You need to check out the hilarious Valentines on my friend's blog. We were on the same floor freshman year at BYU.
We are going to the BYU-TCU game this weekend to witness Jimmer Fredette with our own eyes. It is my Valentine's present to Danny.
His gift to me was a night of cooking together without the kids. Miraculously, Jane was asleep and Dan was mostly content. It reminded both of us of before we were married, when we used to cook together, and dream about being married. Haha.
Actually, his other gift was pretty awesome, too. He used to get $2 bills every year for his birthday from his grandparents. Well, he's been saving them for years, and combined it with a little spare cash, gave me $60. He was going to get flowers, but I called him from the grocery store and forbade him from doing so.
Danny: "But what can I get you?"
Kate: "You know what I really want? A filing cabinet!"
Danny: "But that's such a crappy present!"
Kate: "No way!"
Because he gave me cash, I was able to shop Craigslist. I found a 4 door black filing cabinet for $15. And because I'm coming from far away, they want to give me a small 2 door one, as well. Which is great. I will decorate the small one like this, so it isn't an eyesore in our downstairs living space, and the black one can go in my office closet.
Hooray! And there's plenty left over to get: paint and glossy stuff for antiquing the toy thingy, risers for my desk, foam to reupholster my awesome chair, a bit of fabric to reupholster the same said chair, a massive amount of pegboard for my pantry and office, and some leather restorer stuff.
Our friends are moving and they gave us their leather couches, but they are pretty dirty. I've been scrubbing all morning. I read that if you let cornstarch sit on them for several hours, it can help get out the tough stains. So the library is currently barricaded so Jane doesn't go rolling around in the super messy cornstarch. Hope it works.
2/16/2011
2/14/2011
How We Celebrated Valentine's Day
For Valentine's Day dinner, I made Shrimp Fra Diavolo. It's a recipe from my 'America's Test Kitchen' book, which as far as I'm concerned doesn't contain a single non-delicious recipe. It was my first time cooking with raw shrimp, and also my first time lighting alcohol (brandy) on fire.
Just about now, I am wishing I had remembered to buy a fire extinguisher!
It was really, really delicious, and the perfect thing for my true love. He said it was the best thing I had ever cooked, in his opinion. "Or at least, in the top five!" Which is probably more realistic, because that Boeuf Bourgignon was pretty amazing, just sayin'.
It was perfect for him because he loves pasta, shrimp, and spiciness. There are 2 tsps (THAT IS A LOT!) of red pepper flakes in this baby! But somehow it had a lot of heat, but didn't burn, and also had a lot of flavor. Ahhhh, ATK, I love you. Oh, yeah, and Danny too! haha.
So, on a different note, this is the 300th post, and no new blog yet.
The problem is that the upstairs computer is our server, but it was just recalled, so we can send it in and get a brand new one. Which is good, because there is a major problem with it: the wireless no longer works. As in, it receives its internet through a plug. Weeeeeird. Haha. For now it's just been a desktop-laptop, but to get a brand new computer would be awesome.
But unless we change things around so my downstairs computer can be our server, when this computer leaves us, so does my new blog.
We could just get some free web hosting site and combine it with some redirects to work around this issue until we get the new computer.
The other big problem is that before we do anything to the downstairs computer, Danny wants to reinstall a better version of linux. The one we have is basically just a media-shell type thing. It's fine, but probably regular ubuntu would be better for my computing needs.
The other big problem is with adding an email/RSS subscription widget. It's weird that wordpress doesn't automatically download with that plugin, but whatever. So far, it keeps asking for FTP information when we try to install the plugin I want, but the server is not an FTP server. Why does wordpress want an FTP host to download the plugin? Danny thinks it's just to change the file permissions, which is something he could easily do a workaround for. But that's not a great long term solution because I imagine there will be other plugins I will want to download, and while he can do command line workarounds easily, it would take me fifty times longer and I would most likely mess something up.
I guess I could just start the new blog without a "subscribe!" button, but I daren't do that. I want my parents to read my blog, and while some people are comfortable copying and pasting URLs into their blog readers, my parents get my blog as an email subscription and I don't see that changing. I guess they *could* make it their homepage, but...yeah, no. I need this plugin, by golly!
So basically, getting my new blog up and running will involve reinstalling an operating system and reconfiguring a server, which is too much work to do right now.
This is how my true love and I spent our Valentine's Day evening, by choice. Oh the nerdiness. But it was fun, and that's what matters.
