Holy Shit...

...it's Steph's wedding weekend!! My parents get into town tonight, and then let the good times roll! See you after Monday.

posted by Ami @ Friday, August 31, 2007

Weddings Weddings Weddings!

So I know I will totally be forgiven for abandoning my website when you find out that I was on vacation to fabulous Iowa City, IA! Yep, I just got back from 4 days there. We went to attend the wedding of one of my college friends. It was great, and I got to see people I hadn't seen in a very long time. Some of these people I ran into intentionally, and others unintentionally, but it was all good anyway. We had so much fun what with all of the wedding-y goodness and the binge drinking. It was just like college all over again, except that I got drunk and had sex with my husband. Woah, weird. It all made me want to move back, and then I remembered that it was August, and just wait until January, you will no longer want to move back to Iowa. But it will always be my home, and it felt so good to be there. We need to go and visit Charlotte and Sean more often.

Anywho, I'm back, and this weekend is Steph's wedding! More wedding-y goodness and binge drinking! And my parents are coming to town for that, about which we are very excited. That being said, updates on this here website may be sparse until after wedding weekend #3 of Summer 2007.

So, some quick updates on other topics:

School is going well for Chris. He likes it, and so far has found time to do his homework even amongst the craziness of traveling and taking time off work and adjusting to his new weekday routine. I am happy for him.

I finally got my period. Because I know you were dying to know. I obviously have no clue re: ovulation.

posted by Ami @ Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Short Weekend and TMI

This weekend was SHORT. Chris started school on Saturday. Friday night there was free ice cream for his program, so I was all over that. Only, it wasn't just free ice cream, there was a whole meal! Score! We went to bed early-ish on Friday night so we'd be up at a good time on Saturday. Chris had to be at school at 7:30am, and I got up with him and did a shitload of errands, and things like mowing the lawn and weeding the garden. After he got home, we showered and headed to our aforementioned romantic dinner full of romantic specialness, and DAMN it was good. Seriously, I haven't been to a restaurant with that kind of service, well, ever. And the food was incredible. If I were made of money I would go back tonight. After dinner we were full and kind of tired since we got up at 6am, so we chilled at home and went to bed. On Sunday morning we played our usual game where one of us wants to get up and the other one doesn't, followed by vice versa, and ended up sleeping until noon. We got up and went to brunch at The Dodo and ran errands. I made palak paneer and naan for dinner, and then fell asleep on the couch at 10pm. Seriously. After sleeping until noon. What the hell? Which brings me to my next topic...

Ami being off her birth control, and how weird it is. Seriously, this is my first cycle off my birth control, and it is SO weird not knowing when I'm going to get my period. 28 days since my last one is tomorrow, but I have no idea how long my cycles are since I had been on birth control since I was 17. And I'm crazy bloated, craving all manner of salty and sweet foods, and I'm SO DAMN TIRED, yet there is absolutely no sign of my impending period. What the hell? This has got to stop. This might be TMI, but I swear I think I ovulated on Friday, which would give me a period around August 31st, but I might be full of it. Part of me wants to be right and get a period on the 31st, and part of me just wants to get my damn period already. If I am right, I'll tell you how I know I ovulated, and if I'm not I'll just keep that to myself, since it was obviously wrong. :P

posted by Ami @ Monday, August 20, 2007 1 Comments

Scene From A Grocery Store

Ami: Mmmmm, cakes. And look, they're only $3.

Chris: We should get one!

Ami: What can we be celebrating?

Chris: $3 cakes.

posted by Ami @ Friday, August 17, 2007 0 Comments

Our Old Friend, August

Weather.com is a lying son of a bitch. Every day the predicted high for Salt Lake City is in the mid to low 90s, yet every day the actual temperature here is above 100 degrees. I have decreed that no dinners shall be cooked, and only cold beer shall be consumed in the evening until this ridiculousness stops.

Tonight Steph is coming over to hang out. I hope she isn't expecting a meal, because she is going to be disappointed. Tomorrow night we have a meet and greet thing for Chris' school program. I could care less about the meeting or greeting, but there is free ice cream so I'm all over it. Saturday is Chris' first day of school, lasting from 8am until 5pm, and I am going to make an attempt to be productive while he is gone. After school, I am going to take him out for a fabulous belated-birthday meal where he can tell me all about his day. We are going to The Five Alls, so if you are a local stalker you'll know where to find me on Saturday night. If you are an out-of-town stalker you might still be able to catch a last minute flight.

