselves silly.

Worth it if you're in the mood.

October & the cinema

I'm currently working on an entry about the roadtrip Sarah and I took recently—complete with photos!—but in the meantime I thought I'd start posting about October movies.

Sarah and I have decided to watch a bunch of scary movies over the whole month. We've compiled a list of 35+ movies and ranked them from comedic to terrifying. We're planning on starting easy and working our way through the list so that the week of Halloween is packed to the brim with classic horror favorites. I figured I'd write a short entry as we watch each movie.

We started last week on October 1st with So I Married an Axe Murderer, the Mike Meyers classic. I hadn't seen it in years but could quote every other line, mostly because nearly all of that movie has made it into my family's lexicon thanks to my parents quoting it all the time. ("I'm a human blanket!" is a particular favorite, as is any command starting with "Head!") It was a bit weirder than I remembered, but still really fun, and Sarah enjoyed it as well. She's picked up a few of the quotes as well and has started using them.

On the 2nd we went to see M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit at the theater. I'm a fan of a number of Shyamalan films—The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village (and The Happening and The Lady in the Water were both pretty good, I thought)—but lately he's been having a rough streak, so I haven't seen any of his movies in years. The Visit did well on Rotten Tomatoes and looked pretty good from trailers, though, so we gave it a shot. We both really enjoyed it. It was funny (when appropriate), unnerving, very well paced, and definitely scary when it tried to be. There were a couple great jump scares and a good storyline/premise overall. I'd recommend it.

I didn't see anything on the 3rd, but Sarah went to Hotel Transylvania 2, so there's that. (She didn't like it much.)

Yesterday, the 4th, we watched a couple of the "scary" episodes of Spongebob ("Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost" and "Scaredy Pants") and then a Scooby-Doo episode ("Haunted House Hang-up"). Not too bad for a Sunday evening. :)

Tonight we'll watch either The Tingler or Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, I think, or possibly Ghostbusters. Coming up this week are probably Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown, and then some Tim Burton films, and after that we'll dive into some zombie and vampire fare. I'll keep updating as we watch more films.

roadtrip plans

Sarah and I are planning a roadtrip this month—six days of driving and sightseeing in Portland, the Oregon and California coasts, Redwood National Forest, and San Francisco. We've got a ton of fun things planned and we're currently trying to narrow down a specific itinerary.

I guess that's not much of a blog post, but I'll update when we have some more details. For now, I'll just daydream about driving down the PCH with the top down, the wind in my hair, and the tunes cranked. Sounds pretty great.

secret fishies and more secret fishies

Last week, due to a clerical adjustment, Sarah and I found we had $75 of surprise money that we'd hadn't allocated to any need or want. It was technically Sarah's money, but it had been placed in my account, and she gave me the go-ahead to spend it as I chose, mentioning that buying a "secret fish" (our apartment discourages pets) would be one possibility.

So off to the pet store I went! I picked up a very small tank and a trio of red platyfish. I'll have to post a picture sometime. They're pretty cool, and we decided to name them after Gravity Falls characters.

Cut to last night. We're on our way back from the Provo Temple when Sarah spots what looks like a fish tank on the side of the road. We go around the block and come back. Turns out it's giant (very heavy) fish tank with rocks, grass, a castle, and three fish, plus a metal stand, a pump, fish food, and cleaning supplies. The sign said free, so we struggled the tank into Sarah's car and drove home with three new friends. (Definitely a blessing from going to the temple, haha.)

We haven't cleaned it out or merged our fish or anything yet (that'll be tonight), but we now have six secret fish in our apartment. Here's to hoping we don't kill them.

P.S. It's probably a very minor accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, but I've been working through Codecademy's HTML tutorials this last week (one of my five educational goals), and I composed this entry using the HTML setting instead of the rich text one. That's how I did this postscript. Step one toward success!

Guru's

One thing I'd like to start doing is documenting fun food experiences. There's more to this than just blogging about food/bragging about food. Sarah and I have a goal to eat at every restaurant on Center Street and on University Avenue in Provo (plus a few outlying places that look awesome). We love food and love trying new things, and Provo's actually pretty multicultural, surprisingly so, so this seems like a worthwhile goal. It'll keep our date nights varied and ensure than we have some cool experiences along the way.

