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Well, we had a pretty eventful weekend.  We’re finally recovering from our various trips and able to relax a little on the weekends.  On Friday night we attended a musical that one of Jon’s YM was performing in.  The title of the play: “Zombie Prom”.  We figured, zombies + prom + musical, how can that go wrong?  Plus, we wanted to provide a little moral support for Jon’s quorum member.  The play was actually pretty funny and well performed.  My favorite song by far had the chorus “Jonny, come back from the nuclear plant” and I’ve had it stuck in my head for two days now…

Basically, the story is about two high school kids that fall in love, Toffee and Jonny (Jonny rebeliously removed the ’H’ from his name).  Toffee’s parents thing Jonny is unfit for her and makes her break it off.  After learning about the break up Jonny commits suicide by jumping into the town’s nuclear reactor.  Of course, Toffee is distraught and unable to move on.  She pines for Jonny and is mourning the fact that she won’t have a date to the Sr. prom.  Her pining and love somehow bring Jonny back from the dead as her undead lover…but Toffee doesn’t really want an undead lover.  Drama ensues, the media is alerted about the anomoly and Jonny becomes an advocate for undead rights.  In the end love prevails and Toffee decides she wants Jonny even if he’s green and slightly slimely.  Ah true love.   

Saturday night we were able to babysit for a family in the ward.  Their kids were really sweet and we had a pretty good time.  They have two daughters and a infant little boy who is absolutely adorable.  It was good practice for us I think.  Feeding the baby, changing the baby, being thrown up on by the baby…Yeah…poor guy, we were trying to put him down for bed and he got so upset he threw up his entire bottle…all over me.  I think I had baby vomit literally from head to toe.  Strangely enough, I didn’t find it gross at the time, I was more worried about the little baby.  That must have been pretty tramatic for him.  At least after that Jon was able to rock him to sleep while I tried to clean myself up.  Ah…we’re bad babysitters.  Well, at least that was the only major incident of the evening.  The girls were really helpful and helped clean up too.  After the baby was asleep we did puzzles and played Twister and tag.  Now I see why parents are tired all the time.  Well, like I said good training and we had a pretty good time. 

Well, not much besides that going on on the Northwestern front for now.  Jon and I are getting ready for our Olympics trip to Vancouver (maybe we should actually learn the rules to curling so it makes a little sense).  Pixel is doing well too, she’s actually been a lot better behaved these past few weeks besides her new affection towards rubbery items.  We’ve “lost” the remote in her lair several times already .  Overall though, I’d say all is well.  We’ll try to post more often as the spring and summer pick up (come back to us Sun!).

I’ve had three embarrassing and very painful experiences this past week. So I figured I’d share it in this blog so at least somebody will be entertained at my expense.

1. While we were in Idaho for the holidays, we went to a Thai restaurant with family. One of the things we ordered was a soup with spiciness rating of 4 (out of 4). I like spicy food so I had Angela scoop me some of it. She asked me if there was anything specific in the soup that I wanted. I saw a baby carrot so I thought “ooh, I really feel like having a carrot.” I ate most of the soup and then got to the carrot. I bit down on it and thought it had a weird texture–kind of hollow with a chewy skin. It had such a weird texture that I spit it out to find that it wasn’t a carrot but a Thai pepper! My mouth was already burning but kept getting increasingly painful. The burning just wouldn’t go away even after drinking 4 glasses of water and eating two plates of rice. I started hyperventilating and I couldn’t see anything around me. I thought I was going to pass out! Or die!
2. 

   On the left is the mysterious cut I had when I woke up. On the right is the bite from ferret at Petco.

   All night last night, my finger was hurting. This morning I woke up to find that I had a cut about 1/4 inch wide on my finger and it was bleeding. What!? Where did that come from? Angela?
3. Today we went to Petco and saw they had a ferret. This one was particularly interested in us. I always stick my finger in the cage because the ferrets like to sniff you. This time was different. The ferret bit down on my finger hard and wouldn’t release it. I tried to shake her off to no avail. So then I tried to pull my finger out of the cage, and she still didn’t let go (even though her face was smashed against the cage). So I took my other finger and started tapping on her nose, which worked. Fifteen seconds and a bloody finger later, I finally had my finger back. Oh yea, and this bite was on the same finger that had the mysterious cut.

