Nine and a Half Fingers...

We had a tickety-tight week over here at the Cornett residence. I'll start from where I left off...

WELL... Saturday was productive. Spencer and I finished all our errands and then went over to his friend Robbie's house for some hard-core home-cooking. Spencer informed me the night before that he had volunteered me to make Frog-eye salad a week earlier. I guess he forgot to tell me about that... hmm. Either way, I made a MEAN batch of frog-eye, large enough to fill a bathtub (well, at least that's what it seemed like). At Robbie's, we ate meat. LOTS of meat. And frog-eye salad to "cleanse the palate." AND... the Colts won. Go Austin Collie.

Sunday, we went to church and got our Spirit on - which is never a bad thing. I went to play piano for choir practice and was presented with some lovely cookies, thanks to Elise. She's cute - she's our chorister and always makes TONS of food to entice people to come to choir. Unfortunately, she doesn't witness much fruit from her labor, and the six of us who usually show up normally end up with our arms OVERFLOWING with goodies. Darn... The week before we had cinnamon rolls. mmmm.

That night, we headed over to Mount Pleasant with Kirstin and James for a fun weekend away from all the noise (AND CABLE TELEVISION). 'Twas glorious. We relaxed, played games, and thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. OH, and we watched Signs. At night. And I got scurred, even though I've seen it before. There's just something about the part when Mel Gibson sticks a knife under the door.... it gives me the heebie-jeebies. asdfklajsdf;klaj

We played a LOT of Giza. James and Spencer were bent on making the game HORRIBLE for the rest of us, so there was some serious backstabbing and spouse-sabotage going on. I won a round. I'm just going to get that out there.

I read another book... and started yet another one. At the request of the elderly stranger I met at the gym, I read:


Despite the guy's potty mouth... I enjoyed it. But not as much as Dan Brown's stuff. Right now I'm reading The Second World War by Winston Churchill. That man was the bomb.com. And Hitler was a BAD bad little man... AND he tried to get into the Vienna School of Art but was rejected. mmhmm. I know, right?!

Monday... HOLIDAY. We stayed in Mount Pleasant.

Tuesday... back to school. Except... what's that? Oh wait, my class was cancelled. Who had a five-day weekend? That's right. I did. But I still went to work for SEVEN long hours.

Wednesday, I had my one class of THIS week. I got a 100% on my project, which pleases me.

Thursday - I had a field trip to the Utah Disability Center in Salt Lake. That place was AMAZING. We saw all sorts of Alternative Augmentative Communication (AAC) devices. There was one called "iTobii" that blew my mind. It was basically a computer... that reads your eyes. No mouse, no keyboard, it calibrates to your EYES. Wherever you look, the icon on the screen follows. AMAZING. Too bad it's $21,000... (we don't need cars, right?) Then we went out to lunch at Paradise Cafe. I'd never heard of it, but DANG. It was good stuff. Get the chicken artichoke panini, I beg you. You'll thank me later, and you're welcome.

THEN... comes Thursday night. It's around 11:00 and I'm like... "Hey Spencer, do you want a sandwich? I can make you a sandwich." Don't ask me WHY I offered to make my husband food at 11:00. I do crazy things. Anyways, there I was minding my own business cutting tomatoes and slicing mozzerella cheese when the STUPID cheese slicer went out of control and pretty much removed a part of my thumb. I was holding the cheese a little weird, but I'm glad that I was because I took a chunk out of the BOTTOM of my finger instead of the top, which would have resulted in the loss-of-fingernail. Gross, I know. Luckily, Spencer is awesome and he forced me to put pressure on it and elevate the darned thing. So we watched some cool show on Discovery about explosives and the Secret Service while I could feel my heartbeat in my thumb and went through several blood-soaked paper towels. Yucky.

THEN, being the genius that I am, I had Spencer bandage said appendage and I went to sleep. I woke up in the morning because it HURT LIKE HECKFIRE. I took one look at my thumb and was like... "I think I should call my mom." The last thing I wanted was an infected, gangrenous thumb, thank-you-very-much. She told me exactly what I DIDN'T want to hear: clean it out with hydrogen peroxide.