To kick it off, we went to Guru's last night (how ethnic!) with Lisa & Laura (a belated birthday treat, which was super nice of them). Collectively, we had pita & hummus (quite good), artichoke pizza (delicious), a philly cheesesteak wrap (unexpected kick to it), a turkey BLT (classic), and a southwestern quesadilla (very good, especially with sour cream). Oh, and then we split chocolate cake and an éclair.

Overall, we had a great time with great food, and I'd definitely go there again.

new goals

With the coming of August, Sarah and I have decided to set some new goals to keep us moving forward. We're both pretty dedicated and determined people. Sure, we love lounging with ice cream and popcorn and novels and TV shows. We love lazy Saturdays and naps and goofing off. But we're also pretty goal-oriented and passionate when it comes to things we're interested in, and we're both endlessly curious about the world around us.

We've already got a pretty good system set up for goal-setting (we both make plenty of to-do lists and such), but we wanted to push ourselves a little further, so we sat down and came up with five categories apiece whereupon we want to focus our educational efforts over the next six months. (I think this is particularly important right now, given that we're both taking a break from school for a bit.) Sarah decided upon kanji (and general Japanese proficiency), news & current events, music history & theory, fitness & health, and indexing & family history; I went with linguistics, languages, news & current events & history, music history & theory, and coding.

I'll likely be detailing our adventures with these goals in the coming weeks and months. I just wanted to get a post out about it before we really start getting into it. Today's my first day working on these goals, and so far it's going pretty well: I've studied some Welsh vocab, read a few articles from my RSS feeds about politics and current events, started the first basic HTML course on Codecademy, and am currently listening to the first episode of The Lyrichord Early and Classical Music Podcast, which is fascinating thus far. Wish us luck!

top albums

I had a little spare time today and was going through a list I made a while back. It was supposed to be my top 100 albums, but it had hit 140 or so before I was done. I decided to go through and whittle it down to 100, just for fun. It shot up to the 180s before I managed to cut it back down to an even 100. It's probably skewed a little bit toward what I've listened to more recently, and I'm sure it'll continue to change over time, but it was a fun exercise.

First, here are my top 10 albums—my absolute favorites.

1. Anberlin Cities
2. The Corrs In Blue
3. Jimmy Eat World Futures
4. Lights The Listening
5. The Morning Of The Way I Fell In
6. The Naked & Famous In Rolling Waves
7. Nightwish Imaginaerum
8. Olivia Broadfield This Beautiful War
9. Straylight Run Straylight Run
10. Yellowcard Ocean Avenue

And here's the full list of 100. Thoughts?

