United Breaks Guitars

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

This is hilarious - and so satisfying!

The basic story goes like this. While flying United Airlines, the man in this video, Dave, observed airline employees throwing baggage and they broke his guitar. After a year of filing complaints with United and receiving no compensation he told them that he would write three songs about United's service. This is the first of his three songs. It's become a real viral hit and a "PR nightmare for United".



Enjoy :)

Craig forgot his phone at home today and this is what I do because we can't text today

Monday, July 13, 2009

Google searches

Q: Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search.
A: Shara needs a huge amount of energy to sustain his temporal breach and sacrificed his own body to act as the lodestone to achieve his moment in eternity. (Um, not only is this super weird, but how did Shara become a guy's name?!)

Q: Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search.
A: Hi Shara! You look like one buff chicka! (to a Shara on Myspace)

Q: Type in "[your name] says" in Google search.
A: I like to talk about tv, culture, politics, nature, and peace! (from a Shara on twitter)

Q: Type in "[your name] wants" in Google search.
A: Shara wants to play in the basement (from an online choose your own adventure story)

Q:Type in "[your name] does" in Google search.
A: Shara does not exist (hehehe!)

Q: Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search.
A: SHARA absolutely HATES bugs and the EXTREME hot hot weather (actually that's true)

Q: Type in "[your name] asks" in Google search.
A: Will hot pink lips be trendy for spring/summer of 2009?
(FYI according to The Insider's Hot or Not hot pink lips were trendy in 2007 and if you want to try this style you should at the tail end of summer before winter sets in.) This Shara asks what happened to Fall?

Q: Type in "[your name] likes " in Google search.
A: Shara likes to capture that magic.

Q: Type in "[your name] eats " in Google search.
A: We have this idiom in Arab region if shara spoke, all of us should eats hay (no idea what this means).

Q: Type in "[your name] wears " in Google search.
A: Shara wears a lab coat in her human form . . . (what the?!)

Q: Type in "[your name] was arrested for" in Google Search.
A: Nothing came up - I got a bunch of references for arrests in the Sahara. I'm taking that to assume that Sharas are a gentle creatures who don't break the law,

Q: Type in "[your name] loves" in Google Search.
A: Shara loves trees but she does not have one of her very own

(this is just for fun, but have you ever searched your name before? I do on a regular basis - and I recommend doing it often. One time I searched for my name and the first thing that came up was my name, email, address, phone number - for everyone to see!! - I contacted the person who put it up - it was for a ward/church thing and they took it down. It made me very uneasy how quickly information can be put up about you and you wouldn't even know)

不好意思

Friday, July 10, 2009

Today I was asked to do some review work at my job. It was a little intimidating. It also made me realize that I am being very lazy about my Chinese. Here I have this great skill, and a great opportunity to keep it up (I mean I work in translation, I'm surrounded by Chinese all day long!) and yet I'm not taking advantage of it. It killed me that I had to look up a bunch of characters that knew at one point. It's sad to me that I'm such a slacker about it.

I can actually pinpoint the point where my desire to keep up my Chinese fell - it was when I was taking Chinese classes at BYU and I kept getting criticized for my Taiwanese accent (I mean I only had native Taiwanese companions for most of my mission). I learned to speak Chinese so well that on the phone I would often get mistaken for a native, then that was the best feeling ever - but it changed when I went to school. After that I became or embarrassed to speak it. It's sad really.


Anyways - I've decided that I'm going to be more like Craig. He inspires me. He learns all that he can about the Titanic. He actively researches about the ship - especially the design, layout, and mechanics of the ship. I love to see him reading so intently about something that he is so interested in. I need to take that same attitude and keep up my Chinese - especially when China comes out as the next super-power and will take over the world ;).

Anyways - that was just my thought for today.

Have a great weekend!

For Your Enjoyment: Joshua Radin

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Today


Sky


The Fear You Wont Fall


I was introduced to Joshua Radin through my friend Cecelia. I really like the folksy, alternative, free sort of feeling he has. He has a really sexy voice. :)

(and yes Craig can't stand any of it, thus continuing our tradition of not liking one another's music)

Thank you Tom!!

Monday, July 6, 2009

We had our friend Tom take a look at some of our wedding photos - He did a great job - he gave us some shots we didn't have before and I was pleased with just the touches he did to make them look more professional. Thank you! We so appreciate it.

