Moose

I love animals, especially cats. I have had a number of cats in my lifetime, and currently have 3. Moose is the middle child. He is a tabby-lilac point siamese mix with big blue eyes. I got Moose just over a year and a half ago when my other cat passed away. We needed another cat to keep my female cat Cocoa company. We got him from a woman who was selling kittens off of KSL. She told us he was very loving, because he was born on Valentine's Day. We had no idea he would really be the sweetest cat ever.

I am notorious for naming my cats after food items. I have had Krispy (like the donut), Cookie and Cocoa. Moose was my first boy, and I wasn't sure what to name him. I was torn between a food name and a name that reminded me of my favorite country - Canada. I ended up choosing Mousse, like the dessert. I didn't really like the way it was spelled, so I ended up just settling on Moose. His nicknames include Goose, Moose Munch and MooseGoose.

He does not know how to bite or scratch us, and all he ever wants is to be petted.
After having 2 litters of kittens in our new basement with Cocoa, we determined that we needed to let him live outside. He loved it out there. The second we put him outside, he tore up the mountain and he didn't come back for about a week. I was sure he had been eaten by a coyote. He did come back, though - and he was just fine.

He loves to lie in the grass and roll around meowing for pets. I took some pictures of him, and would love to share them with you. The best thing about Moose is his big blue eyes. I hope you like these! You can click on each one to make it bigger.

Genevieve

Genevieve wakes up to the cold that she created
There's a winter in her mind, though outside the snow has faded
and the sun is bright
but she's bundled up tight

Hands deep in her pockets, she walks, she doesn't talk much
To the people that she passes, they wave, but she just looks away
And so it goes everyday

Genevieve, are you lonely?
Cornered in your walls of stone
Genevieve, are you lonely?
You don't have to go alone
Genevieve, no you don't

Genevieve feels different, she swears no one would understand
The world the way she sees it: a frosty, bitter no-man's-land
No one to hold her hand

But when someone approaches the ice queen with her mittens
Well she thinks of all the times someone left her heart frost-bitten
So she shakes off the warmth
And gives in to the storm

Genevieve, are you lonely?
Cornered in your walls of stone
Genevieve, are you lonely?
You don't have to go alone
Genevieve, no you don't

If you take my hand we can rewrite your song
Or just melt it in the water before it could be sung
But you're looking out for reasons why you can't trust anyone
Genevieve, wont you please open up and feel the sun

Genevieve, are you lonely?
Cornered in your walls of stone
Genevieve, are you lonely?
You don't have to go alone
Genevieve, no you don't

A New Week Is Coming...

So it's the last few hours of Sunday night. It's been a pretty good weekend. I had an enjoyable two days off. I usually check my work email multiple times during the weekend, but this time I didn't. I just checked it a few minutes ago, and as expected - I've got a lot to do tomorrow morning. I really enjoyed not worrying about work all weekend. It was very nice.

Friday night we went out with my side of the family with my parents and siblings to dinner for my brother's birthday. We went to this place in Provo called Burger Surpreme. I kept calling it Burger Extreme. The food was pretty good, but I was way tired because it was the end of a long week. It was fun to see my siblings.

The crazy thing about our family is whenever we get together for birthdays we usually take really funny pictures of each other. To keep the tradition going, I took my camera and got some pretty funny shots. Here they are!

Birthday Boy and his beautiful blonde mullet
Birthday Boy and his beautiful wife

Mom and her 3 (count them) pairs of glasses

My beautiful sister

My beautiful cousin and sister-in-law

My handsome lil brudder

Your beautiful blogger

Dashing Dad

After the party we went back to Leo and Whitney's for cake and ice cream. We had a fun party with dominoes. They just bought a new condo and it is so fantastic. Whitney has done such a great job decorating. My brother had some great paintings that he had done on the wall. I am impressed with how well they decorated their new home. Arthur and I want to go visit them soon and put up a new light that we got Whitney for her birthday.