Why, for the love of PETE... did I not do that the night before?! Instead, I let my little opposable friend rest over night and now it had started already closing itself back off again. SO, I had to soak my stupid thumb for a while, go to the store to buy hydrogen peroxide, and then spend the entire morning (2 and 1/2 hours to be exact), harassing and abusing the thing until I could open it all back up again, bleed out half the blood in my body, scream bloody murder a couple times, and THEN bandage it up again. Oh, what fun! But mom's right... I'm glad it's clean. (grumble, grumble...)

The good news: I don't use my left thumb when I type.

The bad news: I DO use my left thumb to play the piano (and our choir is performing on Sunday. All six of us, chorister and pianist included). AND... as I discovered this morning, I tend to use my left thumb to button my pants. Ouch.

So here's the moral of the story... use caution when cutting the cheese... HAH!

Blast from the Past...

This week has been REALLY good! Shoot, I'm getting spoiled by only having 2 classes. I have so much more time to do the things that need to get done around the house and run errands that have been on the backburner for a LONG time.

My house is spotless, my homework is completely up-to-speed, I finished my backlog at work, and we had some fun dinner dates! I went running at 8 o'clock in the morning on FOUR different days this week, which is an awesome improvement. Yes, I made it longer than 1 mile, but NO, Spencer didn't come with me. He decided that his sleep was more valuable. Maybe I'll get him to come this next week. Maybe.

Last night was awesome - Jeff and Becca came over and they made us dinner. Jeff made crab-stuffed mushrooms and some awesome Vietnamese dish that I can't even begin to pronounce the name of. I was in heaven, even if our apartment smelled faintly of rotten fish oil... that's what Febreeze is for! We played some games together , then Spencer and I were going to make homemade ice cream with mixed berries for dessert. However, our freezer (which is the size of a peanut) is a little bit on the... NOT quite cold enough side. We didn't have enough room to put our ice-cream bowl in the freezer until two days before Jeff and Becca came over (which I incorrectly assumed to be an adequate amount of time for a bowl to freeze). Since our freezer is LAME and doesn't circulate cold air very well, the bowl never froze all the way - which means, our vanilla ice cream was more like a melted vanilla milkshake. Yah. It didn't work. At all. Next time, we'll be sure to stick the bowl in the freezer like FIVE days before our appointment instead of two days before.

I finished two books this week. I read Rocket Boys... and cried like a baby during the last thirty pages or so. I don't care if you've heard the story, I don't care if you've seen the movie, you HAVE to read this book! Holy cow, it's good. I also read The Lovely Bones. The movie came out this weekend and I thought it looked like an interesting concept, so rather than spend 10 dollars to see the movie I figured I'd read the book for free. It was interesting all right... I've never been so creeped out in my life. I won't give anything away for anyone who wants to see the movie, but I'm not so sure I'd recommend the book. A little weird for me, and it had a lot of morals that I'm adamantly opposed to.

Oh, before I forget, I killed our plant. I kept it watered and happy while it was at work, but when I went to carry it home this week, the thing leaked water and dirt all over me and I gave it up for adoption. I have to walk home for 20 minutes, and when my hands are dirty and covered in water from holding a plant (which is also very heavy, mind you), all I can envision in my future is frostbite. SO... I bailed. I left it on top of a trash can on the south side of campus (and watched someone else pick it up as I walked off). We must not be ready for kids, as per my observation last post. Ha.

SO... I'm reading the Old Testament for Sunday School this year. I'm reading four pages a day and I figured that I'll finish around the beginning of November (what with me starting late and all). AND, it's awesome. The Old Testament is the bomb-diggety and I recommend EVERYONE read it. Period. We can compare cool Bible stories.

So last night after Jeff and Becca left, Spencer and I weren't tired. So you know what we did? We built a fort. Yup. A fort. Right in our living room. We set up our bedding and everything and slept there and it was FUN. Spencer was a good sport because he doesn't do well sleeping on the floor, but I slept like a baby once I finally closed my eyes. I love my bed, but my fort is pretty dang cool.

AND... BYU just slaughtered CSU in basketball. Is life good? Yup. It's real good. Till next time...

Things are looking up...

There's something really refreshing about welcoming in a new year. Of course, I hate that it's still really cold (and getting colder), and I feel like the Grinch because I have to take down all my Christmas decorations - but the new year is also the mark of new changes and new goals. If you ask me, the pros outweigh the cons.

