The life & times of Emily's iPods

iPod #1: My senior year of high school, my parents bought me an old-school (well, I suppose it wasn't old-school at the time) iPod, for which I was very grateful. It lasted the longest of my iPods to date, and was filled with lots of upbeat yet illegally-downloaded music. However, at the end of my sophomore year after my first Europe stint, I decided to upgrade to a slimmer version and gave my original iPod away to a fellow impecunious student (aren't I magnanimous?)

Birth: April 2004

Death: April 2006

iPod #2: Ah yes, "blacky" as I like to call him. Oh the good times we had: running (actually it was walk slash jogging, let's be honest), weltering and gamboling in the sun and summer car listening. 'Twas a halcyon summer, indeed. Until a certain individual* happened to murder blacky in cold blood!!! Ok, fine it was an "accident" where said person "rolled" over and "accidentally" "broke" blacky's "screen." Luckily he was revived after an emergency trip to the iPod doctor, only to have me lose him a little later.

Birth: August2006

Death: March 2007

iPod #3 aka "Baby Hermes": My sweet baby! This was actually a free iPod that came with my MacBook, but I my love for him was equal to millions of dollars. Baby Hermes was especially fun because I could watch episodes of The Office on him! Plus he had 3 gigabytes (well, I actually only ever used like less than 1, but it was nice to know it was there). Alas, he was left alone and cold one day at the gym, never to return home to his mama. If only I knew where he was now... I hope he is enjoying his new home.

Birth: August 2008

Death: October 2008

iPod #4: Richie Jr.: After hearing my sob stories of iPods past, my wonderful husband gave me his iPod (also partially because he got an iPod touch for Christmas and didn't need it anymore). We had an immediate bond, but alas, this relationship too was doomed when I (again) left him at a gym. Bye bye Richie Jr.

Birth: December 2008

Death: April 2008

iPod #5: Shuffle City: Which brings me to present. Due to my... uh, bad history of losing/killing iPods, I decided to get a cheap-o one. Enter the First Generation ipod Shuffle that I got for $10 (with running band and cord!) off of Craigslist last night.

Birth: April 22, 2009

Death: TBA

*Identities have been removed to prevent opprobrium, but I assure you this was a real person who is not me.

What Would You Do?

The Cupcake Dilemma:

The Facts:

• We only have a 6-cupcake tin
• Each batch takes 30 minutes to cook
• I had enough batter to make 19.5 cupcakes

What do you do with the batter for the last 1.5 cupcakes?

• Option A: Spend an extra 30 minutes making 1 and 1/2 cupcakes batch
  
• Option B: Eat the batter for the last bit
• Option C: Throw away the extra batter

I picked Option B and I feel *sick* now.

What would you do???

Some Life Updates

Can you believe we're already into April? The months seem to fly by here, although we are still waiting for spring to come. April seems to be a month full of chicanery, with one beautiful day and then several rainy and windy days immediately following. I guess we will look back on these days with fondness as the summer will surely desiccate the beautiful grass and trees we see everywhere now!

It's finals time again for Richard, which means late nights and early mornings of studying to ensure that he is not abased when grades come out. As soon as that is over, he will be interning with a judge here in Fairfax for a couple of months, and then interning at the Virginia Supreme Court for the rest of the summer. We just got a letter in the mail telling Richard he will need to take an oath promising decorous behavior during his duties as intern... very official!

Next year he will be secretary for GMU's J. Reuben Clark Law Society, treasurer for the Student Bar Association, on a law journal, working for the library, on In Of Court (law fraternity, basically), and Trial Advocacy (hopefully). Basically, I do not plan on seeing him for a year... so maybe I'll come visit all of you!

I'm still at my job, and still really liking it, although visions of graduate school dance in my head. I'm hoping that this desire doesn't accidentally prove deleterious to my job performance, but honestly I'm just happy to have a job right now so I won't be a boor and complain about anything. Another nice benefit of working, which forces me to slightly demur about going back to school, is that we are slowly but surely amortizing our law school student debt.

