Evil Red Threes

My sister Melody is visiting from California. We played card games into the night, just like old times. Except, "into the night" means something new when you have to get up in the morning for work. When we were young, "into the night" meant we could stay up until the wee hours of the morning. This week "into the night" was only 11:00. It's ridiculous how late that felt, but it was fun. I lost every single game we played. Some of it was bad luck, some of it was bad risk-taking. I made the "Sisters Team" lose 1,500 points... My team member had three evil red threes in Hand and Foot. We started a new game after that.

Speaking of starting things, I'm hoping to start a new painting. I want it to hang in our bathroom. I'm thinking something floral. Any ideas?

A Perfectly Good Waste of Time

So, I'm going to write about this since Lovetta seems to ashamed to mention it in public (note: I have no shame in this matter). Before we moved into our new apartment, some friends of ours told us about their latest adventure into internet and movie entertainment. Netflix. It's a magical land of DVDs and Streaming TV, ready for your viewing pleasure at a simple $8.99/mo. We wanted in, and boy has it been wonderful.

Besides hitting a few bumps in some of our movie selections, we've been able to catch up on quite a few films that we've wanted to see in the last while. But, most importantly, we've started catching up on new (to us) and favorite TV shows that we'd been missing out on. All of this really started about a month ago when I convinced Lovetta that we should start watching the first season of Heroes that she'd been wanting to see.

Picture this. We'd just had a wonderful date night on a Friday evening filled with Maglby's and Mario Kart Wii. It's now about 10:30 at night and I'm thinking it's just about time for bed. We brush our teeth, while I sit down at the computer. Hmmm, I think to myself, this episode is only 42 minutes long. We'll still be in bed by 11:30 no problem. Not a big deal. Four hours later, we decide that it's probably a good idea to get some sleep. This was only the beginning.

Over the course of the last month, we've gone through two and a half seasons of Heroes, almost a full season of The Office, two and a half seasons of 30 Rock (that one was just me), a few episodes of Dr. Who, and quite a few movies. Next up on our playlist, for those of you who are curious, is Lovetta's chance to get me to watch Bride and Prejudice. Those of you who have seen this will probably laugh, for better or for worse. My judgement has yet to be passed.

Now, back to the "shame" issue. Lovetta has a hard time with the idea of watching 4 episodes in one day of whatever TV-show-crack we happen to be watching at any given moment. I do not. Maybe it's the difference in upbringing. She had no TV growing up; I had my fair share. Part of the reason I have no problem with it is because I know that she needs to learn to relax a little bit. She's spent too much time in her life living for school, she's forgotten how to enjoy wasting time. Label this what you will (obsessive, lazy, unproductive, unhealthy, pathetic, awesome), I know that it's for the greater good in the end. Besides, after a certain point, we'll get all caught up with these shows and have to watch them week-by-week like normal people do.

SCIENCE! Episode 2

We're back! This time we tackle one of the supermarket's darkest secrets. How do you tell a ripe watermelon from its unripe brethren? In this three- to four-part series, we will use the INTERNET to reveal this great mystery for your (or at least our) viewing pleasure.

Movie Editing Blues

So, as you may have noticed, Lovetta and I rather enjoy making movies. Our next episode of "SCIENCE!" will be coming to you shortly. Before we get to that, though, I just had to gripe a little bit. A few months ago, we bought the new iLife '09 suite, mostly with high hopes for the new version of iMovie that came along with it. Watching the previews of it, the program seemed pretty easy to use and not as bulky as Adobe Premiere (which the both of us are used to using to some degree of ameteurity). We've since edited two episodes of our show using iMovie and have gotten increasingly frustrated with it. It isn't as intuitive as we would have liked and we often find ourselves wishing for some sort of Frankenstein's monster of the movie-making world--a little bit of iMovie and a little bit of Premiere.

The number one complaint we have for iMovie is its lack of a consistent audio/video timeline editor. Sure, you could call the "Precision Editor" a timeline editor, but it's quite lacking. Cutting clips is a pain. Lining up your audio is a pain, even if you're scaled down to .5 seconds. Considering that this is most of what you spend your time doing, we've found ourselves yelling at the stupidity of it all. Lovetta wants me to be fair now. So, to be fair, I think iMovie makes a faster finishing program for things like transitions, subtitles, ducking, etc. It makes those kinds of things easier (though less customizable).

