I bought myself an early Christmas present...

...and I love it! It's made me happy all week.

Invisibelt

p.s. Joe: this is what you got me for Christmas, k?

I love this kid.

You'll Be Smitten

p.s. it says the show is intended for mature audiences, but I promise there's nothing naughty in the clip.

p.p.s. aren't you totally jealous of Molly's and my phone conversations?

Dexter

Joe was Dexter for Halloween. I realize that the only people who would "get" this probably don't read the blog, but I was kind of proud of the costume we put together. Dexter is a show that ran on CBS during the writer's strike.

Update: I look like the action figure!

Lucky the Lush

Lucky likes to kick back after a hard day of sleeping.

Unfortunately, he's kind of a jerk when he drinks. He starts fights,

hogs the remote,

makes unwelcome advances,
and climbs all over the place.

We're looking into Kitty Rehab.

Trapeze, Take Two

Emily and I flew on the trapeze a few weeks ago, and it was so much better the second time! We went on a Wednesday afternoon, and there were only 6 of us in what is usually a 10-person class; 2 brand new fliers, 2 second-time fliers, and 2 pretty experienced fliers...so it was a great mix. Since there were fewer of us, we got to go up 12 times! There was no one to "catch" us this time, so we just perfected our take-offs and pretending to be caught.

The Chinatown location is shut down, and the school is moving to a permanent, indoor location in DC. So no new updates for awhile :(

Say Anything

Even though there are at least 20 concert venues within a few minutes of us, we want our concert experiences to be memorable. Just kidding, but since our schedules don't really allow for weeknight fun, we've traveled far and wide (or just far) for some weekend concerts. We saw our good friends Say Anything at the NorVa...in Norfolk...3 hours away. Our Saturday/Sunday went something like this:

10-11:30 Primary Program practice at church
11:30-12:30 Lunch, get ready
12:30-4:30 Drive to Norfolk, park, walk
4:30-6:00 Eat at the restaurant attached to the Norva
6:00-7:00 Get into the show and wait...and wait
7:00-11:30 Watch three okay bands and one pretty amazing band
11:30-2:30 Drive home
2:30-8:00 Sleep

It was SO worth it. Absolutely the best concert I've ever been to. The band had recently put out a new CD, and the whole crowd knew every word to every song. Also, the lead singer of Say Anything is married to a member of one of the opening bands (Eisley)...so he came out to play the guitar when she was onstage, and she came out to sing with him for one of his songs. Pretty adorable.

This was the door next to the restaurant. Hmm.

The band Eisley.

Max playing the guitar for Eisley.

Us, really excited for Say Anything to come out.

Say Anything rocking their little hearts out.

Cutieheads Max and Sherri singing their song together.

Bonus: I bought a tshirt and told the guy selling the tshirts "My brother used to do this..." and he asked who my brother was and I told him, and the merch guy totally knew my brother. Then I thought to myself WOW my brother was doing this 10 years ago and you're STILL doing this?!? but I didn't say that.

Sharon's Wedding

My co-worker Sharon was married two weeks ago. Her wedding was really pretty! Here are Sharon and Ian outside the church in DC.

This is me having a reason to get dressed up.

The reception had lavender lighting, fancy tables and yummy food!

The best part for the guests was the "photo booth". I think ours are the most sober pictures from the whole night :)

Gary & Berta Visit

My parents came to visit over Halloween weekend; I had so much fun with them! We played some Beatles Rock Band, ate out a few times, watched some World Series, and went to the following places:

The Marine Corps Museum
Gravelly Point (to watch the airplanes take off/land from Reagan)
The Old Post Office Pavilion (second best view of the city after the Washington Monument!)
The Newseum
The Archives
The American History Smithsonian Museum

There were no crowds ANYWHERE...which makes up for the Capitol tour we didn't get to take last time because there were way too many people there. It was awesome to just walk around and spend as much time looking at things as we wanted to.

We were pretty dead Monday night after walking around so much, so we ended the trip with a rousing game of Hand & Foot...the best 3+ hour card game around :)










More photos here

Zombies

I remember hearing that George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" was supposed to show that consumer culture had made people into zombies, and thats why his characters are always stuck in shopping malls. The joke in "Shaun of the Dead" is that the folks who ride public transportation are so comatose that no one notices when they turn into actual zombies. I think this cell phone picture I took of guys in the metro sums it up pretty good as well.

Google Voice

I hate listening to voice mails. Like so, so much. Luckily I average about 3 a month, so no biggie. But then I learned that Google Voice will just text you your voice mails, so I signed up for that.

I got this text tonight:

Hi Brittney this for on a capitalist doctor calling to let you know there were that be a place tonight. I was you next week. Bye.
Yup.

I went to Google Voice to listen to the message, and here's what it really was:
Hi Brittney. This is Veronica, the Zumba instructor, calling to let you know there will not be a class tonight. I will see you next week. Bye.