Here is just a look at what he did:

Before
A half-hearted attempt at the tilt. This half-way approach didn't look artistic, just sloppy. I'm obviously not a fan of the tilt, but if you're going to use that effect you should commit to it.

After:
All it took was a little straightening and cropping to make it look finished.

Also one thing I was really sad about was we got very few close-ups of the two of us. I looked through all the long shot pictures she had and there were two that Tom was able to crop down to give us some close ups which made me very happy (these are easy enough to do on my own, but my cropping tool - the ever so advanced Microsoft Paint- doesn't let me crop proportionally)

Before:Nothing too wrong with this picture, but . . .

After:
This is so much nicer! Just look at my handsome husband!

Before:
Again, not sure if this tilt was intentional or not, it looks a little sloppy.

After:
I'm so happy this one turned out so well!
I'm just so happy to have a few more close ups (Tom did some more close-up magic to come).

This one is all about the magic of photoshop.
When we were taking these pictures our photographer spotted Stacia and Richard in the reflection. She asked them to move and got some more shots of this pose, but when she sent them to us we only got the one with them in the reflection (see left-side in the window). I asked Tom what he could do.

Before:

After: They're gone!! Yes you can tell slightly that is has been photoshopped, but I think it is much less distracting than the reflections. I was pleased!

This next one is my favorite result:

Before:
We had a whole series of pictures of us walking towards her under spring trees. They were alright.

But Tom just cropped them in and it pops!! It just needed to be finished a bit to look like a professional picture rather than a snapshot.

After:
In fact when we saw this Craig "wowed" at this picture. Also important to note is Craig hates kissing pictures. Our wedding day was the first time he willing took kissing pictures and it was grudgingly (I'm sure most everyone is ok with this).

Last but not least. Of the six close-up shots she gave us four of them were after Craig had been sunburned . I asked Tom if he could lessen the sunburn so we could use these pictures.

Before:

After:Much better!

If you view them larger it makes a bigger difference than these small pictures. But you get the idea. They weren't huge changes, but he was so kind to fix these up for us so we could be more happy with how our pictures turned out.

Tom is actually a very talented photographer. He is great with the camera and not just in photoshop. We keep encouraging him that he could become a professional with his skills. Maybe one day. . .

Thank you Tom!!

4th of July BBQ

Sunday, July 5, 2009

This 4th of July we celebrated in the most American way we know how: BBQ.

Our friend Christian is really good on the grill. A few friends talked to us about getting together on the 4th and so the BBQ was arranged. It ended up being mostly a bunch of people from our old ward in Cinnamon Tree, I lived there for two years right after my mission. It was an awesome ward. Carina Kirsti, Becca and Stacia were all roommates of mine from CT (although technically, Stacia was a roommate of mine from the time I was 3). Christian and Rich were known for whistling (Christian) at and shooting water guns (Rich) at us from across the grassy knoll/muddy plains - those were good times. We really enjoyed having everyone over.

Here's most of the crew, Christian, Rich, Carina, Anthony, Brianne, Joshua (the little guy on the blanket), Cody (Carina's husband) and Becca.

Stacia and Rachel! - Smile!
Another shot of almost everyone - Christian cooked up four pork roasts and plenty of brats and polish sausage. Everyone brought delicious food, although I think the star dish (aside from the meat) was the cobbler Kirsti made, Craig insisted that we keep some for him for leftovers.

Then we went a shot off a few fireworks. Craig especially liked when we went to lit a few fireworks and Cody threw the monster balls up in the air. He could throw them so high that the exploded in the air! That was awesome! There was a small concern when we drew attention from some of the neighborhood kids and three of them began to lit some dead grass on fire. We weren't quite sure what to do, fortunately the left pretty quickly and we stomped out the fire.

Hope you enjoyed your 4th of July celebrations as well!

Make Mine Freedom

Thursday, July 2, 2009

I can't help but think that too many of us already signed away our Freedom for some ISM.



I'm ready to go back to what made America great.
Happy 4th of July!

I would love . . .

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

to fill you all in on my interview and this last week (I had a great time with some of my friends) but Craig is on his way home right now! In fact he's so close he won't tell me. So I have a husband to go see! Have a great day!

