Happy Second Day of Spring

Well, it was a rude awakening to snow on the ground (and falling from the sky) yesterday morning, the official first day of spring.

No, not that spring, silly. This spring:

Though, to be honest, it looked more like this where I live: Woohoo! more snow. Just what we need when we've had nothing but snow since December. Yeah, can you tell I'm a little done with winter? Well, I don't want to become a pessimist, so I thought with the end of winter I would make a list of the things I find enjoyable about the winter season. Because nothing makes you more nostalgic than the end of something you didn't really enjoy in the first place (i.e. childhood).

What I like about winter:

Dressing in ridiculous amounts of layers

Cute sweaters

Snuggling under blankets

Long hot showers

Having 7 blankets on my bed

Sleeping late in the morning because it is much warmer under the covers than in the room

Fireplaces

Reading a book when it's snowing outside

Hot chocolate

Soup

The way a big blanket of snow mutes the outside world

When everything looks like a Christmas card

Squishy snow

Crunchy snow

Snow angels

Little kids in big fluffy snowsuits

My diva coat (it only comes out when it snows)

How my car feels like a cave when snow covers the windows

Heaters

Boots

How everyone's yards look good snow covered (do dead grass eye sores)

Stews

Not having to worry about the lack of air conditioning in my car

Walking into a building after being outside

Happy Spring everyone!

Name Tag

Because I'm still working out some other posts, and I don't want to throw too many pictures at you at once, enjoy this tagged name game in the mean time.

THE NAME GAME

1 . YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) - Jordan Geo or Jordan Traker, either one sounds pretty good.
2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) Peppermint chocolate chip
3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of last name) t-pec
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) pink llama (I think this sounds more like your villian/thief name in an old radio detective story.)
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) No, no sillies, it's your middle name and the street you live on. I'm Jayne Van Ross.
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) pecta
7.SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) The Blue Water
8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers) Charles Horace
9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy) Oh, I got an email with a much better system involving the third letter of your first name and the third and second letters of your last name. According to this system I am Sugar Heaven Tower
10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names ) Gentry Owen
11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 6th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) Young Yamoussoukro (capital city of Cote D'Ivoire)
12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower) Thanksgiving Lily
13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now+“ie”) Strawberry Skirtie
14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) Bagel Redwood
15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”) The Reading Rain Tour
16. YOUR CELEBRITY COUPLE NAME: (half of your name, half your significant other's name, mixed together in whichever order sounds best.) Tahnny

10 Years Ago: I was 13 and was starting what would be a 10+ year awkward phase.
5 jobs I have had: Albertson's sample lady, Alpha Graphics temp, Resident Assistant, Runner, Legal Assistant
What I would do if I became a billionaire: Live in several foreign countries, not at the same time, get 12+ graduate degrees, start my own business(es).
Bad habits: feeling guilty about things, procrastination, laziness
Things I enjoy: Reading, acting, singing, finishing a project, hosting dinner parties.

Home Remodeling

First of all, let me apologize for not posting in so long. I know how frustrated I get when I go to my favorite blogs and they haven't posted anything new in over a month, or a week, in some cases. (I know that somewhat assumes this is someones favorite blog, but don't worry, I have no such delusions.) Let me explain a little of what happened. I was in a show all last month, which kept my nights pretty much occupied. When that closed, I suddenly became crazy busy (probably all the stuff I kept shoving to the back burners during the show), then we fired one of the legal assistants at work. We were already short staffed due to new baby (congrats Carrie!) so everyone's been putting in ridiculous hours and all I want to do when I get home is crash. So as penance for my slothfulness, I bring you ... pictures!! Lots of pictures for the next few posts, I hope. But to start, my home remodeling. I have been repeatedly asked (yes Erin, I hear you) for pictures of the latest goings on in my house. So here you go. First: here's what the house looked like before we moved in.


The first thing to go was the carpet. As seen here:


Now, if you look closely, you can see the lovely window coverings (window boxes with pleated peach curtains) and the great paint job on the back wall. That darker section by the mirror is where bookshelves used to be that just didn't get moved before the last paint job. But before we tackled that mess, we decided to help the ceiling. Not only was there lovely faux wood paneling in the house:

But also a popcorn ceiling:

Pardon my mess. So we took down the lovely curtains:









And scraped off the ceiling, which went very smoothly thanks to some helpful advice from my bro and sis in Seattle who had also dealt with the mess of the popcorn (thanks guys!).
And underneath we found sky blue ceilings and spring green walls and all the settling and poor taping of the sheet rock, which the hope of concealing probably led to the idea of putting up popcorn in the first place. So after fixing what we could, we decided white would be too unforgiving to paint it, and we were done with texture at this point, so we went with lavender. It was a good choice. I really like it. You can kind of seen it in this next picture which is after we took down the faux wood and had to rebuild the wall since the wood paneling was glued to the untaped and unmudded dry wall. Oh and also, this wall, which creates a hallway in the house, is not actually attached to either of the two walls it connects to. Awesome.