Premiere is just a beast to work through. While the quick, more precise audio/visual editor is nice, the fact that it allows for a lot of customization can be a turn off at times. This is why we had such high hopes for iMovie. So, we're going to do a little experiment (outside of SCIENCE!). These first two episodes will be done in iMovie. The third and fourth episodes--already filmed--will be done in Premiere. Afterwards, we'll see what we like and maybe post about it. Who knows? Maybe we'll end up using them both in our own sort of Mary-Shelley-type way...

Of Cuts and Computers

So Lovetta and I just got haircuts about a week ago. These are our same-day haircut shots.
Before/After


Before/After


This is us today, after a little stylage.



Lovetta decided that she wanted to go back to something a little shorter. I did too, though you can hardly tell the difference between the before-after shot (not like hers anyway). I'd say more about it, but the pictures speak louder than words.

On to more important and fun things. Like this:


I'm gonna let Lovetta now explain the awesomeness that is now held in her hands. Take it away, babe!

He, he, he... well, it is very nice. All I did yesterday was get it set up and play with it. Tom is always on our iMac, so I'm super excited to have a computer of my own. It will be very handy for school next year. I resolve to start writing in my journal again, write letters to friends on missions, and check my email.

We bought it from the BYU Bookstore with our tax return yesterday. Apple just had their World Wide Developer's Conference where they announced their new laptops. This is a discontinued model, so it was on sale. I got a free iPod touch, too. The iPod connects to the iCal on my laptop which makes it useful for scheduling things.

I feel very spoiled. :)

SCIENCE!

Yay! Tom and I answer one of life's most pressing questions. Do different colored Fruit Loops have different flavors? Only, due to budget issues for this video, we've substituted Western Family "Fruit Rings" for the Fruit Loops. Science is fun! And maybe I'll get better at filming and talking at the same time so the next video (this is only the beginning) won't be so focused on Tom's tie... although, it is lovely.

Your Life A Splode

That's kind of what we've been feeling like lately. Ignoring the fact that we haven't updated our blog in *cough* 10 months, things have definitely been happening.

We decided to move our blog off of MobileMe, because it costs too much. Blogspot is free. Because of this move, we no longer have picture galleries for you to look at. QQ. We'll figure something out. Although, admittedly, we haven't taken that many pictures in a while. Maybe we'll upload our watermelon-testing videos to YouTube and post those here. Definite good times. Let me get you caught up on things a little bit.

August to April: We took a lot of classes. Lovetta got a year-long half-salary internship at Westridge Elementary. I got a student teaching opportunity at Timpanogos High School. We taught. It was fun.

April to Present: We graduated, finally. Lovetta had to still teach for about a month until her contract ended at Westridge . That's over now. She has a job at Noah Webster Academy in Orem teaching first grade. I have nothing. Except maybe a lot of time on my hands. If any of you out there want to BBQ this summer, let me know. I'm all about eating meat.

Great! Now you're caught up from last August to today. Easy enough right?

Well, we're kind of at an interesting point in life and in marriage. Since both of our jobs really don't have work time during the summer, we're trying to figure out what on Earth to spend our time doing. One solution: Seven Peaks Waterpark season passes. Oh yeah! It's all about lazing around in front of a pool and water slide all summer long. While this won't be taking up all of our time, we figure that the amount of money we spent on the passes will encourage us to spend a fair amount of time getting wet and getting tan.

In other news, our apartment is a mess. Let me explain to you mathematically. Free Furniture + Everything from Lovetta's Classroom Being Stored in the Apartment + New Exercise Bike X The Amount of Time I Spend Playing Video Games Instead of Cleaning/Organizing Because I'm Lazy = No Room for the Inhabitants of the Reyes-Cairo Houshold. Follow that? At least we have a place to sleep. Eat? Not so much. I think this next week is going to be deep clean week. It should be, anyway.

Well, we'll be updating things a lot more frequently now. We have the time for it after all. Catch ya round here soon.