Some fun summer trips: a weekend in Seattle, Bylund Family Reunion in Pennsylvania, a week at Lake Powell with the Petersons and a few day trips to Pilly and Baltimore. Riding through the declivities of Virginia will be fun, too!

(PS- Okay, fine this was a semi-fake post so I could use some GRE words in context. Please don't form a cabal and overthrow this blog!)

A Summer of FUN!!!

This morning, sitting in a budget meeting, my mind drifted into "spring fever" mode, and I thought, "I wonder what amusement parks are near Washington DC?"

Upon further research, I found that there is a Six Flags a mere 20 minutes from our house!

And even better, they are doing a deal right now where you can get season tickets for the cost of a one-day pass!

And EVEN better, you get 5 free "friend" tickets (on select days) for each pass.

Needless to say, we are now the proud owners of season passes (with parking cost included!), and plan to venture out a couple Saturdays a month this summer.

So you should all come out and visit us, and we will take to you 6 Flags for free.

HORRAY FOR SUMMER!

PS- Did I mention I'm excited this long winter is ending?

1 Year!

Happy anniversary, happy anniversary, happy anniversary... Haaappy Anniversary! (sung to a tune which I know, but don't know the name of...) So, Emily and I were married a year ago today. It has been a very good year. Last night, Emily and I went through a list of fun and exciting (and some less exciting) things we have done over the past year. It has been so great that I have a hard time remembering what it was like not being married. Yay for being married!!!

-Richard

A Steamy Relic of the Past

What you see here is the result of rational yet "heated" (zing!...you'll get in a second...) debate. Yesterday, I implored of Emily that we get an iron because I've recently gotten some shirts that require ironing. However, I foolishly advocated a trip to Target for this purpose. Alas, such a trip would cost much more than the benefits, no doubt, as Emily quickly instructed me. And so, in Emily's economical wisdom, I was counseled that we rather visit Goodwill to find the iron I desired.

It turns out that Emily's sagacious recommendation proved its worth the moment we entered Goodwill. The store had a smell that shouted "bargains!" I went straightaway to the appliances section and we were faced down by a plethora of irons. I was not prepared for irons in plethoric proportions and so we made another rational decision: each of us chose our favorite. I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the iron you see in the small picture above. It may be hard to see it from the picture but the nostalgic essence that permeated my being simply from glancing at this model of perfection was overwhelming. It beckoned a period when irons were irons, and washing boards were washing boards.

Moments later I was plugging it so that she (I use the pronoun "she" here because her name is Bertha), may prove to us that she could handle the ironing I so desperately longed for. What joy when the element was heated and we felt the warmth of an iron that had doubtless made passes at numberless concourses of fabrics. I made my exultation known to Emily through beaming eyes and smile. She acquiesced to its purchase. And that is how we came to own "Bertha."

Splurging

With some unexpected car issues in the past few months (partially paid for by Mama and Papa Peterson, thank you, thank you, thank you), we've had to cut a few corners in our budget.

Then, last weekend, we were walking to Harris Teeter and saw a Johnny Rockets (50's-style diner) on the way. We looked at each other and both said at the same time "let's eat there!!" This is only the third or fourth time in our marriage that we have eaten out (unless certain parental units were paying for it... thank you, thank you, thank you again!).

All through our $20-combined meal, we kept on saying to each other "I can't believe we're eating out!!" We were pretty giddy about it for the rest of the day, and actually for a few days after. It was quite the splurge for us.

This got me thinking about "splurging," and why people splurge. My guess is that people like the euphoria of temporarily living at a higher/more expensive level than they are used to. Makes sense -- that's how we felt. Then I thought, what if we did eat out a lot? Then what would we have to do to get that same feeling?

It's interesting the splurging doesn't feel like splurging if you are "living large" all the time. I guess an unexpected benefit of being poor is that moderate indulgances like eating at Johnny Rocket means a lot more!