Day 229

Tonight was the first drinking Wednesday since Karen and Luke got engaged.  It was so much fun to hear the story and see her ring.  She got a very unique ring with a yellow diamond, which is just what she wanted.  It also occurred to us tonight that if she and Luke live in Burlington and we move to Champaign, we'll only be a few hours apart!

I think I may have developed a weird allergy to mushrooms. The last two times I've had them I've gotten really sick later in the night.  I'm hoping it's mushrooms, because the only other similarities between the two nights was alcohol.  An alcohol allergy would be a real bummer.

I have another trial coming up soon and I tried to call my client today and her phone is out of service.  Why does this keep happening to me!?  She really needs to take a plea deal, and I'm secretly hoping she decides to, because if the trial gets canceled I can go to San Diego with Rick!

Day 228

Tonight we had our 2nd dance lesson.

Before our dance lesson we met up with Tom and Libby at Oklahoma Joe's which was delicious, but maybe not the best choice before dancing and standing in close quarters with other people.  I felt like I reeked of BBQ the whole night.

Anyway, we reviewed our push-pull dance moves from the last lesson and then learned a waltz.  Rick was excited because now we can do this instead of the 'awkward sway' at weddings haha.  He taught us some other moves to jazz up the basic box step, one of which involved me parading around in a circle (which I was not a fan of).  Then at the very end we learned a dip.  So we can wow everyone with an awesome ending to our mad, crazy, dance skills.  The dip is not new to us, but this was a more advanced version.  Normally when Rick dips me he just leans me straight back and it is not very pretty and kind of painful, but our teacher taught him how to swivel, so I basically just lay across his legs... much prettier.

Day 227

Ugh, back to school.  Poor Rick never really got a break.  There are exactly 5 weeks of school left for me.  Then I have pretty much the entire month of May off... yay!!  Although, it will probably (hopefully) be filled with packing and moving and finding a place to live wherever we end up.  We've finally narrowed it down to more or less 3 places.

San Diego, CA: Rick is heading out there in a couple of weeks for an interview.  We're both a little leery of moving all the way to California and then hating it.  But it would be a big adventure and when else can we go on a big adventure if not now.  The weather would be awesome, but the cost of living is ridiculous.

Champaign, IL: Rick has been talking with his old boss and they are putting an offer together for him.  We both loved Champaign, and since we already know the town we could buy a house pretty quickly.  The weather could be better, and it's a little flat for Rick's biking tastes, but it's definitely affordable.  The nice thing about Champaign is that if I took the Illinois Bar we could always move up to Chicago or down to St. Louis at some point and I wouldn't have to take another bar exam.

Kansas City, MO: I think we're both still hopeful that Garmin will randomly call Rick up and make him a great offer.  However, the deadline for the KS bar is less than 2 weeks away, so this option is going to quickly be eliminated.  It would be nice to stay here for the summer, since we already have a place.

So that's where were at.  Hopefully, we'll have something nailed down in the next couple of weeks.

Day 226

Today we woke up to fat, wet snow flakes.  It's been too warm lately for anything to stick, but it was weird to have snow this late in March.

Being the avid (obsessed) beer brewer that he is, Rick refused to let a little snow stop him from brewing his next batch.  Last weekend we bottled to batches in one day and it was the first time in months that there wasn't beer in buckets in our 2nd bedroom.  I think the empty buckets were too much for Rick to bear, so he filled one right back up.  This is his 5th brew and by the time it is done we will have about 250 bottles of beer.

Currently most of the beer (that we haven't drank) is strategically piled in our second bedroom.  The first two batches have no distinguishing marks at all, Rick just put them into separate piles and he knew which was which. However, last week when my brother came to visit I had to stash all the beer and I messed up his piles.  So, we had to go through and guess what was in the unmarked bottles and this time we marked them.  Someone may get an interesting surprise haha.

Rick has one more brew kit ready to go, but I think after that one I'm cutting him off for awhile.  I refuse to move 300 bottles and 3 buckets of beer and at the rate he's going it's going to be even more than that.

Day 225

Today we made the most of our last weekend of our last spring break (for awhile at least).  We slept in, lounged on the couch, watched a lot of Lie to Me and Planet Earth.  Then we took a 3 hour nap.  It was only supposed to be a 1 hour nap and I was going to wake Rick up, but then I fell asleep, too.  After our nap we ventured out for some dinner and then retired back to our spots on the couch.  It was an excellent day.

