My Purely Material Christmas Post

This is our first Christmas in Wyoming. There isn't any snow on the ground other than what is left in the shadows from the little bit of snow we got last week. Reid's parents came up from Castle Valley, UT to spend Christmas with us. That was nice! They also brought a truck load of gifts with them. Also nice! We went from having 3 gifts under the tree to more gifts than could fit under the tree. I must say I have no complaints. It took the pressure off the tree to be pretty, which is difficult for it since it is the cheapest plastic tree Walmart had to offer. Christmas trees don't grow around here and so they have to truck them in from...somewhere...and charge way too much for them. By the time we got around to looking at trees there were just the Charlie Brown trees left, but for $3 more we could get a fake one with the lights already on it. I really hate putting lights on a tree. Even though Reid usually does it I don't even like to watch him.

Anyways, back to the point. I got a bunch of stuff that I want to show off to people to make them jealous, but rather than bombarding facebook with my crappy cell phone pictures I thought I would be polite and just do a side post. (I know the 'jealous' thing may be a stretch on some items as not everyone has such refined taste in gifts as I do).

The first thing I opened today was my new ammonite mug Reid got me. Nerdy! He was replacing my favorite mug that broke in a Tommy related mishap in which an entire box of our mugs was dropped before it even made it onto the moving truck in Seattle. I was actually able to salvage my favorite mug and use it as a pencil cup, though. The gaping holes in the side where the handle used to be attached just don't allow for it to retain liquid anymore. Reid had me open the ammonite mug because we were about to have Grandma Tenney's infamous hot chocolate. I love it, but I can only handle it in small quantities. It has like 4000% of your daily recommended dose of dairy in one sip. Yep. That is a completely accurate fact. Well regardless, my digestive system believes this to be true.



Reid's mom made me a dinosaur quilt. I LOVE it! I can't believe she spent so much time to outline various dinosaur shapes for me in thread on fabric. Wow! Apparently when she was working on it she had her friends ask if she was making it for a grandbaby and she had to respond that, no, she was making it for her daughter in-law. Heh. I have already been informed that I may have to ship the quilt back to her in February so she can enter it in a contest. It will win. I have no idea what any of the contest rules or regulations are, but it will win. Anything that is this full of awesome needs a prize!



Continuing with the dinosaur theme Reid's sister Ashley got me a nice little dig a dino, a dig your own treasure kit (not dino) and a dinosaur marionette. Kona is incredibly interested in the marionette. She desperately wants the marionette to be in her mouth, but we are good at keeping it safe. I don't ever plan to let Kona have what I have termed 'mouth snuggles' with the puppet. It doesn't tend to end well.



Reid was very cute and in addition to getting me the ammonite mug I also received an ammonite canvas bag, an ammonite tank top and ammonite postage stamps. Whaaa? Postage stamps? Yes! So if I send you actual mail you better appreciate the stamp. The one bad part about the awesome postage stamp gift is that I have to give them away.



And you know what? You know what? I got a Doctor Who TARDIS cookie jar. When you open the lid the light on top lights up and it makes the very characteristic TARDIS wheezy whirring noise (that I'm not even going to attempt to spell) of a machine that is just about to travel in time, or in this case give me a tasty treat. Who loves me and is willing to make the kitchen clash for me? Reid does!! When Reid first put it under the tree he told us not to touch the gift and I didn't understand why. Unbeknownst to me Kona kept knocking into the box and causing the TARDIS noise to go off. I don't know how I didn't hear it. It's fairly loud and will be a nice indicator to me for when (not if) Reid thinks he needs to get into my treats.



Chrissy also sent me a box of goodies for Christmas. When it arrived I had Reid's mom look in it in case the items weren't wrapped. They weren't. So we got to keep it in Avon box it was shipped in on the other side of the living room as it was a terrible eye sore to have near the tree. Just kidding. We only kept it about 5 feet away from the other gifts. We got a Ben original painting and some clothes for me! With the clothes came a note from Chrissy saying "I'm not sure if you'll like the vest, but it will look good on you, so you have to wear it." Awww feel the love. Also when Ben gets older we will have a discussion about his use of white space. Or is that interior decorating? Oh well.