Just about now, I am wishing I had remembered to buy a fire extinguisher!
It was really, really delicious, and the perfect thing for my true love. He said it was the best thing I had ever cooked, in his opinion. "Or at least, in the top five!" Which is probably more realistic, because that Boeuf Bourgignon was pretty amazing, just sayin'.
It was perfect for him because he loves pasta, shrimp, and spiciness. There are 2 tsps (THAT IS A LOT!) of red pepper flakes in this baby! But somehow it had a lot of heat, but didn't burn, and also had a lot of flavor. Ahhhh, ATK, I love you. Oh, yeah, and Danny too! haha.
So, on a different note, this is the 300th post, and no new blog yet.
The problem is that the upstairs computer is our server, but it was just recalled, so we can send it in and get a brand new one. Which is good, because there is a major problem with it: the wireless no longer works. As in, it receives its internet through a plug. Weeeeeird. Haha. For now it's just been a desktop-laptop, but to get a brand new computer would be awesome.
But unless we change things around so my downstairs computer can be our server, when this computer leaves us, so does my new blog.
We could just get some free web hosting site and combine it with some redirects to work around this issue until we get the new computer.
The other big problem is that before we do anything to the downstairs computer, Danny wants to reinstall a better version of linux. The one we have is basically just a media-shell type thing. It's fine, but probably regular ubuntu would be better for my computing needs.
The other big problem is with adding an email/RSS subscription widget. It's weird that wordpress doesn't automatically download with that plugin, but whatever. So far, it keeps asking for FTP information when we try to install the plugin I want, but the server is not an FTP server. Why does wordpress want an FTP host to download the plugin? Danny thinks it's just to change the file permissions, which is something he could easily do a workaround for. But that's not a great long term solution because I imagine there will be other plugins I will want to download, and while he can do command line workarounds easily, it would take me fifty times longer and I would most likely mess something up.
I guess I could just start the new blog without a "subscribe!" button, but I daren't do that. I want my parents to read my blog, and while some people are comfortable copying and pasting URLs into their blog readers, my parents get my blog as an email subscription and I don't see that changing. I guess they *could* make it their homepage, but...yeah, no. I need this plugin, by golly!
So basically, getting my new blog up and running will involve reinstalling an operating system and reconfiguring a server, which is too much work to do right now.
This is how my true love and I spent our Valentine's Day evening, by choice. Oh the nerdiness. But it was fun, and that's what matters.
2/12/2011
Married, Female, Mormon, Insomniac? (anybody else catch the reference?)
My bro-in-law sent me a link to this article, and after reading the first sentence I decided not to read it because I knew it would just be too upsetting. When the first sentence in an article has the words "planned parenthood", you just know that.
Later, I talked about it at length with Sarah, who had talked about it with my mom. It's about an older single Mormon woman who decides that the church is not for her because of its oppressive culture towards sex. So as a 35 or 36 year old, she goes to planned parenthood, gets an IUD, and starts living a "happy" life of promiscuity. My mom and Sarah both agreed that the author's main motivations for writing the piece were to validate her unrighteous actions, which she probably needed to do because she felt so guilty for them.
Anyway, I didn't read that article, but I read THIS one, which was an interesting response by an LDS woman who got divorced and then remarried. She basically says that the point of our existence has to be more than sex, because when that is all it is, our lives are shallow and meaningless. Even people who never get to be married and enjoy the blessings of family life still can lead full lives because the point of this life is to gain a testimony of Christ and to learn to be more like Him.
I read this with Danny. We thought it was a good blog post. I think I mostly agree with her, except maybe that she under-emphasized the importance of getting married and having a family. Thinking about it, it's really easy for me to say, "Sure, I could lose everything, but I'd still have Christ." But the truth is, I actually feel like I would have nothing without my family. But there are plenty of people who can still have full lives, who don't get the chance to marry here, but will later. I guess I just have a hard time relating to that?
What do you think?
(My MIL had a good suggestion for what to do about Dan's night wakings. She says it's a good idea to get up and "plug him" with his binkie, not feed him immediately, sort of train him to sleep a half hour longer, bit by bit. So we'll see how this goes. I'm writing this post between episodes of getting up, wrapping him up, and plugging him, FYI. I'm now on round 5.
The truth is that I kind of actually like middle of the night feedings, it's just when I wake up an hour beforehand and can't fall asleep for an hour (or two) afterward, and end up getting 3-4 hours of sleep total that it is hard. It's the insomnia/hunger pains that I could do without. But if baby wants to nurse, I'm down with it pretty much any time!)
