The long gap between posts this time can be explained only by finals and life getting crazy busy and catching up to us. However, we have some newsworthy points of interest that have occurred in our lives recently. For starters, I have moved on from my job as a custodian for Wymount housing (where we live.) There were many chemicals, fun coworkers, and a very flexible schedule which I highly enjoyed. Here are some of the highlights of that job, which I will in many ways miss (although scrubbing endless toilets and walls in apartments I will not particularly miss.)
Often, we'd clean so much we'd wear holes daily in the green brillo pads. That's real arm grease.
In one of the Wymount laundry bathrooms, the most impractical soap dispenser placement exists. It's placed only inches above the faucet, making it almost impossible to actually push with your hand to dispense the soap.
This is perhaps one of the creepier things I discovered while working. It's supposed to help secure the door or something to prop it open, but in fact it looks like a little crocodile dog or something.
One day while we were working, we noticed a distinctive musty, wet, nasty scent in one of the public laundries. We opened it up to investigate, and there was a lot of nasty old water inside and dust. We quickly closed it and decided to report it later. As we debated, two men came in, hoisted the broken washer onto a trolley, and then rolled in with a giant white box. They slotted the box in the spot where the broken washer had been. When we looked closer, we saw the box was actually a decoy washer. Like, they'd glued metal buttons on it and everything. We thought it was pretty funny they used a fake one to replace the washers they were fixing.
Snowing at work!
As we walked from laundry to laundry, we decided for our 15 minute break to make a snowman during one snow day. We showed some pictures of it to our boss and she thought it was super fun.
In some of the older laundry rooms (which have probably been there since the 60's), they have these big hand painted signs hanging up with the rules for the laundries. This looks suspiciously exactly like the way jeepney placards or other signs are painted in the Philippines. Maybe they were imported? Or some RM mastered the art of Filipino sign painting on his mission.
I now have a new job working for a professor in the library's Folklore department. I'm reading through old (and new) homemaking books and compiling information from them. I've certainly learned a lot of weird facts and practices from back in the day. Pork slabs bound on a wound were thought to prevent shock, worms were ground up and made into "healing ointments," and there were instructions for fire-proofing dresses and more. It's good that some of those practices have fallen out of style! I'm enjoying the job and learning a lot of useful housekeeping tricks from it as well (plus it pays slightly better and is a desk job.)
#couplegoals - Tandem biking older couple for the win.
As Paul and I were chilling on our new couch and love seat one day, I saw a mouse run from under the couch to our room. A great chase began, with Paul on top of the bed trying to scare it out and me attempting to build a pathway that would lead it through the open door. The picture above was our heroic effort to make the pathway from random junk, but the mouse instead ran under a door to our water heater and we couldn't scare him out - until two days later, when we found him dead on the floor, probably poisoned by the poison my grandma had put out in her garage where the couches had previously resided.
This is the "snow chicken" that lives right by the Walmart Marketplace in Provo. The little red spots there are the top of her head. She actually blends in well with the snow - hence, snow chicken. We've seen her almost every time we drive by that area, and I tried to catch it and pet it once since it's pretty cute but he's actually pretty fast and escaped my clutches.
Speaking of chickens.... this is Chicken Dog the at, a stray that was outside our door meowing and we decided to let in for the night. We fed her some cheese and other food we had on hand and she was extremely cuddly and adorable. Paul named her Chicken Dog for no reason I can discern, but it stuck. She seemed to be semi-potty trained and meowed to get out, and with how friendly she was we wondered if maybe she was someone's escaped pet so we let her back out to hopefully find her real home again.
We've still been making delicious food, like these apple cider pork chops and mashed red potatoes. We also love these little Louisiana fried and breaded raviolis which are time consuming to make but tasty.
Paul convinced me it was a good idea to do a Star Wars marathon over the course of 5 weeks. We watched one or two movies just about every weekend, and managed to get through all of them starting chronologically in the story, not by release date (which helped me understand the plot a whole lot better.) It was fun to watch it as adults since I hadn't seen many of them since I was a kid. Star Wars is pretty serious stuff, as Paul likes to say. We're excited to see the new one this week.
We had Thanksgiving at my brother and sister in law's house and it was delicious. 'Twas our first Thanksgiving together as a married couple! We kind of wished we had made our own turkey and everything just because it was so good we wish we had our own leftovers! My favorite dish was the cranberry pie which had a sweet but tangy flavor. We contributed stuffing (made from scratch), but I over seasoned/salted it so it didn't taste as good as it could have. Paul made a chocolate cheese pie as well which is a family favorite of his. I personally don't like cheesecake, but it was still good.
In more unfortunate news, I probably fractured one of my toes a month or so ago. It was dark and I was hurriedly trying to dig around in our very stuffed closet when this evil can of camp dry stuff fell on my toe and nearly severed it. I yelled and jumped away and Paul ran out to see if I had died or not. Fortunately I hadn't, but my toe did continue to hurt for about a month after the incident.
It's Christmas now, and we're really happy my parents have driven in from Virginia and we'll be having a happy full family Christmas this year. We are sad that we won't be with Paul's family this year, but hopefully soon we'll get to spend a Christmas with them too. Paul and Dad have enjoyed playing trumpet together and make a pretty good duet. Also speaking of duets, Paul and I sang a duet for sacrament meeting today - "What Child is This" arranged by Sally Du Ford. We're excited for our first Christmas together and for what next year may have to offer.
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