1. Acceptance Phantoms
2. Al Lewis Battles
3. Al Lewis Band Heulwen o Hiraeth 
4. Allred Parades 
5. Amaranthe The Nexus 
6. Anberlin Cities 
7. Anberlin New Surrender 
8. Angels & Airwaves Love Part One 
9. Annalisa Mentre Tutto Cambia 
10. Annalisa Non So Ballare
11. Ashley Tisdale Guilty Pleasure 
12. Bastille Bad Blood 
13. blink-182 Untitled 
14. Bon Iver Bon Iver, Bon Iver
15. Boys Like Girls Boys Like Girls 
16. Brand New Your Favorite Weapon 
17. Brand New The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
18. Capital Lights This Is An Outrage! 
19. Carly Rae Jepsen Kiss 
20. Ceredwen Ô'r Mabinogi 
21. Ceredwen The Golden Land 
22. Chvrches The Bones of What You Believe 
23. Clique Girlz Incredible 
24. The Corrs In Blue 
25. The Corrs Borrowed Heaven 
26. The Corrs Live in Dublin 
27. Fall Out Boy Take This To Your Grave 
28. Fall Out Boy From Under the Cork Tree 
29. Fall Out Boy Save Rock & Roll
30. A Fine Frenzy One Cell in the Sea 
31. Florence + The Machine How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
32. The Forecast In the Shadow of Two Gunmen 
33. Frank Turner England Keep My Bones 
34. Funeral For a Friend Tales Don’t Tell Themselves 
35. The Gaslight Anthem The ’59 Sound
36. Go Radio Close The Distance 
37. The Goo Goo Dolls Magnetic 
38. Green Day American Idiot 
39. Haim Days Are Gone
40. He Is We My Forever 
41. Houston Calls A Collection of Short Stories 
42. Jacks Mannequin Everything In Transit 
43. JamisonParker Sleepwalker
44. Jimmy Eat World Bleed American 
45. Jimmy Eat World Futures 
46. Jimmy Eat World Chase This Light 
47. Jimmy Eat World Invented 
48. Jimmy Eat World Damages 
49. Kenotia You’ve Dug Your Grave, Now Lie In It 
50. Lights The Listening 
51. Lights Little Machines
52. Lights & Motion Reanimation 
53. Lindsey Stirling Lindsey Stirling 
54. Loreena McKennitt The Mask and Mirror
55. Loreena McKennitt The Wind That Shakes the Barley
56. Loreena McKennitt The Book of Secrets
57. Mae The Everglow
58. Mary Jane Lamond Storas
59. The Material Everything I Want to Say 
60. The Material What We Are 
61. Mayday Parade A Lesson In Romantics 
62. Mêlée Devils & Angels 
63. Mercy Mercedes Believe It 
64. The Morning Of The Way I Fell In 
65. The Naked and Famous In Rolling Waves 
66. The Naked and Famous Passive Me, Aggressive You 
67. Nightwish Dark Passion Play 
68. Nightwish Imaginaerum 
69. Nightwish Endless Forms Most Beautiful 
70. Of Monsters and Men My Head Is An Animal 
71. Olivia Broadfield Eyes Wide Open 
72. Olivia Broadfield This Beautiful War 
73. Olivia Broadfield Paper Dolls
74. Olivia Broadfield Jumberlack
75. Owl City Maybe I’m Dreaming
76. Paramore Riot! 
77. Postiljonen Skyer 
78. PVRIS White Noise
79. Quietdrive When All That’s Left Is You
80. Rookie of the Year The Goodnight Moon
81. Rookie of the Year Sweet Attention
82. Rookie of the Year The Most Beautiful
83. Serenity Death & Legacy 
84. Sherwood A Different Light 
85. Shiny Toy Guns III 
86. Silverstein A Shipwreck in the Sand
87. Silverstein This Is How The Wind Shifts
88. Simple Plan Get Your Heart On!
89. The Starting Line Say It Like You Mean It 
90. Straylight Run Straylight Run
91. The Summer Obsession This Is Where You Belong
92. Tonight Alive What Are You So Scared Of? 
93. Two Door Cinema Club Tourist History
94. We Are The In Crowd Best Intentions
95. Wild Ones Keep It Safe
96. Xandria Sacrificium
97. The Years Gone By Forever Comes Too Soon 
98. Yellowcard Ocean Avenue
99. Yellowcard Paper Walls 
100. Yellowcard Southern Air 

"she wants to dance like Uma Thurman..."

Fall Out Boy concert last night. USANA Amphitheater. 20,000+ people in attendance. Outside in the cool summer air.

Amazing.

Seriously, this was an amazing performance. Wiz Khalifa and Fall Out Boy were coheadlining, but Sarah and I arrived right in between their performances (as intended). We had a lovely drive there, taking the scenic (and faster, and less traffic-occupied) route on Mountain View Corridor. Perfect name, by the way. We ate Five Guys (Sarah's first time, and she loved it, though we didn't have anything to drink, so we had to go easy on the Cajun fries) and listened to Funeral For A Friend's Tales Don't Tell Themselves (great album) while we drove. The sun was setting and turning the mountains pink and the full moon followed us through the hills.