Later, I talked about it at length with Sarah, who had talked about it with my mom. It's about an older single Mormon woman who decides that the church is not for her because of its oppressive culture towards sex. So as a 35 or 36 year old, she goes to planned parenthood, gets an IUD, and starts living a "happy" life of promiscuity. My mom and Sarah both agreed that the author's main motivations for writing the piece were to validate her unrighteous actions, which she probably needed to do because she felt so guilty for them.
Anyway, I didn't read that article, but I read THIS one, which was an interesting response by an LDS woman who got divorced and then remarried. She basically says that the point of our existence has to be more than sex, because when that is all it is, our lives are shallow and meaningless. Even people who never get to be married and enjoy the blessings of family life still can lead full lives because the point of this life is to gain a testimony of Christ and to learn to be more like Him.
I read this with Danny. We thought it was a good blog post. I think I mostly agree with her, except maybe that she under-emphasized the importance of getting married and having a family. Thinking about it, it's really easy for me to say, "Sure, I could lose everything, but I'd still have Christ." But the truth is, I actually feel like I would have nothing without my family. But there are plenty of people who can still have full lives, who don't get the chance to marry here, but will later. I guess I just have a hard time relating to that?
What do you think?
(My MIL had a good suggestion for what to do about Dan's night wakings. She says it's a good idea to get up and "plug him" with his binkie, not feed him immediately, sort of train him to sleep a half hour longer, bit by bit. So we'll see how this goes. I'm writing this post between episodes of getting up, wrapping him up, and plugging him, FYI. I'm now on round 5.
The truth is that I kind of actually like middle of the night feedings, it's just when I wake up an hour beforehand and can't fall asleep for an hour (or two) afterward, and end up getting 3-4 hours of sleep total that it is hard. It's the insomnia/hunger pains that I could do without. But if baby wants to nurse, I'm down with it pretty much any time!)
2/11/2011
Baby 15: mom 4 - hours of sleep that is.
Why does it always happen that I wake up at 3 am, lie awake in bed for an hour unable to fall asleep, figure out that my stomach is screaming, "HUNGER HUNGER HUNGER!" after about an hour, get a bowl of cereal at 4 am, and just as I'm finishing said B.O.C., le bebe awakes?
Rinse and repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat, ad infinitum.
Baby Dan, please wake up at 3 am next time.
Rinse and repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat, ad infinitum.
Baby Dan, please wake up at 3 am next time.
2/09/2011
"Metablogging" or "When to Kill a Blog"
I am so glad that I married a computer nerd. Last night, we spent several hours working on my blog.
My new blog.
I am a one-blog woman. I can't have multiple blogs that I keep up. I just can't. I know this because my blogger dashboard has something like 13. Don't worry, they aren't all supposed to be daily-updated type blogs; some of them are just me saving the name for someday-but-not-today. Some are group blogs that are no longer in existence. And some are finished blogs.
What in the heck is a "finished blog"?
Obviously, a travel blog is "finished" when you get home. Or some time after you get home, as was my case, since I wanted to include the first little bit of major culture shock.
But this blog? When will it be done?
The fact is, I don't listen to "This American Life" anymore because the last 3 times I tried to, it was always either extremely dirty, or worse: extremely negative about marriage. Okay, maybe it's not worse, but I can't tolerate either. So why would I want my blog to be named after it? Besides, the person who introduced that NPR show to me is no longer important to me at all.
Anyway, reading this article completely changed my attitude about blogging. How? It highlights "typical mormon mommy bloggers." Wanting to know what that is, I subscribed to all the blogs she mentioned in the article. The past few weeks reading them, I have figured out this one thing:
I want my blog to be more like theirs.
Short daily posts, lots of pictures, lots of happines, lots more about the mundaneness of life. Starting over with a clean slate seems like a good way to do it.
Besides, on a more practical-usage level, I am getting "wordpress-lust." My original blog was with livejournal, then I graduated to blogger, and now that I've grown up I am becoming a wordpress blogger? From our home server and my own domain? Don't want to bore you with the nerdiness of last night. Let me tell you, Danny and I had a blast working on it together. Again, I will state: I am SO GLAD I married a computer nerd, mainly for the reason that he has just as much or more fun figuring out the technical aspects of blogging, so it is something we can sit down and do together. Secondarily, for the reason that he knows orders of magnitude more about computers than I do, so parsing through RSS XML DNS CNAME ATOM madness is much, much, much, much easier with him around.