So we rebuilt the wall. Then primed everything. Here's Johnny by his handy work.

Then finally, we painted the walls. We did white in this room and on the wall with the mirror a few pictures back, and on wall with the fireplace ...

Green!






I think the is best green known to man. Every light I see it in, it continues to make me happy. It's a very cheery green and adds some nice color to the house. There is still more to do. Lots more, but I will try to be better with the pictures from now on. Also I apologize if this takes forever to load. I wasn't sure what size the pictures were when I posted them.

Blond!

So I had to go blond for my show. And I was asked for some pictures, so here you go. First, the before picture.
Then I got blond highlights, hoping the director would just let it go at that. Also, you can see how much my hair grew in just a few months.


Finally, I had to get bleach blond curls to pull off the diva, ditzy look they were going for. Here's me all dolled up for the show. I think it was worth it to have a middle stage, just to ease into the blond thing. It is a pretty drastic change. And although you can't really see it in the second picture, I am more blond.


And I will say, the show was super fun, so maybe it's true that blonds have a better time than the rest of us. (Still think of myself as a brunette.)

Smell you later

So, I have a highly developed sense of smell. This means I smell things before most people (unless they also have a highly developed sense of smell), and can usually identify smells. This has occasionally been a problem for me, like the time I smelled dog poo in my car. I didn't smell it in my house, only my car. And I don't own dogs. I checked my shoes and they were clean, and I thought it unlikely that a neighborhood dog would have opened my locked car door and then pooed on my newspaper-covered car floor. I thought maybe it was on the tire, but I never proved this theory, so the mystery went unsolved.

Then, today, I was driving in the car with my husband and I smell vomit. And I know you know what smell I'm talking about because it's very distingishable. Since I'm not around children, who are normally the ones to vomit places other than the toilet, I'm not quite sure were this smell came from. Again, it was not my shoes, or my hands (yes, I check there too). And not even the smell of fresh bagels could get rid of it. And even as I sit here at work, I still smell the smell. Needless to say, I feel a little nausiated. I'm hoping it's not some chemical in my brain combining with the residual whipped cream that got all over me last night. (pie in the face. You know, for the play.) I also hope I don't have a brain tumor or something like that.

OCD + English Degree = Annoyances

Yes, I am OCD, a little, but aren't most people? (hey, a girl can dream ... and justify, right?) And yes, I am an English Major, which means that sometimes I get really annoyed or frustrated or just bugged by grammatical errors. Now, I don't mean to say that I go around correcting any one's grammar. Cause I don't. Speaking is a different kind of art all together. But if you are writing something down, something that a lot of people are going to see, like say, a billboard, you might want to have someone, a native English speaker perhaps, look it over for you first before you go advertising your lack of English skills to the world. Or at least the neighborhood at large. Maybe even the city.

So, what sparked this (mini, and not very mean) rant? Well, there's a lovely little church on the corner of a fairly busy road and the street I turn onto to get to my house. This intersection is right after the freeway exits onto the busy road. So there is a lot of traffic passing this church. This church, like many Christian churches has a sign out in front that they change about once a month to tell the community about choir concerts or events in the church, but for the most part the pastor puts punny little messages on it, that I will admit make me smile every time I pass the church on my way home. I enjoy a good pun. Perhaps it is because I enjoy this church and its sign so much that I have been so bothered by the recent message. Now remember I told you that the sign changes about once a month. Well, this particular sign has been there since November. Which is another reason why it has bothered me. I'm not really, really annoyed on the off chance that something sad and tragic has happened to the pastor resulting in the grammatically incorrect sign remaining on the side of the road for so long. I don't know, I don't go to this particular Christian church. And I wouldn't have minded it being up so long quite so much had it been one of their regular, delightfully bad puns on a Christian theme. But it says this: "Quit griping about your church. If it was perfect you can't belong."

Luckily for me, because of play practice, I don't go home that way much any more. But I'm really hoping that the next time I do, they are back on their regularly scheduled punny, grammatically correct, religiously themed sign that will make me smile.

Tagged Again

Rules:
1.You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts.
4. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Middle Name: Jayne
I have never been called for Jury Duty. In fact, I've never received a voter registration card, despite many promises. I typed up an amendment to Utah Law for my work at a law firm. It was for Municipal Building Authorities, so nothing anyone else cares about. I'm a little bit of a yes-man. I find it hard to tell people no. This is why I just hang up on telemarketers. I have never sworn in anger. It used to be that I had never sworn knowingly, but now I have incorporated some of the lower-end, less offensive swear words into my sense of humor. Also I had to swear on stage in high school, so that killed the unknowing aspect. I would one day like to know everything, but I'm pretty sure I'll have to be dead a long time before this happens.

