Fortunate

Today I had chinese food because our litigation group lunch was at a chinese restaurant in Palo Alto. 

Here's the truth: I don't like chinese food. I will eat it, and it's not like I hate chinese food, but honestly ... it's not my thing. I don't even like fortune cookies. 

But I do like the fortunes in the cookies.  And on the occasions when Paul can drag me along for some orange chicken or mongolian beef, I always take a fortune cookie, crack it open, then hand the separated halves of the crunchy wafer to Paul to eat while I read my fortune.  And I find myself sticking the little scraps of paper with red-ink messages into my wallet or purse to carry around and peruse at random moments over the next couple of weeks until I invariably lose them.

Today's message from the Universe:  Prepare yourself for a change of events in your personal life. 

Any guesses as to what that means?  (And just so everybody knows, this is not a lead-in to announcing that we have begun the adoption process or anything, so we can just bypass that line of thought.  Although you never know, right?)

And do you have to eat the cookie for the fortune to stick?  I have always thought that, but I think its just something I made up.

5 Things You Probably Already Know About (But Maybe Not)

Recently I have been surprised to find out that stuff I thought everybody knew about maybe isn't quite as common of knowledge as I originally believed.  Like for example, a friend recently posted on her Facebook status about Seriously So Blessed as though TAMN had just come up with her first post or something--she was telling all her FB friends to check out the awesome new website she had stumbled upon.  I was flabbergasted that she was just now being exposed to the hilarity that I thought every LDS gal in Utah Valley had already known about for at least a year.  So if I have already raved about some of the following to you in person or you already know about any of this, please forgive me.  But here are some of my favorite things:

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I thought everybody had heard about this book until the other week when a well-read friend mentioned that she had just barely heard of the book and hadn't read it yet.  It's easily one of my favorite books I've read in a long, long time.

2. If you hate uploading photos onto your blog because it takes forever and inserting them is frustrating because it messes up your formatting, you are probably using the old editor settings.  There is a super easy fix for this.  On your Blogger dashboard/profile, go to "Settings", then "Basics", then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says "Global settings", then choose "Updated Editor" (it's the button next to "Select Post Editor").  You can insert photos easily anywhere into your blog post and you can also easily change the size of the image.  You can also upload all of the photos for your post at one time, then go through your post and insert them where you please.  We always size our photos to x-large. 

3. Speaking of photos, you know that Paul and I aren't against fixing our images with photo-editing software to bring out colors that get lost due to bad lighting, right?  A little saturation or fill-lighting here and there never hurt anybody, so long as you don't go over the top with it.  And you don't need to be a photoshop pro to do it.  I just use Picasa, which is free to download at http://picasa.google.com/.  Once you have the program on your computer, play around with the different functions.  I almost always use "I'm feeling lucky", then a little "fill lighting", then sometimes I'll up the "saturation" if the photo really needs it. 

Here's the original photo (not bad, right?):

Here's the photo after my Picasa adjustments (better, don'tcha think?):

You can also crop the picture, make your image sharper, etc.  It's a really fun tool. 

4. Bertolli dinners.  Yes they are frozen dinners and I am a slacker for using them, but they are scrumptious.  My favorites are the Lemon Penne Shrimp and the Roasted Chicken with Linguine.  So yummy and all you do is dump the bag into a pan and heat for about 10 minutes.  They actually taste like real food and have vegetables and everything.  I watch for them to go on sale at Safeway and then I stock up.

5. Books on CD.  Since I have been commuting, I have gotten into listening to these while I drive to and from work.  I just finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman and I loved it (thanks again for the recommendation Nathaniel and Dorothy).  It's not like I never knew that books on CD existed before this year, but I just never thought about listening to them.  They don't replace books for me per se--I'm still reading during lunch breaks or before bedtime--but they have brought a whole new dimension to literature.  I just check these out from the library, and it works out perfectly.

I'm pretty sure I had a couple more things in mind when I planned out this post, but it's getting late and I can't remember anything more, so that's it for now.  Does anybody have recommendations for things that you think I should know about but that I may actually not know about?  I'm usually pretty behind the times about stuff - I never even heard of Harry Potter until the third book had already come out.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I just got back from getting my hair cut and I'm feeling a little depressed.  I remember when I was younger the stylist would often comment about how smooth, thick, and good-looking my hair was.  Today I was asked if I had considered using special "anti-thinning/hair loss" shampoo.  And it wasn't the first time I've been so advised.  I'm trying to talk Amy into letting me just shave it all off and embrace my baldness, but she won't give in.  I keep telling her its only a matter of time at this point.