Fall Out Boy killed it. They always do, of course, but I never fail to be impressed by their delivery. Patrick's voice is the best it's ever been and one of the best in the genre. Andy and Pete and Joe were all in their element blasting away. And the fire and cannons and lights and videos (they played an American Beauty/American Psycho–inspired clip backed by a reading of Alan Watts's "The State of Nothing" lecture, which is now on my to-read list) were exciting and the sheer numbers in attendance were daunting.

I really enjoyed their setlist this time around. Here's the setlist they played (it's not the one for SLC, but it's accurate as far as I remember). Of course I would have loved "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy" or "Reinventing the Wheel To Run Myself Over With," but I can't say I'm surprised at any of their choices, and every song was impeccably played, energetic, singalong, and super fun. In particular, the acoustic performances of "Immortals" and "Young Volcanoes" were amazing and "Uma Thurman" was incredibly catchy. Hard to pick favorites because every song was fun.

More than anything I loved how much Sarah enjoyed herself. She's not a huge fan of the band and it was her first real rock concert, and she just had the time of her life. She was really fun to watch and I'm glad we both had such a good experience. (It was great that my sisters & their friends were there too, of course.)

I just realized that it's been nearly 10 full years since my first Fall Out Boy concert: November 8, 2005, on the Nintendo Fusion Tour with The Starting Line and Motion City Soundtrack. What a concert. And then of course I saw FOB with Paramore about a year and a half ago. Great performances all around. I don't know if I'll for sure catch them the next time they're in town—it might depend on who's accompanying them/if they've released a new album in the interim—but I know it wouldn't be a mistake to grab tickets the second they're available.

That's all for now, I think. We're going camping after work today with the extended family. Looking forward to 24 hours of card games, smoky food, fishing, good atmosphere and company, and probably reading Gardens of the Moon on the lakeshore for an hour or two.

music

So turns out Sarah and I are going to a Fall Out Boy show tomorrow. Kind of a last-minute decision. We're really excited. They put on a great show. Sarah's never really been a fan, but she likes their newer stuff, and I think she'll enjoy the performance.

Also, I'm halfway through my first listen of The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem. Can't believe I slept on this for so long. It's like The Killers meets Go Radio meets Bruce Springsteen. Amazing stuff.

mid-week update

Well, the Sunday School lesson was a success, as were the cookies Sarah made for it. And now we're halfway through the last week of July. I can't believe how quickly time is passing. (As usual.) I've been married for 39 days. I've been 25 for a full month. I've been at my job for 10.5 months. I've been out of college for a full year, home from Mexico for 4, and out of high school for 7.

That's just crazy talk.

I've been working at accomplishing goals lately. That sounds redundant (or something like it); I'm always working at my goals. But lately I've been trying to do more of them each day. I'll often have a lengthy to-do list that includes everything under the Sun I'd like to accomplish, and then at the end of the day I've only done about 15% of my goals and I feel a bit disheartened. So I've been working on setting more manageable goals and on simply doing more each day, and it's been going really well.

For example, I have a goal to write every day. I also have specific goals regarding different writing projects in the works. Usually I only have/make the time for one project per day—I can either write more of the short story I'm working on, work on polishing my first novel, or continue with the outline for its sequel. Well, lately I've been trying to do all three of those things every day. It's a bit of a sacrifice, but honestly not much; I'm sacrificing loafing-around time, if anything.

And yesterday I wrote 500 words in the short story, ~750 in the outline, and read half a chapter of my novel. Not bad at all.

Anyway, I've been seeing improvement there. I'm still pushing to hit ~80% of my weekly goals on a regular basis. That's the number that I think is significant: It shows that I'm setting good goals and working hard to achieve them.

I might actually get there this week. And then it'll be August, and I can set some new monthly goals and get excited about them and all this hard work will propel me straight into fame and fortune.

Well, not really. Good thing that's not one of my goals. At least not until September.

Apple customer service is nice

Re: my last entry, I got the issue with manually managing my music using Apple Music figured out. Chatted with an Apple Care rep for about 15 minutes. He became as frustrated as I was, but eventually we figured out how to sync & upload my music, and I'm now enjoying Jumberlack and hundreds of other albums I love. Good stuff.