Reid and I also received an assortment of wonderful gift cards that we will DEFINITELY be putting to good use. We also received a lot more than I listed, so please don't be offended if you got me something that I didn't list. I promise I loved everything I got! I won't be returning a single item! heh I just got lazier and lazier as I was typing. You know how it goes.

I hope everyone had as lovely of a day as we did. Happy New Year!

Growing Up

You know when you're young and at a theme park and you're stuck waiting in a long line to get on the ride...and you are watching the ride and scoping out which seat you want to be in for whatever ride you're waiting for? And you're imagining the reasons why that seat is the most awesome seat on the whole stupid ride. Well anyways, I caught myself doing that the other day when I was watching my bus doing a U-turn to come pick up my stop. Growing up is lame.

Inconsiderate bus riders

Dear girl on the bus,

I hope your decision to put your backpack on the seat next to you while I walked down the aisle was really worth it for you. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the guy that came on the bus at the next stop who made you feel obligated to move your bag so he could sit. He looked like he hadn't showered in at least a week. I bet he smelled good. I showered this morning. Just thought I'd point that out. Maybe I will see you tomorrow.

~Melissa

Coupons and Mer-people and Bigfoot, Oh My!

Friday was an interesting day at the museum. We definitely have our fair share of crazies, but it seems they tend to travel in flocks and all come in to visit us on the same day. Maybe I should be paying attention to the moon calendar and I might find some correlations. Anyways, the first story for the day was more of a difficult customer than a crazy. She came into the museum with her husband and 2 kids (one of which was younger than 4 years old which made her free) and she had a buy one admission get one free (of equal or lesser value) coupon from the Entertainment Book. As I always have in any coupon situation, I made the cheapest admission the free one. In my mind this is standard practice pretty much anywhere you go. Well the lady pitched a tissy fit saying that whenever there is a coupon that says 'equal or lesser value' that the most expensive option is ALWAYS the free one and that what I was doing was WRONG. Oh I very much hate being told I'm wrong, especially when I know I'm right. Clearly this lady has never shopped with a coupon before either at a restaurant with an entre, or to the Payless BOGO (buy one get one) shoe sale. I was being a good employee that day and I bit my lip and just let her have her way as there were people coming in the door behind her. Her husband was standing a good distance back pretending not to pay attention to what she was doing. Poor guy.

Then of course she had a large bag. It is the museum's policy to hold large bags behind the counter unless they contain emergency medications. I told her that we needed to hold her bag behind the counter (and I wasn't being snotty about it or anything!) and she must have presumed that I was retaliating for letting her have her way with the coupon fiasco. She aggressively pulled out her wallet and almost everything out of the bag and tucked them under her arms to take with her, muttering how she didn't trust me with her stuff. Then she pushed the bag toward me and said "Well you've made this so pleasant I'll be sure to never come back here again." Haha. I hope she never does. I wish I could have gotten that in writing. At least when she turned around she instantly switched moods and was nice to her family. That was one of the first visitors for the day.

A little while later I was helping a couple of visitors that came in with their home school children. On the other side of the counter an older lady approached, interrupting asking me where my office was. I told her that my office was the desk that she was currently leaning against, but if she was looking for the 'office' for the business side of the museum that it was on the opposite side of the building (then I gave her directions). She started talking to me as I continued to help the visitors in front of me. I was only half listening to her, but I kept hearing her talk about her drawings throwing around phrases like "mer-people" and "bigfoot" and I would turn my head to her each time, hoping I was hearing her wrong. Then she was mentioning ammonites which was much more normal for our natural history museum, and that made me feel better. Before I was done helping the visitors she had disappeared from my desk and had traveled to the back 'office' of the museum. Now on the weekdays there is an awesome back desk receptionist that is a friend of mine and we both always have our gmail open and are constantly linked via gchat (instant messenger) which comes in handy in situations such as these. The following is just a copy and paste of our conversation:

Receptionist: can you call {our boss} and tell him i have a strange lady down here trying to sell people her drawing
she's not pushy, but needs to be gently told to go away
or tell him
me: he's on his way
Receptionist: thanks
Receptionist: crazy lady went in the cafe
me: ah
good to know
can't watch her there, though
or save the poor patrons that get stuck talking to her
Receptionist: i know
shes gentle about telling everyone that we should live in peace with the mer people at least...
me: haha yeah actually she was up here and I sent her downstairs... my bad... I was busy with people and she asked me where the office was... I was hoping I misheard her about 'mer' people
then she started talking about ammonites or something so I thought...maybe relevant?
Receptionist: she thinks she found an ammonite walking across the street in marysville and says she told us about it and she has a drawing of us living in harmony with the mer people and other animal spirits she's trying to sell
me: lol
I really do love people
Receptionist: yeah
me: I think I heard her mention bigfoot too
Receptionist: yeah, he was illustrated in the picture
me: should have made a photocopy of it on the copier
she probably would've charged, though
we could have hung it on the fridge in the hallway there

It was nice to have instant messenger for her to be able to contact me (silently) as speaking code over the phone to try to tell someone there was a strange person in front of her doesn't always work. Other things the drawing lady mentioned were that she had met a mer-person in her youth and had decided to be friends with all of the mer-people after that. She also mentioned that she had always had this uncanny ability to solve people's problems. She was very nice, just definitely not in the same reality as the rest of us.

I guess earlier in the week we had a gentleman come in claiming he had a fossilized dinosaur eyeball (among other things). You know, because we all know that it's the soft parts that fossilize. Then he went on a contradicting rant...something about how he didn't believe in dinosaurs. Then he went on to say that he did believe in dinosaurs and that they were hunted to extinction by humans. Oh goodness sometimes my soul just dies a little bit. I was not working when this gentleman was in, though, so this is just a third person story.

And if you are still reading at this point, that is your little glimpse into why it is so much fun to work at a museum. At least that is my opinion. :)

McDonalds Put a Job Application in My Food Bag

I don't feel like being coherent right now so I'm just going to go ahead and throw it all out there.

Last week Reid and I went and stayed at Dad's house as Chrissy, Chris, Ben and Tiffany came up to visit. It was a lot of fun. Ben is huge and more like a toddler than a baby. He sounds like a cute little girl when he chatters to himself saying 'mamamamama' and 'dadadada'. He also learned to clap while we were there. He always yells when he's clapping and looks angry, but we all just think that it is due to everyone always clapping and saying 'yayyyy' to get him to imitate us. It's his anger clapping. Chrissy informed me that at the Denver airport he was practicing his clapping at strangers.

The last couple days of the trip I got a cold. I still have it. I really hate being sick. Reid has been taking good care of me! He even bought me 2 varieties of juice last night. V8 Splash and grape juice. I suspect the grape juice was actually for him, but I'll let it slide ;) Also I learned that blowing my nose causes my glasses to fog up.

On our birthday we went out and played putt putt golf and then the day after we had a dinosaur birthday cake with our names on it! It was so cute..and tasty too of course. I like being a big kid. For my birthday Reid bought me a Motorola Droid. It is very exciting. Reid got one for himself too of course, which is a good thing so now he can tell me how to work it. He went to the store at 6am on the release date for the phone planning on buying 2 of them. I guess they told him I didn't qualify for an upgrade on the phone since I'm not the primary person on the account and it would cost $600 for me to have the phone. He came home to wake me up to tell me that he didn't get me a phone...which he didn't. He wasn't tricking me. He bought himself a phone, though. He said he was sorry and I told him to go away as at that time I needed to mope. Anyways, while I was in the shower he had gone back to the Verizon store and found a way to change the account so that we wouldn't have to pay the ridiculous $600 for the phone. Five or six trips to Verizon stores later we now both have working Droids with cute little cases. Sorry Reid. MANLY cases.