On Saturday, we spent some time relaxing and Arthur tiled the basement. He is a member of a fish club that has a "Reef Tour" once a year. It's kind of like Parade of Homes, except for all of the club members drive around Utah seeing all of the different fish tanks of the members. Arthur has been working on his fish fort and his tank since we moved in, so he is excited to show off our new basement. He is working to get the tile done before the Reef Tour. He's gotten a lot done on the basement in a short amount of time. The tile he picked is really cool. It's stone with cool fossils of shells and stuff in it. Here are some pictures of his "fish fort" and the tile job so far.

Here is his fishfort. He did the stonework himself. (Click picture to enlarge)
Here is the tile. All of the framing, drywall, fireplace, painting, electric and gas by himself. He is pretty amazing at diy! (Click picture to enlarge)

Sunday we spent the day getting ready for our dinner party. Arthur's family came over for turkey dinner. It was delicious. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and Marie Calendar's pie. Delish!

I'm pretty excited for a new week. It's going to be a crazy week at work for sure. Mike starts his new job as an Agent tomorrow too, which is going to be cool. He gets to be trained to work in my department. He has to start at 6:00 AM, which totally sucks. I'm going to try to get up early and be there with him. I want to make sure he is settled in his new class. I also have to make sure the trainer who is teaching another class is ready to go. :) Another week begins...

Genevieve + Arthur = 8.15.08

Today Arthur and I went to his parents house to give his sister a violin lesson. His other younger sister was there and she asked to come stay with us. We agreed, and headed back to our house in Eagle Mountain. While we were in the car, his sister found one of our wedding albums behind Arthur's seat. She pulled it out and was looking through it. When she was done, I spent some time flipping through the pages. It was funny to think that I hadn't really looked through them since I put the album together. I realized that I had never really shared my wedding video or pictures with most of my family and friends.

So, I uploaded the video and wedding photos for you to see. The video was shot by my friend Katie and then I edited it. Unfortunately, I had to reduce the quality because Blogger will only take 100MB in size... so you get the pixely version.

I really enjoyed making this video and it helps me remember the day, because I really can't remember too much of it. I had stayed up the night before packing, cleaning and enjoying a "bachelorette party" with Katie. Don't worry, we didn't party too hard... ;)

Here's the video and slideshow for you to see. Before you push play, just know that I say "HELLO!" really loud in the first few seconds. After that, you can turn your volume back up. If you'd like to see larger versions of the pictures, you can click on them and Photobucket should open in another browser. Let me know what you think!

Music in the video:
First song: Winter in August from Nanny McPhee Soundtrack
Second song: I Do by Jewel
Third song: Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole
Last song: Standing Still by Jewel

First Friday Five

I have been in the blogging world for a long time. I actually began "blogging" when I was in my sophomore year of high school. This was back in 1998, so about 11 years ago. It was not called blogging back then, though. It was referred to as online journaling. There are a few old school sites out there that existed back when the interwebs were new.

There are a few online journalists that I have been "following" since then, and every once in awhile I will remember to check their journal. It is interesting to see that their lives have changed just as much as mine has in the past 11 years. I really enjoy looking through old entries from when they first began. I remember sitting and reading their posts when I should have been in class.

One of my favorite online journalists was someone who began "blogging" beacause she wanted to spread the word online about a con artist who had taken advantage of her. She wrote this extremely long entry all about her account of what happened. I remember this as one of my first experiences of reading about someone else's life like I was reading their personal diary. It was awkward, and wonderful. I felt like I knew this person, even though I didn't even know their real name or where they lived. She was faithful about posting every. single. day. I found that I became addicted to logging in online just to see what she had written every day.

One thing this particular online journalist would do is her "Friday Five". She would ask her readers for 5 questions and she would answer them. I looked forward to Fridays often for these entries. She still writes every day. She no longer does Friday Five, though. I just visited her blog to see that she has posted today, and no one has commented on her blog for quite some time. I feel a little bit sad for her, but I know for a fact she does not do it for sole purpose of getting feedback from others.

So, because her online journal did a lot to shape who I am online today, I figured I should begin my own version of "Friday Five". I will probably take some of the questions that she has been asked in the past, and then if I ever get asked questions through my blog, I will collect them and answer them on Friday. I am fully aware that this is a practice of someone who has many, many followers... so I am going to rely on the vast internets to get my Friday Five started.

