Happy Mother's day to my Mom

I don't know if y'all know this, but I have the best mom in the whole world.

We've long been the best of friends, and I can honestly say (at least from my point of view :p) that that didn't even change during my teen-age years. She's a wonderful woman who provided me the perfect mix of guided mentoring while allowing me to learn many lessons for myself, however hard that was for her. She's one of my best role models of an ideal parent (my Dad is up there too) in my book.

Perhaps my favorite memory of her when I lived at home were our frequent late-night chats that we'd have, sitting exhausted in the living room, talking about who knows for hours on end. She has a fantastic laugh, the most supportive voice, and the most heart-wrenching "I'm disappointed in you" look I've ever seen.

These are just a few of many thoughts in thanks to my mother. She is a saint. She is wonderful. I love her deeply.

Here are some pictures of us in my early years...

A fun little story I have to tell, since it is Mother's day... I was due sometime in late April/early May-ish, but I was a little late. Like two weeks late. [Interjection: In our Church moms are given flowers or chocolates or something at the end of our worship service on Mother's Day.] Being two weeks late meant that I hadn't come yet when Mother's Day rolled around in 1987, so, after our worship service, my mom, now more than 9 months pregnant, was passed-by in the gift giving. Rightfully being a little annoyed (having your baby be late is bad enough), she demanded a gift anyways and got one. She still hasn't quite forgiven me for that tardiness.... :p

Just think, in 2017 we'll have Mother's Day and my birthday on the same day!

Mom, I love you. Thank you for all you've done.

Your loving son,

Sean

Great cartoon; commentary on society

I'll say this up front: Most of the New Yorker's cartoons are Greek to me. Seriously. Most make no sense to me.

This one, however, I love.

I saw it at work nearly a year and a half-ago, took it home, and hung it on the fridge till we moved (at which time Heidi made me throw it away, so I took a picture of it). So well said.

{Red Robin - YUM!}

Wanna know what's absolutely awesome? Getting free stuff for your birthday like free desserts at restaurants or a completely free entrée. Like how I got a free gourmet burger for my birthday today :) You wanna know what makes this even better? The Husband's birthday is next week and he also gets free meals for his birthday. So for lunch today the Husband and I went out for 2 completely FREE gourmet burgers.
Oh snap.
It was delicious. I love me some bacon guacamole burger and bottomless fries :)

I'm a (google) geek

Heidi says this frequently: she had no idea how much of a nerd I was before we were married. Heck, I didn't even know. Now I can't listen to other people talk about Androids, iPhones, tablets of any OS or brand, Windows Phone 7, Nokia, Windows 8, the next iteration of the Mac OS, etc. for more than 10 seconds without needing to correct them.... I know way too much of the newest (and not yet announced) gadgetry out there. I follow three tech blogs (Engadget, Gizmodo, Beta News) and do my own research on the side, and I'm somewhat obsessed.

That said, my wife is incredibly patient with me. Whenever I randomly spurt: "Hey Heidi, guess what??" or something to that affect, Heidi always takes a moment to pause and ask if whatever is about to follow actually matters or if its some new gadget thing.

And admist all of my fascination with gagets, I consider myself a strong Google-fan. I switched from the iPhone to an Android two years ago (I'm on Sprint's Evo) and I could never go back. While I consider the iPad quite nifty, I'm excited to see more Android Honeycomb tablets hitting the market this summer. I was one of those that had to wait for an invite to join gmail, and I've never looked back.

Oh, and I should say: I flip out when webpages are incompatible with Chrome. I can't stand using Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. I love Chrome. And now I have a ChromeOS notebook. It's a great nerdy-life!

To honor my geekdom, Heidi gave me a very special present for Easter... :)

They're finger sweat-bands!!!!!!!

Instructions:

Admittedly, I don't actually use the sweatbands... But they are hanging next to my desk at work to remind me to work out those finger muscles! You can order your own here (they're free!)

My free Google Laptop

Many an economist say there's no such thing as free lunch, but they never mentioned free laptops. Sure, I had to fill out a 5 minute survey to convince Google that I was an ideal Beta testing candidate, but jeesh, 5 minutes for a laptop I didn't spend a dime on? Any day.

This laptop is running a new Operating System (like Windows 7 or Mac's OS X Leapord) - called ChromeOS. If you've ever ran the web browser named Chrome, you already know exactly how the user experience is on this Chrome Laptop - it only runs Chrome. That's it. No start menu, nowhere to install programs (no programs run on the thing besides Chrome) - it's just plain, simple Chrome. It's built for all those millions of people that only use their computer for the internet.

If you only use your computer to surf the web, why bother having a CD drive, a 5-minute boot-up time (this thing takes a whopping 5 seconds from the off position, less than a second from sleep), or millions of the pop-ups, updates, and other things that plague standard operating systems??

Here's a picture of the machine next to the box it came in

And here's a number of shots of the laptop. Notice that there are no stickers - anywhere!

But Intel still had to say that it was "Inside" - even without a sticker. This card came in the box.

If you're up for a good laugh, read Google's safety instructions for the device. Seriously. It's hilarious.

Lastly, here's a picture of the modified keyboard. Who uses f-keys now-a-days anyways?

Why does a device like this exist, when you can buy a laptop that can run programs AND surf the web? Well, this thing is way cheaper. First off, ChromeOS is free. Secondly, the hardware needed to run it is pretty basic - it's just a web browser for heavens sakes. Nothing fancy. Laptops like this will be on sale this summer in the $300 range. Sweet deal.