Day 224

Today was the last day of Tristan's visit, so we decided to visit the Federal Reserve Museum in KC.  Tristan is really interested in finance, so we thought he might like it.  It was pretty cool, but it took more time to get through security than it did to see most of the museum.  Tristan read all the exhibits and spent a lot of time looking at all the coin collections.  Meanwhile, Rick and I did all of the kid activities... taking pictures in the money, coloring and sending emails of bills we designed to all our friends.  We're so grown up.

Day 223

Rick and I have been struggling to figure out what we're doing after graduation.  We seem to just be getting more  and more options instead of narrowing them down.  I suppose that's a good problem to have, but I think we're both pretty stressed about getting it figured out.

I've been thinking about it a lot this week, though, and I think we should really just be embracing this time in our lives and enjoying it.  We don't have any debt, we're well educated, and we're healthy.  We have absolutely nothing tying us down or holding us back.  When else will we have the option to go pretty much anywhere we want in the country, or the world, and just have an adventure?

It's easier said than done, because I'm definitely a planner and I like to have things lined up way in advance, but I'm going to do my best to just relax and see what happens.  I know that wherever we go we'll be together and that's enough.

Day 222

Wednesday Ramblings

- I had this whole list of things I wanted to get done while I was on spring break, one of which was cleaning our bathtub.  Our tub can get pretty gross because it has this no-slip stuff on the bottom that just clings to the dirt and then Rick uses bar soap, so there's lots of soap scum.  Anyway, I used oven cleaner because it's magical, but I forgot to wear gloves... the next day the skin was literally peeling off of my hands in chunks.  Oops.

- I've also been working on designing some beer names and labels for Rick's newest brews.  So far I've come up with: Legally Blonde Ale (a blonde ale), Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana Honey Wheat (orange honey wheat), and Bloody Finger Black IPA.  The last one is because Rick almost chopped his finger off with the scissors making it.  And then he refused to sit down until it stopped bleeding bc he was so excited about it.

- The end of law school is turning out to be a lot like the end of college... I've had like 5 friends from school get engaged lately.  I guess one isn't from law school, but still.

Day 221

Last fall Rick and I bought a groupon for 2 dance lessons at a studio in KC.  Tonight we finally got around to using it.  I was a little nervous going in, because it was a private dance lesson and all the attention would be on us, and Rick was nervous he wouldn't be good... but it was really, really fun.  Our teacher was super nice and really good at breaking it down for us, and teaching us a bunch of stuff.  We learned the basic 'push-pull' and then we learned a bunch of turns and spins, too.  Our teacher told us these were swing moves.  I think I had the easiest part because I just had to follow and poor Rick had to remember everything.  By the end we were pretty good.

Next week we're going back for our second lesson and we're going to learn a romantic dance.  Surprisingly, Rick is really excited about this bc he hates doing the slow dance sway at weddings haha

After our lesson Rick had scouted out an El Salvadorian restaurant nearby for dinner.  From the outside it was a little sketchy, but the food was awesome.  I got enchiladas and Rick got their special dish, pusitas (sp?), both were very good.  And it was super cheap.  Our whole dinner cost $13, so we left the waitress a really good tip because she was so nice and we came in right at closing.

Day 220

Rick and I have been trying to find healthier recipes to cook for dinner.  One of the best things we've found is making our own pasta sauces.  We've made a sun-dried tomato pesto sauce and a roasted red pepper and basil sauce that were both awesome and SO easy!  You just buy jars of the main ingredient in oil and blend them up in the blender with a few other ingredients... salt, pepper, herbs, broth... and then pour it on the pasta.  Super easy.  They were both awesome, too.  The only downside is that the peppers and tomatoes in oil can be a little pricey, but we're just going to start looking for them on sale and stock up.

This picture isn't from our sauce because we ate it before I remembered to take a picture, but this is exactly what ours looked like.  This is from the pioneer woman's roasted red pepper sauce.  She actually roasts her own peppers... we're not that adventurous yet.  It's such an awesome color.  So good!

Day 219

Well both of our teams are out of the tournament.  Sad day.  Rick was a lot more pissed about it than I was... probably because Illinois went down against KU.  Stupid KU.

On a positive note, the weather was beautiful today and we both got out and ran.  I stuck with my usual 2.5 miles, but Rick is trying to gear up for the brew-to-brew.  Which is in 2 weeks.  Where he'll have to run approximately 8 miles.  I'm a little worried for him.  I'm sure he can do it, but he is going to be so sore the next day.  Good thing there will be lots of beer afterwards.  He ran 5.9 miles today I think, which is kind of awesome.  Way farther than I've ever run.

