What a Pane! (hahaha I'm so clever!)

Yesterday it was really windy.  At some point in the afternoon I went into the kitchen and noticed dirt all over the stove and counter.  There's a really strange glass window above the stove/kitchen sink.  I figured that the wind had blown so much against that window that a lot of dirt had come through the cracks and settled onto my stove.  The building we live in is 100+ years old so anything is possible, right?

Well it wasn't until Connor got home and I was telling him about the dirt everywhere that he noticed that one of the window panes was actually missing.  The wind had blown it out.  That explains all the dirt, and it makes more sense than my previous theory.  Connor went outside to look at the damage, and amazingly the glass was still in one piece!  So he caulked it back into place, and we sterilized the kitchen.  (It needed a good cleaning anyway.)

It's kind of a blurry picture, but you can see the broken pane at the bottom left of the window.  There's dirt all over, but it's hard to see.  (I had already cleaned up some of it.)  Our poor kitchen.  

Before we moved in one of the radiator pipes broke in our kitchen and flooded the chapel below us.  (We live above a funeral home.  There's a chapel.)  They had to rip out all of our counters, and they didn't do the greatest job putting everything back together.  Hence the backwash, or lack thereof.  But, hey, it's free and you can't beat that!

Torn

Apparently I tore my medial meniscus.  Yay me!  I have no clue how I did it, but a couple of months ago my knee started cracking really loudly when I would go up stairs or squat or lunge or whatever.  At first it didn't bug me, but then it started hurting.

Today I went to the doctor to see what was going on.  They took some x-rays and everything looks okay there.  Then Dr. Cooley pushed on this one place on the side of my knee and man did that hurt!  Like blinding pain.  So, yeah.  I tore some cartilage.

It's been getting a little better on its own so if it keeps going that way then I don't need to do anything with it.  But if it gets worse again, I will probably have to have surgery to fix it.  Blech.

Revelations of a Needle

A friend of mine is pregnant with her 5th kid.  Yesterday she posted in her blog about the needle trick.  It supposedly predicts the amount of pregnancies that you'll have, gender of the baby, and the order that they will come.

Here's how it works.  You get about 20 inches of thread, put a sewing needle on it, and knot the two ends together.  Hold the knot in your right hand, hold out your left hand with your palm flat, and tap the needle 3 times in the crease between your thumb and finger.  Then flip your left hand over with your palm still flat, and hold the needle over it.  Make sure there aren't any fans or ventilation in the room that can affect your needle.

With the needle over your left hand (keep your right hand still) the needle will start to move.  If it circles, the baby is a girl.  If it makes a straight line, it's a boy.  It will start with your first pregnancy and move, and then stop, and then start moving again, and then stop and do that through all of your pregnancies.

I figured I'd give it a shot (I'm not prego, but I thought it'd be fun).  According to the needle, Connor and I will be having 4 kids -- girl, boy, girl, boy.  When I flipped my hand over the needle started to move in a circle, then it stopped.  Then it started to move back and forth in a line, then it stopped.  Then a circle again, then a line.  Then it was done for good.

I've tried this multiple times and it's given me the same results each time.  Only time will tell how accurate it is (give us about 10 years).  I had Connor try it and the needle didn't move at all.  My friend who tried it on her blog posted a video of it and it predicted all 4 of her kids accurately, but she still doesn't know what her 5th is(that's right Heather, I'm talking about you!).

Anyway, I just thought this was fun.  Give it a shot if you're prego or not.  If you're done having kids, see if it's accurate about what you had.  I'm curious to see the results that others get.  It's a fun little game.

If my instructions were confusing, here's a video that might explain it a little better.

Swagbucks

In September of last year I joined Swagbucks.  Swagbucks is a website where you earn (appropriately named) swagbucks when you do various things.  You can earn them by doing searches, taking polls, surveys, or purchasing things through their links.  I like to buy Groupon/Living Social deals through Swagbucks.  So whenever I do, I receive X amount of Swagbucks.  With your swagbucks you can purchase things.  There's thousands of things that can be purchased, but I always go with a $5 Amazon Gift Card.  450 Swagbucks buys 1 gift card.

Like I said, I joined in September of last year.  To date, I have received 16 $5 amazon gift cards.  So basically I've received $80 all for using their website.  I also have 2 gift cards on the way, so that will bring my total to $90.

I recently purchased Lego Harry Potter for the Wii (which is now my new favorite game), and it was all covered with gift cards that I got from swagbucks.