This year I have LOTS of goals. And I'm excited, because for the first time I don't have to set them by myself - I HAVE SPENCER! Of course, he probably has no idea what I'm dragging him into, but I'm sure he'll thank me when it's over. My mission taught me a lot about how to set goals, but I think that being home has taught me even more about why they're so important. If I don't write something down, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. Period. Next to Spencer, my day planner is probably my best friend.

I won't share ALL my goals, since some of them are personal, but I think some of them need that little added "oomph" that comes with me having them in writing... twice.

First things first:
No matter how organized I am in my life, nothing is in place until I have my spiritual priorities straight. I wake up every morning, scrunch my legs up until I'm in the fetal position, and say my prayers. It gets the job done, yes... but really? Is that the best I can do? When I think of the phrase "with full purpose of heart" I think that a college student who only has 6 credits and the privilege of sleeping in until 8:00 in the morning can do a little better than that. From now on I want to wait until I've gotten up, eaten breakfast and gotten ready before I say my prayers so I can at least be coherent, for goodness sake.

Next:
Let's be honest here...school has always managed to usurp almost complete control of my time. This semester marks the first time I've had a chance to sit back and breathe at any point during the week since I was in the sixth grade. School's only been going on for a week but I've already learned that I need to have a plan for my time every day, or I will fill that time with nothing of value. Monday and Tuesday, I came home from work and school, and did just that. Wednesday, I finally realized I was going to go crazy if I didn't get cracking on something besides "relaxing". That's when the goals started swimming around in my head...

-Read books that are NOT for school. I absolutely love to read. Yesterday I went to the Library (convenient... since I work there) and checked out two books. One is Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, and the other is Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille. I was at the gym over Christmas break and had my nose buried in a Dan Brown book - a complete stranger came up to me and told me that if I liked Dan Brown, I absolutely HAD to read a book by Nelson DeMille, and that Plum Island is his best. I'll let you know what I think of it, but I'm only about 50 pages into Rocket Boys, first. P.S... I love suggestions, so if you know a good book, I wanna hear it.

-Go running more often. I also love running, but last semester I had no time for it with 15 credits, grad school applications, studying for the GRE, and work. I was pretty good over the summer, but NOT good the semester before that because... oh wait, I was planning MY WEDDING. I went with Spencer the other day and we made it a measly mile before the dry air caused us to stop and take a breath without our throats freezing. Lame, I know. This is the woman who once ran a half-marathon and would go for "fun runs" on the weekends and come back two hours later.

-Spend more time with friends and family. Last semester, I hardly ever saw Jeff and Becca and WE ALL WORK IN THE SAME BUILDING for crying out loud. Unacceptable. I also never went out and played with my friends. This semester, things are going to be different. I had breakfast with JaiCi and Nelli on Wednesday, we're going to Kirstin and James' tonight, we're doing dinner with Jeff and Becca next Friday, and next Saturday is going to be a triple date with two couples that Spencer works with. Seriously, if you want to play... call us. I WILL be social, dangit.

-Become the homemaker I know I'm going to be someday... in the far distant future. So Spencer wants puppies. I want babies. I'm trying convince him that we're not ready for either right now. I'm not going to be capable of taking care of THREE living things until I can sufficiently care for TWO. Don't get me wrong, we don't live in a rathole, but we could do laundry more often and make our bed and such. My boss recently gave me his poinsettia plant because he's tired of taking care of it. That will mean that (technically) we WILL have three living things in our home, but SHH... don't tell. If I kill it, it's a further sign that we're just not ready.

Finally, I will be a better blogger. I used to keep a journal, and then that was kind of replaced when I came home from my mission to Hong Kong - I would email my mission trainee every week and keep those emails as my pseudo-journal. Then she came home, and now I have nothing. That's where this blog comes in. So besides the fact that it helps me stay in touch with family and friends and GREATLY relieves the stresses of daily life, this blog is going to be the "Cornett Family Archive" of events and exciting occurences. I hope you all enjoy it. =)

Oh... the list could go on. In fact, the list DOES go on, seeing as the list is a real thing and all. I've barely scratched the surface. For now, I just have to figure out which things on the list are the most important and tackle them all in stride.

Till next time...