This Girl...

came to visit her aunt and uncle.

I got to take her picture.  She's not very cooperative, but she sure is cute.  She has the strawberriest of blonde hair and ocean-blue eyes.

Her mama is cute too.

The weather wasn't cooperative for most of our plans, but we had fun anyway.

I'm gonna miss you Emma-girl.

Hidden Talent and Hypocrite, Or In Other Words: Amy's Interactions With The Po Po

Interaction #1:  You may not know this, but my hidden talent is that I can get out of most any speeding ticket.  Seriously, I've been pulled over many, many times (can't count the number on two hands even).  I have only ever gotten (not a word, I know) one speeding ticket and that was for going 25 in a 15 zone on a balmy Sunday afternoon in downtown Provo when I stumbled into a speed trap and the police cited me even though there was seriously not another soul within five miles (give or take).  I like to drive fast, okay?

The other day I was cruising through downtown Campbell at 7:45 in the a.m. on my way to work when a police officer stepped out into the middle of the road across the street from the Home Depot and waved me into a parking lot.  He had been lurking behind a bush--a BUSH people--with his speed gun pointed through the leaves, the little sneak.  He clocked me going 39 in a 25 zone.  So what's a girl to do?  Flirt, you ask?  Definitely no, you amateurs.  Cry?  Puh-lease, that only worked once when I was sixteen and the cop who pulled me over was the father of one of the girls on my dance team.  Lie?  Deny?  Make up an excuse? Instead, I tell the truth, say I'm sorry, and shrug with not quite half a smile that says "whadda'ya do?"  The officer came back after running my license and plates and told me that I was getting my one warning and then I was on my merry way.

Interaction #2:  Tonight I was driving home from work through downtown Campbell when a police car passed me going the opposite direction.  The officer was blatantly holding a cell phone to his ear and chatting like a middle-school-aged teeny bopper.  I was law-abidingly on my bluetooth at the time talking to my mother, otherwise I would have hollered "HYPOCRITE!!" at him through my window.  Talking on your cell phone without a hands-free device is illegal in California.  ILLEGAL, you read me?  Paul says I'm confrontational. 

The end.

Testimony

I lay in bed this morning, trying to fall back asleep after having awoken at 5:45 (no alarm, just excited) to sneak out of our room and put together Paul's Easter basket, thinking about whether to write this blog post.  See, I'm not a big fan of really "churchy" blogs or blog posts.  For me, although there is a time and a season for everything, spirituality is more personal than public.  But as I lay listening to Paul's steady and slow sleep-breathing, I found myself going over these things in my head and then thinking about how my sister Jessica is spending her first week actually in the "mission field" sharing this same knowledge that I wanted to share on my blog and finally I crept back out to my computer to compose this post.  Because if there is a time and a season for this message, that time is Easter when we celebrate the resurrection of our Savior.

I know that I have a Father in Heaven.  He knows my name and he loves me and understands me like no one else.  When I pray to Him, he listens.  I know that He sent His Son to earth to get a body so that one day, that man--my brother--could atone for my sins and the sins of all mankind in a sacrifice so great that I will never entirely comprehend what it means, at least not in this life. I know that because of that one act of humility, pain and love, that I can one day be with Him and with my Heavenly Father again.  And I know that after his crucifixion, Jesus Christ, my Savior, rose again and lived.  He took up his body and was resurrected, and because of that great miracle I know that death is not an end and that one day, all of us who chose to come to earth and receive these amazing bodies that we have been blessed with, will also be resurrected with perfect bodies, just like our Savior was resurrected.  None of this is conjecture or belief or faith even. At this point, it is a knowledge that I treasure and don't share lightly.  This knowledge has shaped my life in the most beautiful and miraculous of ways, and continues to do so.  I wouldn't be Me without it - not the same Me anyway.

If you're interested, here's one of my favorite songs that I found a few months ago and feel is only too appropriate for how I feel right now.  And if you ever want to know more about my beliefs, you can go here or just ask.