Anyway, if you're interested, you can go here to sign up.  It's good stuff.  Who doesn't like getting free stuff?

Pigeons!

I hate strongly dislike pigeons.  I have heard them described as "rats with wings," which I would say is pretty accurate.  :)

Here's the reasoning behind my strong dislike of pigeons.  In our apartment, there's a window in our living room.  It's kind of like a bay window, and above it there's a little overhang.  Well, apparently this space between the top of the bay window and the overhang is an ideal living location for pigeons.  And so they live there, and breed there, and poop there. All over our window.  Connor spent a very good amount of time last year cleaning the window, repainting, and trying to make this space very undesirable to pigeons.

Don't they look gross?

Well, unfortunately it didn't work.  The  pigeons are back, clearly very unconcerned with the great efforts that were put in to deter them from returning.  (Perhaps they even welcomed the clean window and new white paint!)  We can hear the little babies outside the window chirping away during feeding time, and the older ones cooing (or whatever it is that they do).  Blasted pigeons.  

Well, we can always try again this year.  But I have a feeling that the pigeons will be here much longer than we are.  

This is the only kind of pigeon that I do like.

My thumb is bigger than your head.

That's what my cute niece said over and over again while we were visiting DC.  "My thumb is bigger than your head."  "My thumb is bigger than Abraham Lincoln."  "My thumb is bigger than the Washington Monument."  You get the idea.  Robin is hilarious.  Last week we went to Virginia to visit my mom and we had so much fun.

Since I work for JetBlue I get awesome flight benefits.  But in order to get to Virginia from Salt Lake we had to take the red eye to JFK.  So when we got to Virginia on Wednesday, Robin and I were both very tired.  After I woke up from my much needed nap, we went to a toy store and Robin got some silly putty and I got this toy called Bucky Balls.  It's a toy for adults that is made of over 200 magnetic balls and you can make all sorts of cool things out of them.  They're really fun and very addicting.

Thursday we got pedicures.  Robin loved that we sat in massage chairs during our pedicures.  She had a lot of fun with that.  After pampering our feet, we went and did some shopping.  Then we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, and went and saw Rango, which was pretty good.  (It was either that or Gnomeo and Juliet, and I really did not want to see that.) :)

After getting our pedicures.

On Friday Robin and I headed into DC.  We went in on the Metro and when we got there we walked over to the Washington Monument to see if we could get some tickets to go up, but they were already sold out.  So we just walked over to the Lincoln Memorial (which Robin really wanted to see).  Then we walked over to the Smithsonian and went to the Museum of Natural History.

My favorite part was this butterfly room that they have.  You get to go into the room and there are butterflies everywhere.  I had one land on my back for a little while, and then one landed in my hair and stayed there for at least 5 minutes.  While it was in my hair, another one landed in my hair.  So for a while there I had 2 butterflies on my head and they wouldn't leave.  They ask you not to touch the butterflies so I couldn't get them off, and people kept commenting about the butterflies in my hair.  Robin wanted one to land on her but every time one would get close she would flinch.

At the Museum of Natural History.

The first butterfly that landed on my head.

The highlight of Friday was when Robin and I got back from DC and went ice skating.  We went to the Reston Town Center to the ice skating rink they have there.  Robin had never been before and it was so fun.  That's actually the first place that I went ice skating too, and I was about the same age as Robin when I went ice skating for the first time.  We had lots of fun skating around the ice.

Ice Skating!!!

On Saturday we got some lunch at Red Robin, and then we went to Great Falls State Park.  It had rained a lot on Thursday so we thought it would be interesting to see the falls.  There was so much water.  My mom said that she had never seen the water like that before.  We also saw a wedding while we were there.  After that my mom couldn't do anything more, so we went home.  Later Robin and I got dinner at Wendy's and then got some ice cream at Baskin & Robbins. 

At Great Falls State Park.

Sunday we went to church, hung out a little, and went flew to Long Beach.

Robin and Grandpa Byrd before we left.

We stayed in Long Beach for the night, woke up the next morning, got some breakfast, and went swimming.  The pool (which they claimed was heated) was freezing, so we stayed mostly in the hot tub.  Robin was adventurous and jumped into the pool for about 5 minutes, but it was still really cold so she came back to the hot tub.  It was a pretty big hot tub, so we could sort of swim around it.

Flying home from Long Beach to Salt Lake was a little stressful.  I was concerned we weren't going to make it since the flight was so full.  (Flight benefits = Standby travel)  Luckily we got some seats and made our way home!

We had so much fun on the trip, but it's definitely good to be home.