To Google Voice's credit, when I viewed the text online, most of the words are really faint, (their way of telling me they're pretty sure those aren't actually the words spoken on my voice mail). I honestly didn't expect a transcription service to know the name of my workout class...but capitalist doctor? Awesome.

Sports Guy

As if Joe didn't have a long enough day with work and school, we picked him up and went to Matchbox for dinner two weeks ago. I think I've blogged about Matchbox once or twice, but let me just tell you again: Loves it!

JJ, showing us the score of the Monday Night Football game on his iPhone

Marc & Emily

Britt & Joe

Yummy, yummy sliders

After dinner, Joe and I went to ESPNZone to meet Bill Simmons (the Sports Guy) and buy his book. Unfortunately, his book wasn't being officially released until midnight, so we were forced to watch the un-watchable Eagles vs. Redskins game while we waited in line. Bill was a great guy; here are some pictures of the top of his head.

I'm wearing a pink Favre jersey 'cause Sports Guy hates Favre and pink jerseys. I had three people ask me if I was going to the next Packers/Vikings game.


Happy to have our book!

The Sports Guy was funny 'cause he would write anything in your book. So Joe had a book and knew what he wanted, and I had a book that we were getting signed for Joe's cousin Greg. Joe told me about 5 times what I was supposed to get on the inside of Greg's book, but I kept forgetting. Then when I got up to Sports Guy, I was like "This is for Joe's cousin Greg...um...what was I supposed to put?" (looking at Joe). This is what we got:

He wrote "Cousin Greg," which is awesome...and then totally added his own parentheses :)

Training For The Circus

A few weeks ago, I emailed some of my girlfriends to say was going to sign up for a trapeze class through TSNY, and they were all invited to join me. Five of them did, and 2 weeks ago we were on a trapeze in Chinatown!

From left to right: Lytle, Britt, Katie, Alex, Ashley and Emily

I was REALLY excited to not do this by myself, but SUPER DUPER excited that all these totally awesome ladies joined me. LYTLE and I go way back to Freshman year. She accompanied Joe, Jacob and me to a concert in SLC once, and had to hide a disposable camera in her hair so we could sneak it in. Later, Joe put a deer head in the trunk...we have some awesome pictures. I'm so glad she's in the DC area now!! KATIE and I used to work together at GWorld. We had many days where one of us would end up on the floor laughing while the other one had to leave the room. My favorite memory of Katie was hearing her on the phone with local non-English-speaking vendors, asking what their hours of operation would be over Inauguration weekend. "Inauguration...in-aug-yur-a-shun...the swearing in of the President." Awesome. ALEX is also a GWorld friend, but is currently one of Joe's co-workers. She plays a mad game of Blokus and can ROCK the mic on Rock Band. Alex also left a whole container of brownies at my house, so I blame her for my current non-weight-loss. ASHLEY is another friend I met Freshman year. I made her call the bowling alley where Joe worked to reserve lanes for our blind date. This is the night Joe let me borrow his bowling shoes and I got a kiss on the hand, so pretty much Ashley facilitated all that. Additionally, she helped transport 300 balloons to my wedding reception (and did a few more traditional bridesmaid duties,) so she's definitely a friend for life. Ash came down from NY for trapeze, but I'm pumped for her to move out here next year!! EMILY is my newest BFF; her husband Marc and Joe are GW buddies, and she got me my job so now we're co-workers. We have tons of fun every day and (hopefully) help keep each other sane.

This is Ashley, but you can see me climbing the ladder. Climbing the ladder was probably the scariest part...once you're swinging around, you don't think about things too much.

Joe was a great supporter and photographer. Thanks for supporting your crazy wife!

With the "original" crew for a celebratory dinner at Five Guys. I might have put chalk all over my arms then crossed my arms across my chest when I got nervous...but you can hardly tell ;)

Alex, Emily and I each bought 2 more classes (to get the 3rd one for free!) I will definitely post more photos/videos when they happen. For now, you can see the goods HERE

Happy Halloween!

Love, Lucky

lol

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted much this semester, it's been crazy. Pretty much every day something bizarre and funny happens at this office. I don't know if it's our location or what, but if all I did was post the weird things that happen here, I wouldn't have time to do anything else. That being said, I have a funny story from today to share.

So, last week Jeb Bush (not this Bush brother) was on campus at our Media and Public Affairs Building giving a speech about how the GOP can remake its image. It was a pretty big news on campus and around town, because Jeb has been keeping a low profile, and lots of people had initially hoped he would be the Bush son to be president.

Anyway, we've got a crazy guy that comes to our office a lot. He apparently used to work at the Library of Congress, and is on medical disability. He demands random information about scholarships, and the paralegal certification / Master's degree program. The school advertises their paralegal and other professional certification programs heavily in the newspaper because they are profitable programs for the University.

So today he came in with a newspaper, and was livid. He had circled the time and room of the Paralegal program information session, but had apparently got it mixed up with the Jeb Bush speech. He came in today to the office and was yelling "I sat through the whole Jeb Bush program but he never got around to talking about paralegal studies!"