Day 218

I was doing some laundry today, mostly washing our two big blankets and some towels.  I put them all in the dryer and when the buzzer went off this is what I found...

It's Santa's bag!

Just kidding.  It's my blanket that somehow swallowed another big blanket, 4 towels and 5 wash cloths.  They were all knotted up inside the red blanket and it took forever to untangle them.  I literally could have swung the red blanket over my shoulder and gone all around the world in one night... that's how securely wrapped up they all were.  Of courses, none of them were dry either.  So annoying.  I had to dry the red blanket by itself, so it wouldn't swallow anything and do the other stuff in it's own load.

Day 217

Well, last night was fun!  We ended up going to 23rd st. to watch the kstate game... which they won!  And playing trivia which, turns out, is really, really hard.  We did not do well and we even used our cell phones/cheated on  a few.

Anyway, it was rough getting up this morning.  Only to spend a pointless afternoon at work.  Luckily, the day got better when we grabbed dinner at the Beer Kitchen in Westport and it was amazing.  Better burgers than the Casbah OR Dempsey's.  Then Illinois won their first game in the tournament.  Yay!

On the way home we stopped by Thomas Restaurant, which we haven't been to since our wedding reception.  It was really fun to go back and relive it all a little.  We talked to the piano player, Vince, and he remembered everything about us.  It was weird.  Especially, considering the man refused to return my voicemails or emails while we were planning our wedding... who would have thought he'd be so good with details.  Then we talked to the manager/owner Kevin and the bartender for a while.  Everyone there is just SO nice, I'm so glad we found that place and decided to have our wedding there.

Day 216

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We don't have any big Irish plans for today.  There's a big parade downtown which is making parking for work interesting (a big pain).  I think we're going to head down to 23rd street (our favorite spot) to watch the basketball game and do a little celebrating.

Tonight K-state plays their first game in the tournament and according to everything I've read/heard it's going to be a tough game.  I really hope they can win.  As Rick says, "it depends which team shows up."  So, hopefully it's the good team.

Oh, and I'm hosting book club.  I tried to come up with something clever to make, and all I could come up with is guacamole.. .which is really more appropriate for Cinco de Mayo than St. Patrick's day, but at least its green. And good.  I also didn't read the book.  I'm a terrible book club member.  I did read the summary on wikipedia, though, so that should count for something.

Day 215

Wednesday Ramblings...

- Rick has decided to try to take up drinking coffee haha.  I told him I would make some extra for him tomorrow morning, so we'll see how it goes.  I told him it's an acquired taste, like all that hoppy beer he drinks, so you think he wouldn't mind the taste of coffee.

- At court today my client new all the other clients on the docket and she gave me the backstory on what they all did.  It was kind of awesome and very entertaining.

- If Illinois wins their first game in the tournament, they play KU.  This could get interesting.  Everyone is talking smack to Rick, and he has no faith in his team.  Sad.

- I read an article about The Bachelor finale that referenced Lie to Me.  Hilarious.

Day 214

Last night I saw a commercial for Grey's Anatomy - the musical episode.  Seriously?  If that's not a 'jump the shark' episode I don't know what is.  Thank god I stopped watching that show.

I only recently learned about 'jumping the shark', so I'm pretty pumped to get to use my new terminology. haha  Apparently it's in reference to a Happy Days episode where Fonzie jumps a shark while water skiing.  This is what Rick (and wikipedia) told me.

Day 213

I do not like daylight savings.  It always messes up my sleep, or that may have been that long nap I took yesterday, but either way I could not fall asleep last night forever.  I think it's all in my head and I just psych myself out.

Rick was pumped for daylight savings because it would be light later, but then it was rainy all day yesterday and we didn't even get to enjoy it.  Then today we woke up to a couple inches of snow!  Luckily, it was mostly melted by about noon.

This might be the lamest, most boring blog post ever.  Sorry.

Day 212

The Summer of the Wii.

When Rick still lived in Champaign he bought a Wii on Craigslist and got the Mario Kart game.  We spent hours that summer playing Mario Kart.  Of course, Rick was awesome at it right from the beginning, but toward the end of the summer I could beat him on a couple levels.  You could race against each other and the computer or you could go online and race against people all over.  On the Wii you could create a 'Mi' that was like your little character.  And when you raced online that was who drove your car.