My newest obsession has been the Pioneer Woman's blog (thanks Liz! I just REALLY needed something else to keep me online for long periods of time). Basically there is this woman who was a city girl that randomly fell in love with a cowboy. She'd never even met a cowboy before in her life. It's the true story of her life and it is addicting (and funny...overall very entertaining)! I highly recommend it. I almost wish it wasn't all true because I kind of feel like a stalker. So here is the link to her love story and here is the link to the other random blogs she posts that aren't necessarily related to the love story, but are related to her life on the farm. Barbie I really think you'd like this!!

The dogs have been really clingy since we got home. I definitely think they have developed abandonment issues. It's cute but also kind of annoying. Oh well. At least Kona only ate the one thing (poor little Zoey's bed). I don't think Zoey's noticed yet.

Oh and since Reid went to Office Depot tonight I was reliant on McDonalds for nourishment. They put a job application in my food bag. I thought that was funny.

Not much.

So I've started working full time at the Burke Museum. I really do love it. Me saying that is probably getting old, but I can't help it. We are in an interesting transition right now as our store buyer just retired unexpectedly and the museum doesn't plan on rehiring for her position (which means that her duties will probably just be spread out amongst current employees). We have also been losing employees as they are finding new jobs (full time jobs that will actually allow for them to pay bills). It will be interesting to see how we delegate things in the coming months.

Lately I've just been reading a lot. I've been addicted to the Sookie Stackhouse novels (there are 9 thus far in the series). They are fast reads and are very creative and actually keep my attention. These are the novels that inspired HBO's True Blood series. The books are a lot different from the series as they are actually funny. The show is very serious. Reid hates it. No surprise there ;) Also I've gotten Reid addicted to the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which is hilarious and I recommend to anyone that appreciates science.

Dang this is why I don't update, I don't have anything interesting to say! I think there is something fundamentally wrong with me in working only one job and by that I mean that even though I should be done with all my temp shifts at the University Bookstore this quarter I keep picking up more shifts. I am working tomorrow night after I get off work at the museum until around 10pm. Makes for a 9am to 10pm-ish day. Yes. Something is wrong with me. The event that I'm going to be selling books for seems interesting. It is a speaker named Richard Dawkins who is going to be talking about his new book about evolution. His last book I believe is called "The God Dillusion" and this one is called "The Greatest Show on Earth: Evidence for Evolution." When I first signed up for the shift the people at the bookstore told me it was a sports guy talking haha. This is just a slightly different sort of topic. It'll definitely be more interesting to me than sports, though. Oh but the sad thing is that I will miss Jim and Pam's wedding on The Office. This is of greater concern to me than necessary. Reid will save the day and record it for me.

Reid and my 3rd year wedding anniversary is coming up on October 14th. We are going to go to a lecture at the Burke Museum on the 15th about solving the mystery of King Tut's death. That will hopefully be interesting. On November 12th we're planning on going to another lecture at the Burke (meaning I'm dragging Reid to this one) about dinosaur fossils in Antarctica.

The most exciting part of my near future is that Chrissy and Chris and Ben and Tiffany are going to come up for the first week of November!! Reid and I will take a week off and go over to Spokane to be with them. Dad and Barbie are going to have a full house! Chrissy and I will be able to celebrate our birthday together which we haven't done for years. Oh and we're going to have an early Thanksgiving. I have already mentally prepared myself for coming back to Seattle with several extra pounds of winter weight added to me. It'll be worth it, trust me. If you've ever been priviledged enough to have Barbie cook for you then you can only imagine the happiness that a Thanksgiving type meal will bring.

Better than Miley

For anyone that's heard the Miley Cyrus ('Hannah Montana' from the Disney channel) song that made it on to normal radio play "The Climb", this version is better! Same song, just Kelly Clarkson and her backup singers playing around doing their version.