I'm going to be famous

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Ok, not really, but I am going to be part of a book.

About a year ago I was invited to be part of a workshop for this woman who was in the process of writing a book about dating in a hanging-out world. I dragged my friend Becca and we went to some of these workshops. It was pretty fun and she asked me to send her some of my experiences. Which I did and promptly forgot about, until today.


I just got a call from this woman. She has a publisher and wants to interview me for the book!! How exciting! I'm going to do the interview tonight. . . I'll let you know how it all goes. And who knows I probably be cut by editors, but still it's exciting.
image found here

Carey Come Visit Soon!

Monday, June 29, 2009

My good friend Megan is visiting from New Jersey. She was my roommate during Summer 2007. We got to talking and wow - that summer was the best. It was so fun. I'd forgotten how great that summer was and how much fun we had living in CT. Megan and Carey were both visiting students for the summer. We were determined to show them a good time - and boy did we! (It helps when they were so fun too!)

Here are some of the things we did:

  • Camping in Zion - we had a big group come down. It was a blast - that is still one of my favorite camping trips.
  • "So Betos" we got asked this every night. While Betos is gone now (and honestly I don't think we went that often) Christian never failed to ask, and we went out to eat - a lot. Doesn't Christian have the friendliest face? Megan and I both agree that Christian is the best! He really is and was the heart of CT and what made it so good.
  • Pranks - oh man there were some good one. Like the time we took all of 61's video games and passed them around to every girl's apt in CT (we kept a thorough list of what went where). This was too funny and I look back on it fondly, but I'm not sure 61 does and there were reprecautions. ;)
  • Ice Skating - look at how fun these people are!
  • We had a murder mystery (high school themed). We had a blast - and due to Eric's amazing hair dye a few crushes were developed (none by me of course). I write this knowing that Craig thinks murder mysteries are lame - little does he know how much I loved them a few years ago. I wrote two of them! (ps ones you write on your own are so much better than the games you can buy).
  • The whole season of Firefly, we set up a TV outside and watched it way into the night (I think I only actually participated in this once, but still so fun!)
  • Noodle dates
  • I Can Hear the Bells - Carey and I did a lip sync to this for all the "sweet spirits" out there
  • "I like plain potatoes" I can't elaborate on this, but this represents many memories from that summer.
  • Turning 25 and I was visited at work by and given 25 black roses and onions (?). :D Can you imagine being surprised by this group? That was awesome!!
  • This picture
Those were some happy happy times. When I think back on times in my life that summer ranks as one of the best!

Craig's gone another week - but we still get blessings

Sunday, June 28, 2009

So one of our main goals right now is to get out of debt. We read the book Total Money Makeover (thank you Mickelle & Scott!), it is an awesome book and has really helped us to get really focused with getting out of debt. I highly recommend it to anyone who is really serious about getting out of debt and staying out of debt.


So this month is the first month we've really been able to hit our debt, and we have felt really blessed with being able bring more money in. Craig has been out of town working (when he goes out of town he can always make more). This time however, Craig talked to his boss and is able to get paid by the foot instead by the hour. Fortunately I have a very hard-working husband and now he'll be getting at least twice as much as he would have by the hour (even with overtime!). I feel really grateful for this huge blessing. I'm proud of my hubby and grateful to a kind boss. We are hoping to be out of debt by October!! It's looking good so far (and now that I just typed that we're going to have to replace his car tires, or I'm going to have 10 cavities . . . hopefully I didn't just jinx us).


a little bit of a heavy heart

Thursday, June 25, 2009

So we know that Michael Jackson, King of Pop, died today. Honestly his death doesn't affect me in the slightest. But there is something that is disturbing me about it.

child victims < pop star

This is the a reaction I've been seeing from a lot of people. I've seen many reactions saying that we should respect him, his career and his music. We need to forgive him for making mistakes (after all everyone does). We should honor this man who hurt little ones. M.J. was a very talented man, no doubt about that. But when did a few songs and some dance moves become more deserving than the well-being of an innocent child?

Sorry this is a heavier thought for today. But that attitude saddened me. I'd rather little children weren't hurt and we would be without a few good songs.

P.S. molesting a child is never a "mistake."