The Unadventures of Tracie

I hate the universe sometimes....It so often screws with me. Once again Austin and I are having to say goodbye to friends. Over the last several years we've had many friends move away. Every time it's been hard. Every time tears were shed. Every time I hoped the friendship wouldn't die. This time I really hope we can keep the flame of friendship burning bright. If you would have told me a year and a half ago, I would be sad that Jake and Wendy were moving away, I wouldn't have believed you. We met at book club. It was clear right away that these were interesting people. But there was also some clashing. (Largely due to me hating Kafka. Sorry I'm still not a fan. ;) ) I actually don't remember how or when it happened, but somewhere along the way, instead of seeing differences, I started seeing similarities. We became friends. And now they're some of my favorite people in the whole world. And they're moving. I'm happy they'll get to be wit...

The gulf between us grows day by day. The distance between us loams larger. I see you on your side and me on mine. I wonder how things are going over there. I can only guess. I don't have a direct line anymore, only binoculars. How I so desperately miss, mourn, and grieve being on the same side. I know I'll never be able to live on the same side again. Too much has changed. There will always be a divide.  But I want to build a bridge, connect our two halves. We may live on different sides, different worlds with different experiences, different terrains but does that mean we can't have a connecting path? There just needs to be one strong connection, built from one side to the other. How I long for that bridge to be built. But how? Can it be done? I haven't done a proper job of starting my side. I don't know what materials to use. I keep searching for them, picking some up and discarding them.  I'm "in construction"  though the bridge shows no signs of ...

I find it funny that it's January and I'm posting about Halloween. Well, I don't want these awesome pictures to go to waste. For Halloween this year Austin and I had three Halloween parties. One with my family (I don't have any pictures from this) and two different ones with different friends. The family party was awesome, as usual. Unfortunately Austin and I didn't dress up as we weren't ready yet. This is first year that I've ever NOT dressed up for the family party. Then we had a party with my "book club" friends. This party consisted of eating food, watching the boys play video games, and taking turns chasing babies. Austin, Morgan, and I dressed up in a theme. See if you can guess. If you can't tell, Austin is Han Solo, I'm Princess Leia, and Morgan is Wicket (an Ewok). My costume was very last minute. I couldn't find any Princess Leia costumes that weren't ridiculously priced, so we thrift-stored it. The skirt and turtle...

So I meant to post this eons ago. Here are pictures from Austin and me's trip to Arizona for our Spring Break Vacation. We went to a butterfly garden, went to Egee's, played minigolf, watched Seth play baseball, and traveled to Mesa. We visited Heather and Heidi.

This is a brief shout-out to Charity, who recently turned 25! Happy Birthday! Here we are at lunch: (Not the best picture of us by any means. But, hey, it was self-taken since we couldn't flag someone down to take it.) And here is her birthday party: (the picture of her blowing out candles unfortunately did not turn out.) (There were other people there as well but we didn't take any other pictures.)

I love popcorn. It is one of the best treats ever invented. I am perfectly capable of devouring enormous quantities of popcorn single-handedly. I blame my mom. She is also a popcorn fiend. But this isn't about her. This is about fluffy, buttery popcorn and all of its marvelous wonderousness. My life has been forever changed. So I'm not a complete idiot. I was perfectly aware that not all popcorn comes from little paper bags cooked via "the popcorn button" in the microwave. I mean, I had heard of air poppers. What I didn't know is that it was entirely possible to cook popcorn YOURSELF...ON THE STOVE. Thanks goes to Charity who shared this little piece of wisdom with me. A few weeks ago Austin and I went over to Charity and James' to watch a French postapocalyptic film about cannibals called Delicatessen . (Verdict: Weird, but interesting. And the French are weird.) Anyway, being the good host that she is, Charity had made some homemade popcorn th...

I'm updating so you can all stop sending me dirty looks through cyberspace. I love Halloween. And yes I know that Thanksgiving is now approaching (a holiday I also love) but I'm writing about Halloween now so those of you sick of it will just have to deal with it. I had two costumes this year. One for work and one for the family/friend Halloween parties. I decided on my work costume because of a conversation Charity and I had one day. We were discussing one day how we hated the term "comma nazi" because it has such a negative and derogatory connotation. So we decided to come up with a replacement. I decided that "comma ninja" was a much better alternative as one, ninjas kick the butt out of Nazis and two, it was a more accurate description. I approach editing in a subtle kick-butt approach, hi-yahing extra commas or karate chopping abused apostrophes. Like ninjas in the night, Charity and I sneak in and edit. Okay, so editors are nerdy. But most of you alrea...