Pixel discovered that there are spots under the arms of our couch that she can climb into where we can’t reach her. As such, she likes to steal our things and hide them in the couch. Her favorite things to hide are stress balls, scissors, and flip flops.

She hides flip flops so often that we put them on top of our table so she couldn’t get them. That didn’t work because all she had to do was climb the table. Now we keep flip flops on top of her cage because she hasn’t figured out how to climb it yet.

We had an uber-successful shopping season this year!

About a week ago, we found a 24″ LCD full HD monitor for $170 with free shipping on the Dell Outlet website. Thanks to Twitter, I found a $20 coupon. So we got a humongous 24″ monitor for watching movies and viewing recipes while we’re cooking in the kitchen.

On Black Friday, we left for Old Navy at 2:20am. We bought 13 items including 50% off jeans. We got in the checkout line when there were four people in line and were out of the store in 20 minutes total. By the time we left the store, the checkout line had grown to about 30 people.

After Old Navy, I waited in line to get in to Target while Angela went to Kohl’s (which was already open) to buy a bunch of $3 board games and sweaters. Kohl’s gave us a $10 gift card for shopping there (woohoo!).

Target was the best store of the day! As evidence, the line was about 1000 people long by the time the store opened. Since we knew that perfect execution would be critical at Target, we shmoozed with an employee and got a map of the store. We also found out that we didn’t have to waste time grabbing a cart at the entrance because there would be carts spread throughout the store. We planned our route and were able to beat the 50-100 people in front of us in line to the good stuff. We got one of the four piano keyboards they had stocked, a bunch of DVDs, and tons of clothes. As we were leaving the electronics area, there were swarms of shoppers like ants swarming around their kicked anthill. I wanted to snap a picture but was afraid of being trampled, so we fled screaming and clutching our prizes. Finally at checkout, they gave us a $10 gift card!

At Staples, I grabbed four $10 webcams that were normally $50. When people kept taking them, I had to try hard to resist not taking more. My heart sunk when an employee told me that they only allowed one webcam per customer. I decided to try to check out anyways and we were particularly nice to the employee. We found out that she was sick the past week and consequently missed all the Black Friday orientation meetings. And she let us buy our webcams! We also bought some other good stuff like speakers, a GPS, and 8GB USB drives.

We headed over to Half Price Books in hopes of randomly winning a $100 gift card. Unfortunately we didn’t win. But they did give us $10 in gift cards.

After we finished out our critical early bird steals we headed to the mall and Angela went to JCPenney while I waited in the car.  She got a bunch of $9 sweaters and Christmas gifts for the Moomers.  After that we headed to Joann’s to pick a rubber stamp set for the giving tree at Angela’s office.  We got all the stamps for over half off! 

Black Friday was a success! We got every item that we wanted to get that day. But wait! That’s not the end of the good deals! On Saturday, we stopped by Ikea and found a hidden clearance section! We bought 14 plates for 99 cents each (normally $4.99 each). And rubber gloves for 10 cents each.

What a great year for deals!

So I don’t have any before/after pictures, but I guess it’s news.  I cut my hair last week.  I took off about 14 inches and donated it to Locks of Love.  I got it cut in this goth place with a tatoo parlor attached to it…that part was sort of odd, but they did a really good job.  I’m pretty happy with the cut.  Check out the upcoming posts for pictures of my new look.

We took a little vacation the week before Thanksgiving this year.  Our friend Susan visited us from Provo so we decided to have a little adventure.  We headed North on Sunday with our luggage and a bag of goldfish crackers.  Good thing we had them or we would have starved!  First we caught the Edmonds-Kingston ferry and drove to the Hood Canal Bridge, which was closed for about 25 minutes due to weather (we think).  Even with the delay we made it on the Black Ball Ferry that left from Port Angeles to go to Victoria, BC.  The ferry ride was really rocky and I even got a little sea sick along the way.  We arrived in Victoria just as the sun was setting.  My Mom and Dad were nice enough to let us borrow their time share for the trip.  The time share is located right down the street from the ferry terminal, so we didn’t have any trouble finding the place.  Once we got all settled we cooked dinner and just relaxed for the rest of the evening. 