At first we both had Mi's that looked like us, but one night we got the bright idea to make our Mi's look like celebrities.  This was right around the time Billy Mays was doing the Pitchmen show and then died from cocaine use.  Which, strangely Rick predicted before it actually came out that was what caused his death.  Anyway, Rick made his Mi look like Billy Mays and I made mine look like Oprah.

The Wii also had fun sports games like bowling, golf and tennis.  We had a lot of late night bowling tournaments after everyone had been drinking.  Rick's roommate at the time was particularly accident prone, so we always had to make sure he had the wrist strap on so he didn't end up chucking the 'wii-mote' through the tv.

I was just thinking the other day that we haven't played with the Wii forever.  Maybe we'll get it out and do some laps next week for spring break.

Day 211

Today I met Libby at the Legends to do a little shopping.  I got some good things for my work wardrobe.  It was crazy busy over there, like the mall on the weekend before Christmas, ridiculous.  We had a good time, though.

Then Rick and I checked out the new sushi place in town.  It was mediocre.  Rick thought their chinese was pretty good.  And they had a noodle station where you could make your own noodle soup,  but neither of us were in the mood for soup.

Afterwards, we went to see the Adjustment Bureau.  I really liked it, Rick thought it was ok.  I definitely think there must have been some kind of plan for Rick and I to end up together.  What are the odds that I would decide to go to law school, get a job through AmeriCorp, move to Champaign, IL and randomly sign up to live with one of his friends from college?  And that he would apply to grad school, interview at Frasca, get turn down at Frasca, get accepted to Grad school, get re-interviewed by Frasca and then hired, so he ended up staying in Champaign?  And then on top of all that, that he would happen to walk down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant where his friend/my roommate and I were having a drink outside on the very first night I moved to town?  Weird.

Day 210

When Rick and I got married we combined our checking and savings accounts, our credit cards, and all of our bills.  It was fairly easy to get all that done, but figuring out how to manage everything with two people has been a little more complicated.  For the most part I keep track of the bills and when they need to be paid.  However, our bank only gave us checks in my name for our savings account which only allows us to write a few checks from it per month, and the checks for our checking account are only in Rick's name, so only he can sign them.  This made things difficult because instead of opening a bill, writing a check and dropping it in the mail like I normally would, I have to open it, figure out the amount, track down Rick, get him to write a check and then put it in the mail.  It got really annoying and I felt like a 50's housewife asking Rick to write me a check all the time.  I don't know why it took us so long, but we finally called the bank and asked for new checks.  I think I was just putting it off because I figured at the end of the school year, we'd be moving and getting a new bank, so ordering all new checks wasn't really worth the effort, but who knows what's going to happen with that now, so we ordered new ones.

Anyway, keeping track of bills and stuff with two people is twice as complicated in my opinion.  When it was just me, I always knew how much I was spending and the balance of my checking account and that is definitely not the case now.  We've managed to avoid any big overdrafts so far, but I did forget to pay the credit card once (in my defense they stopped sending me the usual 5 day warning email) luckily I called and got the late fees waived.  And forget any semblance of a budget.  I tried, but it's just not possible with my part time job and the University always forgetting to pay Rick.  It's waaay too complicated.

But, once we're both employed, we're going to have to figure out a better system and budget. We've been lucky that we have a pretty cushy savings account and can get by without too much worry right now, but I don't want to just spend down all of our savings.  I want to invest and have goals for our money.  Buy a house. Save for retirement. Fund our future kids' education. Go on vacation.

Day 209

Random Musings

- Rick had a dream last night that I had an evil twin who killed me and then pretended to be me.  In the dream all of my family was there and none of them could tell that it was my evil twin and not me, except for Rick.  Apparently my evil twin also had a tattoo on her butt.

- K- State is the most inconsistent basketball team ever.  They make me mad.

- Rick is running in the brew-to-brew race with his engineering friends.  They named their team "Yeast likely to win, just hoppy to be here"  So clever.  They better hope it's actual brewers judging the name contest, so they get their brewtastic humor.

Day 208

Ever since our wedding, I'm always looking for projects to craft and design.  I really like doing paper products.  I suppose if lawyering doesn't work out, perhaps I can have a 2nd career in them.

Since we are graduating, but Rick might not 'officially' graduate until June, we decided to just have a BBQ get together for our families and friends and keep it pretty low key.  Point being... it gave me an excuse to design another fun invitation.