Last weekend Austin and I went camping with Charity and James up at Rock Canyon. Their ward was having a campout, and they generously invited us to attend. After much packing and preparation, we barely made it up the mountain in our car. We discovered that our tent was much larger than I originally thought. (Not that it's huge or anything but I thought it wasn't big enough to hold the 4 of us. Turns out it could've.) Austin, with much sweat and vigor, put up our brand new still-in-the-box wedding present tent. Then we stuffed our faces with s'mores, turkey sausages, tin foil dinners, and s'mores. In that order. After dinner we discovered that our mighty tent had fallen, as in completely apart on the ground. Since it was now dark, we had to use lanterns, flashlights, and James's car headlights to put it back together again. Fortunately, we learned how to do it the right way (with James's help) and got it up and standing again. Putting the tent back ...

This weekend was quite the whirlwind for Austin and me. (Yes, this is correct usage. See CACCAAA for more information. I will soon write an entry on this subject.) Anyway, quite the whirlwind. First of all, good news! I found out on Friday that I’m going to be a work-from-home editor! I will be working a few days here at the office, but I believe the majority of my time will be spent working from home. I am quite excited about this for a number of reasons. I will be saving a lot of money on gas (with me currently having to fill up every 4 work days and gas being about $50 to fill up now). I will be saving lots of time (with the average commute being around 2 hours daily). I will be able to get more sleep on a regular basis as I won’t have to drive into work. It also works out great with our current plans. We also won’t have to move anymore, which we were both dreading. Now, on to the rest of the weekend! Charity and James came over for dinner Friday night. I made Tomato & Basil Ma...

I agree with Austin. Blog entries are always hard to start. So last weekend I continued my birthday celebration. I got to go home early on Friday since I had gained extra hours doing the workshops. I stopped at Target and bought myself 3 new shirts (yay!) and a giftcard for my friend Kim whose reception was that same night. Austin and I then went to Red Robin for dinner. Then we hurried over to The White Willow to see Kim and wish her well. We were then going to go to a movie but it was getting too late so we decided to rent movies instead. Then we stayed up watching Friends season 4 all night. Saturday was the day of the party so Austin went to class while I went and got a massage. (I used the gift certificate Austin got me for Christmas.) Then we cleaned house and I made spinach artichoke dip and apple cinnamon yellow cake. Trent & Jess arrived first later joined by Charity & James and Brett & Charlotte. We chatted while we waited for Brittnee & Matt to get there. Th...

Austin and others have been complaining that I haven’t been updating frequently enough. So, here I am updating on the last week or so. On March 4, I, along with AJ, threw Heidi a baby shower. We had a “spring” theme and it was a “friends” shower. (Shera had thrown Heidi a ward/family shower in December.) AJ graciously did the invites and mailed them out while I was still in Texas for Austin and me’s trip. Since I don’t get home until 6:30 usually and the shower was set to start at 7, I planned to get everything done the night before. I left work an hour early and stopped at Walmart for groceries and Heidi’s gift. I then returned home and started cleaning the house. I cleaned furiously and prepared the spinach artichoke dip that was to be cooked the following night. I also made sugar cookie dough and placed it in the fridge to chill while I finished cleaning the house. Austin and I were still technically housesitting for my parents and so we went over there to bake and frost the sugar ...

So this....isssss....love. Sorry. Disney songs in my head. So, good news. Austin found a new job just like I knew he would. He starts a week from Monday, which is extremely fortunate as this was to be his last week at QualitySmith. This means that he will not have any days of unemployment. We're grateful that the company gave them two weeks notice before they were ultimately laid off. His new job is at a place called MarketPartner. They help out new companies that are just starting out with their marketing, brochures, websites, and the like. Austin will be a CSR (Customer Service Representative.) He will not have to be doing sales. They have salespeople for that. He will be checking up on customers for renewals and upsales. He'll be making at least what he was at the old place. He has a higher starting base, which is good, but we'll see how he does on his bonuses and stuff. The place also has benefits too which start after 90 days. They may not be as good ...