PS - after typing this out I realize it doesn't read as being very funny. But it was hilarious to me that a 40 year old man who knows who Jeb Bush is would think he was going to do a presentation on a paralegal certification, and that all the press would be here to cover it.

I <3 my cats

I don't care if all these posts makes me a crazy cat lady or not...these two rock my world.

Lesson Learned

One really bad habit of mine is to lock my car door before I close it. Yeah I have the keyless entry clicker and all that...but for some reason, I just open the door, lock it, then get out and close it. This sometimes results in me frantically looking for my keys just after getting out of the car, which is so lame. Anyway, today this happened:
My keys were locked IN the door. Luckily, the key and the clicker ended up on the outside of the car, so no problem. But still. Me + rain + Trader Joe's parking lot + Joe not home for another 5 hours = quick panic. WHEW. Lesson learned.

Tried and True Ideas I Found on the Interwebs

Dipping apples

Easier than caramel apples, I tried this at preschool:
apple chunks...covered in
nutella, peanut butter, or marshmallow fluff...then dipped in
chopped up candy, chocolate, cinnamon sugar, or dry jello mix
Success! (and HUGE sugar high)

"Smart" ice bucket

Put ice in a colander, then in a bigger container. Your guests end up with ice, not ice water.
Success!

Blink, Beach and 'Burg

Unplanned coordinating outfits, 2002

Blink 182 has influenced my life more than any other band...they gave my brother a job, which got me 1) super-cool status in high school when I got to hand out leftover Hurley and Blink bumper stickers, 2) backstage access to Warped Tour 2000, and 3) my awesome sister-in-law Carter (who met Jake on the road).

When Joe and I started chatting it up Freshman year at BYU, our similar tastes in music was a big plus. We talked about the concerts we went to, downloaded literally thousands of songs (thanks BYU's internet and audiogalaxy,) made each other awesome mixes, and made plans to attend a few shows together.

It's been 7.5 years, but we finally got to see a Blink show together! It was at the amphitheater in Virginia Beach...which is pretty much the coolest place to see a show ever. We had lawn seats, (but we mostly stood,) a great view, and tons of room to move around. Cons: the 3.5-turned-6.5-hour trip to get there, missing the opening band (Asher Roth,) the next band (All-American Rejects,) canceling due to a wrist injury, and parking five million miles away. Pros: Watching Fall Out Boy and Blink rock their little hearts out, knowing the words to every song, and dancing in the rain.

That night we stayed in Virginia Beach, and the next day enjoyed riding a 2-seater bicycle thingy up and down the boardwalk. We saw a pet adoption fair, leftover sand sculptures and a jetski contest.

Then we went to Williamsburg for a night. We walked around William & Mary and did whatever free stuff we could downtown. It's weird to go places where Joe applied to law school and think "We could have ended up here..." It was a beautiful campus, but we really enjoy ourselves here.

And that was our quick trip last weekend! This was actually my first time out of the "NoVa" (Northern Virginia) area since we've moved here (other than plane trips across the country). We definitely need to do it more often. Tons more of Virginia to enjoy!

What We've Been Up To...

I realize this is not at all "what we've been up to," because if we wrote:

7:00am-Joe and Britt wake up
7:45am-Joe to work
8:15am-Britt to work
4:30pm-Britt home
6:00pm-Joe to school
9:00pm-Joe home

y'all would be like "BORING!" (p.s. doesn't Joe's schedule suck and my schedule totally rule? Just remember that today I had to pick up poop, so don't be too jealous).
*****
So the Halo 3 ODST gamey thingy came out last week. There was a midnight release, and we went to it.
See? We're wearing Halo shirts 'cause we're cool. This reminds me of our last Halo-related midnight relase: November 2004 to get Halo 2 at the Media Play in Orem. Joe chillin with Master Chief. Wow, I can't believe Halo has played such an important part in our lives for this long. Crazy.
*****
On Saturday Joe had some law school friends over to watch cool 80's movies (of the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Steven Seagal variety); they do this every few months and rotate living rooms. Fun idea. Anyway, I used it as an excuse to make some pretty unhealthy snacks and to use our keep-food-warm thingy. Those are little smokies, stuffed potato skins and quesadillas. YUM. When is the next party? I will pretend to tolerate those movies if I can make junk food again.
*****
I know you guys have really missed the cat pictures, so here's one. Remember Joe's schedule? Sometimes he falls asleep on the couch. Wherever he is, Lucky finds him and cuddles up. Cute.
*****
And finally, I present to you: Photos hung in living room. We wanted to go a little "DC," so we enlarged our own photos of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, and the Iwo Jima Memorial. This took me way too long to not post a photo showing off my work.
I also put those LED-candles in the fireplaces because we never use it. They're on a timer, so every night from 7-midnight they "flicker". Way better than fake logs.*****
By this time tomorrow we will be on the lawn of the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Virginia Beach, getting ready for the Blink 182 concert. I can't wait.