Rick said it looked like a circus ticket.  I informed him that's probably because the font is called Ringmaster haha

Day 207

He walks in his sleep, talks in his sleep and lately he's started turning lights on and off in his sleep.  He doesn't believe me that this happened, but the other night Rick flipped his bedside lamp on an off real quick in the middle of the night.  I asked him what he was doing and he said, "My light was on."  Umm, no, no it wasn't haha.  Apparently he has really bright, sunshiney dreams.

How could I make something like that up?  And then it happened again, another night.

His dreams are so bright he needs to wear sunglasses... haha 

Day 206

Tonight at the grocery store, Rick discovered that his favorite cereal, Oatmeal Squares, was on sale. This is a semi-frequent occurrence but the last time they went on sale it was a long time before it happened again.  Rick refuses to buy this cereal when it is not on sale because it's like $4 a box.  Tonight it was $2.50 a box.



Determined not to be caught empty-handed again, Rick stocked up...

Day 205

So, the other day I read this blog post about 'super powers of the mundane'.  It was really funny, about super powers that the writer had that really weren't that super.  So, I decided to come up with some super powers for Rick and me.

Rick - Winning Every Game... Ever
This is Rick's he's annoyingly good at games and ALWAYS wins, even if it's some new game he's never played before.  Card games and bar games are his specialties.  The only game I can consistently beat him at is Scrabble.

Jessie - Knowing Where Everything in the House Is
Keys, wallet, nail clippers, everything.  I know exactly where things are in our house... and where Rick leaves all his stuff.  He doesn't even bother looking for things sometimes, he just asks me where they are.  It's really kind of a useless talent, I wish I could remember more important things... like everything I need to know for the bar exam.


Also, I have to include this one about my sister, bc I really think it is a super power.

Libby - Uncanny Ability to Call at the Most Inopportune Time
So, Libby is sort of notorious for not answering her phone, so when she calls back you just absolutely have to answer or it turns into a bad game of phone tag.   The problem is she has this amazing ability to call during the 10 seconds that you're doing something else.  You can be sitting, staring at your phone for 3 hours and she will call exactly as you're in the bathroom, or blowdrying your hair, or run out to check the mail.  It really is amazing how she does it.

Day 204

Well today will go down in history as the day Rick bowled his best bowling game ever!

Day 203

Today we drove out to St. Louis to hang out with Rick's family for the weekend.  It's hard to believe we haven't seen them since Thanksgiving!

We had quite the eventful drive... It was storming in Lawrence when we left and it seemed to follow us the whole way across Missouri.  I felt like I was in that depression commercial where the thunder cloud is always over your head.  At one point we stopped to get gas and the tornado sirens were going off.  Most of the people were acting like it was no big deal, but one family was freaking. out.  It was humorous.  Rick was a great driver, even when we could barely see the road in the monsoon on 370.  We finally made it to town and had a much needed drink at the Stagger Inn before playing some shuffle board.  Rick and I dominated.

Day 202

I finally convinced Rick to go to Orange Leaf with me!!

I had a really annoying and long day and he got a bunch of annoying emails from his advisor right at 5, so we were both in need of a little pick me up.  I have to say I like the frozen yogurt place downtown better I think.  They didn't have as many options at Orange Leaf and it was packed.   I got coffee and vanilla, Rick got cheesecake and Strawberry.  Rick loaded up on frozen yogurt and barely had any room for toppings.  I on the other hand love toppings and made sure to leave plenty of room for heath bar crumbles, brownies, oreos, one cherry, one gummy worm and hot fudge... I'm sure I completely counteracted any health benefits of the frozen yogurt with my toppings haha.

We ended up heading home to eat our ice cream with some Law and Order.  Excellent combination.

Day 201

K-state beat Texas last night!  I don't know where this team came from, but I'm so pumped!

The other day at work I overheard a couple people talking about how great Bill Self was and how he's won as many Big 12 championships as he's lost home games or something like that.  Anyway, the point is they were talking about it like he'd already won the championship this year.  Then they were going on and on about how kstate was going to have to cheer for KU to win the championship, so that Kstate would get a bye in the tournament or something.

Screw that, I'm cheering for Kstate to win the championship.  I hate KU fans they're so annoying.  I really, really hope Kstate can beat KU again and shut them all up.

Day 200

How is it possibly March already?
That means there are:

165 Days until our first wedding anniversary

148 Days until I take the bar exam

81 Days until graduation

61 Days of class left

15 days until my bar exam application is due (45 for the late deadline)

Big stuff coming up.