1. Do you like cheese? Yes. In fact one of my strange life goals is to be a cheese connoisseur.
2. Have you ever been arrested? Nope
3. Have you ever shot a gun? No.
4. Your favorite song? Well, I don't have just one, but at the current moment, I love Blue October's "Into the Ocean" because I can listen to it any time and it relates to whatever mood I'm in and always makes me feel good.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Yes. I also get nervous during the appointment because I don't want to lie, but I always feel better when I actually make it too the doctor's office and I don't want them to think I'm a hypochondriac, but I also want them to fix whatever's wrong.
6. What do you think of when you eat hot dogs? "Try not to think of what's inside this hot dog. Try not to think about what's inside this hot dog. ..."
7. What's your favorite Christmas song? O Holy Night, but I hate it when it's done badly.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Orange Juice. It's the best of the morning drinks.
9. Can you do push ups? I used to do 50 in dance class, but I had to do them on my knees or against the wall. My legs are much stronger than my arms.
10. Is your bathroom clean? Yes, but it's residual cleanness from Monday when I cleaned it last. I haven't had time to clean since then.
11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? My pearl necklace my friend gave me.
12. Favorite Hobby? acting? maybe. Reading, sewing, watching movies, reading blogs.
13. What are you listening to right now? the blowing of what I can only hope is the heater and not the air conditioner. But it might be the later. Brrrr.
14. What is the last thing you ate? a Bacon Swiss Burger, and I'm trying to get the taste out of my mouth. Don't want bad breath you know.
15. What one trait do you hate about yourself? My almost complete lack of assertiveness.
16. Middle Name? Jayne
17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment? I'm glad I look busy typing all this. I'm so cold. I wish I could leave early.
18. Name the last 3 things you have bought. Rubber duckies (for Primary), toothbrushes (for Relief Society) and shampoo (to keep my hair blond).
19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink. Water, milk, hot chocolate.
20. Current worry right now? What is going to happen to my hair when I go platinum blond? I hope it doesn't ruin the current healthy state of my hair that took 23 years to achieve.
21. Current hate? driving to Utah County for work. I'm not the runner any more people!!
22. Favorite place to be? In the Redwoods. It's my happy place.
23. How did you bring in the New Year? I chilled and watched movies at my house. I was burnt out.
24. What is your quirkiest habit? Correcting people when they sing the wrong song lyrics. For some reason, that really bothers me.
25. Name three people who will complete this and return? how about 3 people who have already done this? Tea, Morgan, and Erin.
26. How many siblings do you have? 2 sisters, 1 brother
27. Do you own slippers? Yes, 2 pairs, one is microwavable.
28. What shirt are you wearing? I'm currently wearing 3 shirts (yes I'm still cold): a dress shirt with blue, green and brown stripes; over that, a long sleeve blue ribbed shirt; and over that, a brown suit jacket with tan and grey pin stripes.
29. What shampoo do you use? since my recent purchase, it's Pantene Pro-V for blonds.
30. Favorite colors? all of them that look good on me.
31. Would you like to be a pirate? No.
32. What songs do you sing in the shower? I don't really. I just enjoy the hot water. If I do, it's whatever song is stuck in my head.
33.Favorite female name? I think Tara's okay. Classic, but not overused.
34. Favorite male name? These have always been harder for me to pick.
35. What's in your pockets right now? I don't have pockets. *sniff sniff*
36. Last thing that made you laugh? my horrible singing during voice overs for rehearsal on Saturday. It was truly awful.
37. Best bed sheets as a child? The red flannel ones. We always fought over those. You had to be first in line after laundry day to stay toasty warm in the winter.
38. Worst injury you've ever had? Tearing my rotator cuff in my right shoulder doing maid work at Mack's Inn one summer. I still have pain and unpleasant effects from that one.
39. When's your birthday? July 11th
40. How many TVs do you have in your house? 1.
41. Who is your loudest friend? Morgan
42. There is no 42. That's lame. How about a question anyway. What is your favorite body of water? Hmm. Good question. I'm going to have to say . . . the Mediterranean Sea.
43. Does someone have a crush on you? Yes. His name is Parker and he's 6. He plays young Cosmo Brown in the play. I know this because a) his dad (R.F. Simpson) told me, and b) he tied me up backstage to keep me from going on. Think about it . . . remember he's 6 . . .
44. Do you wish on shooting stars? Never have. I'm not a good wisher.
45.What is your favorite book ? Oh, so many. To Kill a Mockingbird. Gone with the Wind. Mama Day. A Return to Modesty. The Chosen.
46.What is your favorite age? Any one that isn't a prime number over 17.
47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding? I didn't care, we don't really have "a song", however I did play awesome 80's tunes and that rocked.
48. What song do you want played at your funeral? I don't care. It's hopefully going to be really simple.
49. What were you doing at 12 am this morning? sleeping.
50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? Why am I so tired?

As far as tagging: I think all 5 people who read this blog have already do this. So let's let this blogging virus end right here.