The other reason is that my life now is just so, SO different from what it was when I started this blog. I am now a stay-home-mommy. Major life change = major blog change?
What sealed the deal for me was picking up a random Ensign yesterday (to "read" with Jane, which means pointing at pictures and saying, "Look! Jesus!") was when I happened to pick the one with this article. I want my blog to be less ranty, and more lifey.
This blog has been more of a mind-dump. I am not sure if I will keep it active, you know, post here every so often when I build a giant rage about something political or whatever. But let's be honest, I probably won't ever post here again after the 300th post.
Yes, I will soon have reached 300 posts on this blog. That seems like a nice, round number. Good time for change.
Honestly, I'm pretty scared to do this. I love (as in obsess over) my reader stats. I love getting comments. Blogging is a big part of my life. I love writing. I love sharing. I love reading others' blogs. I'm freaked to change to a new blog because I know my readership will go down. But hopefully it will eventually go up? I love being able to say something and feel like other people hear it. Anyway, that Ensign article above clearly stated that even and especially if you don't have thousands of readers, you can make your blog be a wonderful tool for sharing the gospel.
I think the point I get from that is: share your testimony in the small things too, not just the huge, major testimony-building things.
Anyway, more about the new blog later. For now, I am going back to sleep.
My new blog.
I am a one-blog woman. I can't have multiple blogs that I keep up. I just can't. I know this because my blogger dashboard has something like 13. Don't worry, they aren't all supposed to be daily-updated type blogs; some of them are just me saving the name for someday-but-not-today. Some are group blogs that are no longer in existence. And some are finished blogs.
What in the heck is a "finished blog"?
Obviously, a travel blog is "finished" when you get home. Or some time after you get home, as was my case, since I wanted to include the first little bit of major culture shock.
But this blog? When will it be done?
The fact is, I don't listen to "This American Life" anymore because the last 3 times I tried to, it was always either extremely dirty, or worse: extremely negative about marriage. Okay, maybe it's not worse, but I can't tolerate either. So why would I want my blog to be named after it? Besides, the person who introduced that NPR show to me is no longer important to me at all.
Anyway, reading this article completely changed my attitude about blogging. How? It highlights "typical mormon mommy bloggers." Wanting to know what that is, I subscribed to all the blogs she mentioned in the article. The past few weeks reading them, I have figured out this one thing:
I want my blog to be more like theirs.
Short daily posts, lots of pictures, lots of happines, lots more about the mundaneness of life. Starting over with a clean slate seems like a good way to do it.
Besides, on a more practical-usage level, I am getting "wordpress-lust." My original blog was with livejournal, then I graduated to blogger, and now that I've grown up I am becoming a wordpress blogger? From our home server and my own domain? Don't want to bore you with the nerdiness of last night. Let me tell you, Danny and I had a blast working on it together. Again, I will state: I am SO GLAD I married a computer nerd, mainly for the reason that he has just as much or more fun figuring out the technical aspects of blogging, so it is something we can sit down and do together. Secondarily, for the reason that he knows orders of magnitude more about computers than I do, so parsing through RSS XML DNS CNAME ATOM madness is much, much, much, much easier with him around.
The other reason is that my life now is just so, SO different from what it was when I started this blog. I am now a stay-home-mommy. Major life change = major blog change?
What sealed the deal for me was picking up a random Ensign yesterday (to "read" with Jane, which means pointing at pictures and saying, "Look! Jesus!") was when I happened to pick the one with this article. I want my blog to be less ranty, and more lifey.
This blog has been more of a mind-dump. I am not sure if I will keep it active, you know, post here every so often when I build a giant rage about something political or whatever. But let's be honest, I probably won't ever post here again after the 300th post.
Yes, I will soon have reached 300 posts on this blog. That seems like a nice, round number. Good time for change.
Honestly, I'm pretty scared to do this. I love (as in obsess over) my reader stats. I love getting comments. Blogging is a big part of my life. I love writing. I love sharing. I love reading others' blogs. I'm freaked to change to a new blog because I know my readership will go down. But hopefully it will eventually go up? I love being able to say something and feel like other people hear it. Anyway, that Ensign article above clearly stated that even and especially if you don't have thousands of readers, you can make your blog be a wonderful tool for sharing the gospel.
I think the point I get from that is: share your testimony in the small things too, not just the huge, major testimony-building things.
Anyway, more about the new blog later. For now, I am going back to sleep.
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