I've been really enjoying a few different podcasts lately. I'm going to add a podcast section below, but I thought that in the coming days it'd also be nice to feature some of the ones I enjoy, spread the word a little.

lemon cheese cupcakes and an update

On Saturday Sarah and I made a French-inspired dinner for our date night. It's been detailed better on Facebook, but I'd like to add here that the lemon cheese cupcakes we made for dessert have made an excellent accompaniment to my cup of chamomile and honey tea for breakfast. It's a rainy Monday morning and I'm pretty worn out from not getting a lot of sleep last night, but breakfast is helping.

Anyone else using Apple Music? I signed up for the three-month trial, and so far I'm loving it. I'm still not sure whether I'll pay the $9.99/month fee when my trial expires—I expect I shan't know until the time comes—but it's really been great so far. I love having access to so much music by artists I like, and the discovery tools have so far been spot on. It's really great for going to the gym, too: I just select a curated pop-punk playlist and off I go.

The one issue I've had so far is trying to manually manage my music. Apparently you just can't anymore. I have music on my laptop that isn't synced with the iCloud because it's not available on iTunes. I used to be able to just drag-and-drop the music into my phone. Not so now. It refuses to let me do so. Very frustrating. Dre and I looked at it for a bit yesterday to no avail. Ah well; perhaps there's some simple fix I'm overlooking. It's a shame, though, because I'd really like to be able to listen to Olivia Broadfield's new album, Jumberlack. It's fantastic.

a preview of classes to come

Today was our first chance to meet some of the kids we'll be teaching in Sunday School. Sarah and I have been called as youth teachers in our new ward here in Provo. We just sat in on the lesson today; next week will be our first chance to teach. Well, my first chance to teach; Sarah will be working, as happens now and then on Sundays. So those kids better prepare for an hour of linguistics and convoluted puns. I'm sure they're excited.

resurrection

Okay, it's time to give blogging a serious go. But why?

Over the last couple months I've found myself driven to solidify my social media accounts. By that I mean that I started trying to really use them for something instead of just having them lying around. I had a Pinterest account that was practically defunct, a Twitter feed I hadn't checked in ages, and a Vine login & password when I didn't even have the app on my phone anymore.

So I decided to go through all those apps & accounts and figure out if I could use them in some objective way. Pinterest became a repository for quotes, jokes, memes, Welsh stuff, language-learning articles, and wedding plans. I scoured Twitter of accounts I no longer wanted to follow, followed a bunch of new ones, and started checking it a little more frequently. I'm still in the process of figuring out Vine, but I at least took the step of connecting with family members there, so I've had some laughs.

I recognize that this might all sound very silly. Who cares this much about social media and apps and organization? I'll grant that it's not very important. There are many other things in life that take far greater precedence: family, friends, education, employment, health & fitness, recreation, religion, etc. Those all warrant much more attention than electronic diversions, and I've set goals accordingly in each category, working hard to improve.

But I nevertheless still do a lot online: I spend 8+ hours per weekday on a computer at work, I have my phone with me constantly, many of my interests involve technology and being connected with current events & other people, and I have the type of personality that loves to acquire new information, catalogue it, and store it for later reference. Combine all of that, and my recent 'project' makes a little more sense. I think all of these accounts and apps can have a purpose, can fulfill a need, and refining something will make it more useful, there's no reason not to go for it.

Anyway. All of that is to say that there's still a bit of a void left to be filled, and I think a blog can do the trick. I initially created a blog partly because it was the hip thing to do (psh) and partly because I wanted something akin to a more-public journal, a place where I could say to friends and family, hey, this is what I've been up to lately and these are my thoughts. Other platforms, like Facebook and Tumblr, could possibly take up the slack, but not in exactly the way I'd like them to. Hence: blog.

I'm going to make more of an effort to update, and at some point in the near future I'll link to the blog on Facebook and other outlets. I'm not trying to demand attention or anything, but I think this could be fun and useful. We'll see, I guess.

hwyl