Sunday will be spent doing whatever Chris wants to do, since it is his only day off this week and I will have done all of the household chores the day before. I am guessing it will involve him playing Civilization IV and me bitching about how the computer being on raises the temperature of the room by 50 degrees.

posted by Ami @ Thursday, August 16, 2007 0 Comments

The Rest Of My Year

Ten days until we leave for Iowa!!!!!!! I know most people don't get excited about visiting Iowa, but I can't wait. I lived there for 15 years, after all, and I haven't been back since 2003. I have a list of places to eat and drink that is a mile long, and I am so glad to have Chris to accompany on this drunken quest for weight gain. Sean and Charlotte's wedding will be the highlight of the trip, of course, but having 2 days off from work ranks right up there.

Aside from anticipating our trip to Iowa, we are also anxiously anticipating Steph and Tom's wedding, which is the following weekend. My parents will be in town for that, and we will all be staying in the mountains, at a resort with a heated outdoor pool, oh my! It will be a great weekend.

Less than 2 weeks after that, it's my birthday! Woo!!!! It's a Friday night birthday, and oh shit, I just realized that if our baby-making plans go accordingly my next birthday will be a Saturday birthday and I won't be able to drink. Mother fucker! But anyway, this year it is on a Friday, and I am excited to go out to dinner and sleep in the next day.

Three weekends after that is Chris' fall break from school, and I think we are going to go camping at Zion National Park for the weekend, and then going to Las Vegas for a couple of days. It will be a vacation of extremes - calm yet obnoxious. But that kind of sums up my personality, so I will love it.

Three weekends after that is Halloween, which is hands-down my favorite time of year. We will carve pumpkins and get costumes together, go to a haunted corn maze, and possibly go on the haunted hay ride that I want to do every year and never do. We will rake leaves and play in them, and then totally judge the neighbors who have not raked their leaves.

A month following that Chris and I will be off to Denver and/or Wyoming for Thanksgiving. We haven't been to visit his side of the family for the holidays since 2004, so we are overdue and looking forward to it.

Christmas will come a month later, and we are staying in Salt Lake City for it. We decided a couple of years ago that we would only travel for one "holiday" during the season, and spend the other one at home (and whomever's side we didn't see that year are welcome to come here, of course). This year we only get Christmas day itself off from work, so we decided to make Thanksgiving the traveling holiday. So it will be a quiet Christmas, kind of an appropriate end to a busy year.

New Year's Eve will follow closely, which is our dating anniversary. Five years, but it will probably be anti-climactic since we are married now. Sometimes we go somewhere for New Year's, but like Christmas, we only have New Year's Day off, so I'm thinking we will stay here to usher in 2008.

So there you have our plans for the rest of the year. Chris will be in school during it, too, so I imagine he will be busy and we won't end up adding anything to these plans. I'm curious to see how it goes, it might be an adjustment for us, who are accustomed to having nothing but free time. Wish us luck. :)

posted by Ami @ Tuesday, August 14, 2007 0 Comments

Not Exactly Oscar de la Hoya

So Saturday I woke up with sore muscles in my arms and back and I thought it was from playing Wii boxing the night before at our friend John's house. That made me feel like a huge wuss. And then I realized that I was probably sore from swimming at Echo Reservoir, which we had done earlier the day before. I'm a dork. The Wii, by the way, is incredibly fun.

We spent all day on Saturday cleaning and organizing our house. Chris starts school on Saturday, and we wanted to clean our office so that he would have somewhere to sit and study that he wouldn't have to share with boxes and piles of paper. We also did some house projects, like fixing our closet which inexplicably collapsed a couple of weeks ago. (Yes, the one that I built. Oops.) That led us to go through our clothes, and we both had a good number of things to go to goodwill. After cleaning our office, drawers, and a bookshelf, we now have a sizable goodwill pile, which always makes me feel productive.

Sunday we spent running errands, and we hung party lights in our backyard. Then Joanna and her friend Pat came over and we spent the evening drinking beer under them. This morning came so soon, and I didn't want to get up.

posted by Ami @ Monday, August 13, 2007 0 Comments

All About Me

I've been trying to write a "bio" since what seems like the dawn of time, and I keep putting it off for reasons unbeknowst to me. I mean, it's obviously not because I don't like to write about myself, because come on, I have a blog. So whatever, I'm just going to crank one out and be done with it.

My name is Ami (pronounced AH-mee). I am 28 years old and East Indian. I moved to the United States (small town Iowa) from the United Kingdom in 1985, when I was in the second grade. I went to the University Of Iowa, where I graduated in December 2000 with a BS in Computer Science. My family had left Iowa by then (for Arizona), so I had no reason to stay after I graduated. When I was looking for a job I just threw resumes out everywhere. Thank you internet!