PS - I should add: When I've shown the laptop to people, they always ask me to show it off to them - what cool things it does, etc... That's always a little awkward because, seriously, this is JUST a web browser. That's it. You can test how you'd like it right now by downloading the Chrome web browser and never leaving it. As far as form goes, though, it's much thinner and lighter than most laptops - and it has a 12 hour battery life. Not bad at all.

{Birthday Anniversary Weekend]

This past weekend was a big one for us! It was our 2 year anniversary and my 21st birthday! Yes, our anniversary is one day  before my birthday which I LOVE. Some people said I'd regret doing that, but not at all. We just combine them and splurge just a little bit :) It's awesome.

We decided to celebrate on Saturday, but first things first - cleaning checks for our old apartment. For the last 3 days Husband and I had spent HOURS cleaning our apartment for our check out cleaning checks. Our landlord is kinda crazy...way crazy... and the cleaning checks are intense. Most people in the apartment complex don't get their deposit back because they didn't pass the cleaning checks. In the cleaning check packet she says that when she comes to do the cleaning check it should take between 2-6 hours depending on how well you cleaned.  I guess that's nicer because if there's something that needs to be fixed, she'll wait for you to do it right then and there so you're not charged for it...anyways, craziness. So, after spending many man hours the last couple days we went for our cleaning check at 8 am [aughhh!!! especially after being up until 2 am the previous night finishing it up.....]. Not bad - it only took us one hour! She said that it was one of the cleanest ones that she had seen! Nice! She just made us use steel wool on the facets again, bleach the floor, and clean the blinds again. Not too bad. Hopefully we get our full deposit back [minus the money for the holes that we put in the walls.....like nail holes for hanging up pictures. I think we get 10 holes for $20 and then for each additional hole it's another couple dollars or something...crazy. Also, we can't patch them up ourselves - it's specifically outlined in our contract and she'll slap us with  huge fine. Like I said, crazy, right?]

Next - Sean went with Brenden and Natalie and some of their friends to the tumbling gym like they did here for a little bit. Me, being preggers, went back to our new apartment and enjoyed moving into our kitchen a little bit [Without the husband there it's a little bit easier because then I can just do it how I like it :) ].

Once he got back we went to the Rugby Game. BYU has an AWESOME rugby team and if you have not been to one of their games yet, you should because it's INCREDIBLE. Our team is #1 in the nation. Stellar. Neither the husband nor I are huge sports people.... we don't follow any sports or teams or anything except for BYU rugby. Rugby is such an awesome sport. It's a mix of football, soccer, hockey, and wrestling. I love it. It's so face paced [unlike boring football, sorry] and it has great action. So intense, you must go see a game. We didn't understand the game when we went for the first time, but they have a program which outlines the basic game play and the avid fans and family members of the team are great at answering any questions that you have. The game on Saturday was awesome - 80 to 0. Yup, our team is that great.

Next we went home and cleaned up to go out to dinner. The husband wouldn't tell me where we were going as it was supposed to be a surprise. It was an amazing surprise! We went to a place called Cafe Madrid in Salt Lake. It was beautiful! It was great authentic Spanish food and made me yearn for Spain.... Delicious!! I could go on and on about how amazing it was, but that would just make all of you jealous, so I'm not going to. :)


After dinner we went to the musical Sunset Boulevard put on by the Pioneer Theater. It was one that I have never seen before and I enjoyed it! It was kinda weird, and bizarre, and makes more and less sense as it goes on. It's a little bit of Inception-esque as in a story within a story about a story sort of thing... it's complicated, but I liked it! Great music! Very fun!







Great day!!!

Ps - Remember this post? Well, Husband got me one of these things for my birthday:













I cannot wait to try it out!

{Graduation}

Graduation was like a huge sigh of relief. It was great.

Graduation day was quite busy, though. First thing in the morning husband and I went to Brenden's graduation and afterwards we went to Natalie's graduation. It wasn't as terribly boring as I had anticipated since at Brenden's graduation ceremony some of the music students performed and at Natalie's the speech was pretty entertaining. Not bad at all!

My ceremony on the other hand, was terribly boring....it was truly awful.I felt bad for all my wonderful family who came to the ceremony who had to sit through that boring-ness. It was so terrible because first off, the main speech was awful. The guy who gave it was some old political science professor who was retiring that year. I'm not even sure what he spoke about. He touched on every single gospel without tying it together to linking it to graduation or anything. I may or may  not have spent the entire speech looking through the program to find good baby names :) Secondly, I'm in the leftover college that houses majors such as sociology, geography, political science, neuroscience, etc...basically a hodgepodge of random majors thrown together. 20% of BYU graduates come out of this college, that's a lot, a lot, a lot. That means that my graduation ceremony took FOREVER...the reading of the names was terribly long. Thank goodness I was able to sit next to some good friends of mine during the ceremony. Jokes and laughs sure makes time go faster!

Luckily, names were read off according to college which were in alphabetical order, meaning that SOCIOLOGY was last on the list. This was awesome because although I did have to wait forever to get my diploma [FAKE...bummer. I should be getting it in the mail in a few weeks...], I only had to wait about 5 minutes after I got mine for the ceremony to end and I could leave. Not bad.

Here are some pictures from that day:

  

Hooray for graduating!! College was great and fabulous, but I'm glad to be finished!

Now on the the next chapter of my life!