Genevieve's First Friday Five

1. If you owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
I would love to open a Sweet Shoppe with donuts, cupcakes, chocolates, cakes, and other pastries. I don't think I would do a lot of the cooking, but I would definitely love the business side of it. I believe I would ask my husband to take care of the cooking, and I would help decorate.

2. If you owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
I think it would be fun to make an actual eBay store where people could come and shop on eBay. I would have a "personal shopping" service where someone could come and set up an appointment to get help finding something on the site. The service could include setting up favorite searches, and getting a phone call or email when their product was available. I am completely aware that this probably wouldn't be popular, but I think having some sort of centralized place where people could come and get help buying on eBay would be cool. I can imagine booths with large tv screens to sit and shop for things. I'm sure this would never fly, but it would be fun to try. :)

3. If you wrote a book, what genre would it be?
Probably fiction. I used to be really interested in writing, and even took a creative writing class once. I wrote a weird short story about a ghost. It wasn't very good, and I spent way too long trying to get a good storyline. When I was young I wrote a lot of little short stories. I had a real hard time with character development and conflict resolution. I finally figured out that in order to make a story interesting you had to have someone die or something. ;) I don't really write anymore, aside from blogging and the occasional written journal entry.

4. If you ran a school, what would you teach?
I would run a charter school for high school dropouts. It would teach them how to be a successful adult in a non-traditional way. I am in no way a successful adult, but I know that a lot of high school dropouts sometimes just need someone to show them the way and help them figure out what they want out of their professional life.

5. If you recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
I would love to learn how to mix music and create a trance album. I will sit in front of our Mac and mess with Garage Band for hours trying to figure the stupid program out. There are so many possibilities for great music in that program... the problem is just figuring out how to use it. Maybe I'll come across someone someday who will pity me and spend an hour or two helping me figure it out. I so badly want to let some of these beats out! :P

There you go, the first Friday Five. Check back next Friday for the next 5 questions!

Blog-mazing

Hello friends (all 4 of you!) I didn't blog yesterday. That is ok. Remember, blogs that force their readers to endure "just beacuse I have to post everyday" entries usually suck. You're welcome.

Let's see... I haven't posted anything lately about what's been going on in my land. Ever since that job interview, my life has changed quite a bit. I was told last Friday that I didn't get the job and in that same conversation with my Manager I was told that they are moving me to another department. I now work for a different Manager in a different building doing basically the same job. I just have a better desk.

I'm pretty excited for next Monday beacuse my little brother will be starting at eBay as an agent doing what I train. So I may get a chance to train him, which is totally awkward and totally cool. I'm excited to be able to spend more time with him since he's been living out of state for so long. Hurray!

Speaking of brothers, my big brother's birthday is today! Happy Birthday, Lil Leenard! Our family is getting together tomorrow to go to dinner and have a birthday party. We usually take some pretty funny pictures at these parties, so I'll be sure to post them. :)

So, I do have a video I would like to share with you today. Before I post it, I would like to call out that YouTube has made some interesting changes since I last posted a video. I used to be a pretty avid YouTuber with almost 1,000 subscribers. That may not seem like a lot, but it was to me. :) I tried posting a video once a week when I could and I was pretty used to how YouTube worked. The new upload feature allows you to upload larger sizes of movies, which is cool. I'm just having a hard time figuring out how to make sure it is uploaded in widescreen. I will have to mess around with the features in my video editing program to see what I'm doing wrong.

In the meantime, here is the video I made of one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite cities in the world. Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. This was taken when Arthur came to visit me while I was up there for work. This Aquabus is used kind of like a small ferry or water taxi. I'm not sure many Canadians actually rely on it to get around, but it is still a cool feature of this beautiful city. Enjoy!

The First Day of Fall

Hurray! It's the first day of fall! Fall is probably my favorite season because it's cool enough that I can layer, layer, layer. I also don't have to deal with snow and I still have many sunny days left until the snow falls.

One of my first dates with Arthur was driving up the Alpine Loop and seeing all of the trees with their fall color. This is a video I took last year when we went again. It was so beautiful! I hope you enjoy. :)