I took a Software Engineering position in Salt Lake City, UT, of all places. Off to Utah I went in February of 2001 (What? I took a couple of months off to hang out.) and I fully intended to live and work here for a couple of years and then move on to somewhere else. But I loved Utah, and the job was great, and over seven years later, I'm still here, same job and all.

And of course, there was a boy... Chris is 36, and is a cowboy from the great state of Wyoming. He is also an engineer, and works at the same place as myself. He's smart, cute, funny, and he likes me back, thereby meeting all of my criteria for the perfect man. He puts up with and encourages all most of my crazy ideas, thereby exceeding my criteria for the perfect man.

We bought an old POS house together in October 2005. Because I'm nuts. (See above about encouraging my crazy ideas.) We have two cats, Roxy and Hillary, and they annoy us. And each other. We were married in June 2007 and are currently living happily ever after.

Things I love to do include traveling, camping, gardening, eating fabulous meals, cooking fabulous meals, playing the guitar (poorly), skiing (even more poorly), drinking (exceptionally well), hiking, running, going to plays, working on our house, taking photographs, and hanging with friends, preferably near bodies of water or swimming pools.

Things I do not like doing include dishes, dusting, getting up in the morning, cleaning up cat puke, getting up in the middle of the night to kick cats out of our bedroom, and getting up in the middle of the night to let cats into our bedroom. Luckily, Chris does most of those things for us, including getting me up in the morning.

We are planning to procreate sometime in the couple of years after our wedding, which should be highly entertaining for all of those involved. We plan to spend our (rapidly diminishing) child-free months eating at fancy restaurants, sleeping until noon, and drinking lots of beer and wine.

posted by Ami @ Thursday, August 09, 2007 0 Comments

Life Is Sweet Right Now

We had an awesome weekend, wherein we didn't do any of the chores we were supposed to, like mow the lawn and weed the garden. We just had fun, instead.

Friday night we met friends at The Bayou for beers. I had 3 giant wheat beers, and the company was excellent. I couldn't even finish the last beer. Chris had to help me.

Saturday morning I was wide awake at 8:30am, but Chris didn't want to get up. I stayed in bed and eventually fell back asleep. When Chris finally woke up, I was deep in round 2 of sleep and didn't want to get up. So he stayed in bed until I woke up, and it was 11am before we got our asses out of bed. (I am SO going to miss being able to do that when we have kids.) We got ready and hopped on our bikes to go to the farmer's market. We stopped on the way so that I could get my eyebrows waxed, and then we decided to eat lunch, and by the time we got to the market it was almost over. So we rode on to The Gateway instead, which is an outdoor mall type of thing. We shopped and hung out before riding home. On Saturday night we went to the drive in with some friends to see the Simpsons movie. It was pretty good. They also showed Live Free or Die Hard, which was good, but I suck at following movies like that so it didn't make much sense to me.

We got out of bed at a decent time on Sunday morning, somewhere in the 9 o'clock hour. The night before Chris had requested that we go to The Original Pancake House for breakfast, so we went there. It was super tasty. We stopped at the grocery store afterwards, and ran into a friend that we hadn't seen in quite a while. After the store we dropped our food off at home and left again to go shopping for jeans for Chris (we had unsuccessfully looked for them the day before) in Park City. We scored awesome jeans, and left to go to Jesse and Sharon's house for swimming and a barbeque. We ate a ton and I fell asleep on their couch while watching pre-season football like the homeless person that I am.

I would be sad that the weekend is over, but I'm going over to Steph's tonight to talk wedding things and play with makeup (her wedding is in less than a month!) and drink wine. And we just got invited to go boating on Friday (we have the day off), so this week is shaping up to be mighty fine. Good thing, too, because this coming weekend is Chris' last before starting school! I have a feeling our lives are about to change.

posted by Ami @ Monday, August 06, 2007 0 Comments

So we survived our first 5-day work week since we've been back. The last one we worked was the week of June 18th, so it was a little trying. We threw ourselves back into it fully, going to the gym at night and making good meals at home.

I'm reading the new Harry Potter book, and it's great so far. I'm not tearing through it, in fact, I don't want it to end. I'm going to be sad when there is no more Harry Potter to look forward to. I don't read much fiction, but these books are definitely the exception.

Tonight we are going to go to the gym and then we're going to go to the Bayou for drinks with friends after coming home to shower. Tomorrow we're going to run errands and then go up to the Canyons resort to their free Saturday night concert. A good lazy and relaxed weekend.

posted by Ami @ Friday, August 03, 2007 0 Comments