Monday morning we went to breakfast at this “hippy” place near Chinatown.  It was pretty good, they had these really good pesto potatoes.  After that we just walked around Market Square and Chinatown.  Supposedly, Victoria’s Chinatown is the first Chinatown to be built in Canada.  It seems like winter is downtime in Victoria and there weren’t many people there or many stores open.  After we finished up there we headed to Craigdorrach Castle, which is a mansion that a wealthy family built in the 1800’s.  I wouldn’t call it a “castle”, but it was pretty fancy and it was interesting seeing how people lived back then.  The furnishing are mostly from the original family that built the house, so that was pretty impressive.  Next time we visit Victoria, I’d really like to visit Hatley Park, which is the house built by the oldest son of that family.  The pictures make it look like somewhere Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice would live…After the Castle we headed home for a little break, but headed out again later in the afternoon.  We set off on foot from the time share and saw the Parlament Building, Empress Hotel and walked to Victoria’s downtown which has a lot of little shops and resturants.  We got fish and chips at this little place, they were pretty good.  After exploring a little we headed back to the hotel since it was getting pretty late.  We did a little FHE at the time share then we caught dinner at a Japanese place then went to watch “The Blind Side” (that football movie with Sandra Bullock).  It was a pretty inspiring movie.  Showed that some people still have good hearts and it’s always good to try to help others out when you can. 

Tuesday morning we headed out to catch the morning ferry back to the US of A.  We drove through Port Angeles a little, but then we headed to the center of Twilight-dom and drove to Forks, WA.  Home of the Cullen vampires etc.  Forks was as small and bleak as the books described…I think there were like 20 buildings in the whole town max.  We ate lunch in a little diner, checked out the local high school and some Twilight stores…that was about all there was to do there.  After Forks, we headed back home. 

Overall, the trip was pretty nice and relaxing.  Victoria was very quaint and peaceful and a perfect Christmas town.  Maybe next time we’re up North we’ll visit the National Park and Victoria’s other sites.

Pixel seems to really get in trouble when she goes in the kitchen.  She climbs into the dishwasher, gets behind the fridge and sometimes climbs under the cabinets.  So to stop her from getting into the kitchen since we’ve had her, we set up a barricade consisting of lots of boxes, blankets, and anything else we had.  However this solution also made it hard for us to get in and out of the kitchen.

So I set out to build a barrier out of wood.  I’m pretty proud of what we ended up with, mostly because of how cheap it was.  The worker at Home Depot was extremely helpful.  We got some really MDF for really cheap since it wasn’t a full length.  The whole project cost $2.59.  Here are the pictures:

Introducing the newest member of the Chin family!  Pixel, our new pet ferret!  We got her last Monday, but we first met her three weeks ago.  We were walking around Petco looking at the animals until we saw the ferrets.  There were five ferrets in the cage, but there was a white one that was really interested in us looking at and smelling us.  She must have put some ferret spell on us because we kept wanting to buy her.  We checked out about ten books from the library about ferrets and kept checking Petco to make sure she wasn’t sold yet.  We were fearing the day that we’d go back and she’d be gone, especially because the ferrets had been marked 50% off.  We were sure she would be the first one to be bought because she was the cutest!  The day finally came when we took her home.  We named her Pixel because she was comparatively small (and because we’re nerdy).

Pixel sure is a handful!  She has so much energy and runs around wild (we’ll post a video later).  She bites when she’s having fun, but we’re trying to train her to not bite at all.  When we put her in her cage, she bites onto the wire and pulls violently.  And when she’s mad at us, she poops outside of her litter box.

We think she’s deaf because she doesn’t wake up or respond to any amount of noise.  Which could explain a lot of her behavior.  We learned that deaf ferrets often tip their head back like a Pez dispenser.  Intense staring is another thing that deaf ferrets usually do, and that’s probably what entranced us about her in the first place.

So far, we’ve had some interesting ferret adventures.  Pixel sleeps for about 18 hours each day, but when she’s up for those remaining 6 hours it’s like her energy has been concentrated, distilled then distilled again.  She’s like a little ball of craziness!  We’ve showered her with all sorts of toys, but her favorite toys are still this paddle ball Angela got for free at a conference, a cardboard tube from our Rockband set’s box and a big plastic bag.  I guess she’s into cheap things like her human parents.  Her craziest moment yet was yesterday right after we gave her a bath.  She was bouncing off the walls, literally.  She ran all over the apartment, ran into every piece of furniture and was just rolling around.  According to the books we’ve read that’s pretty normal for bath time…so we can look forward to it every other week…yay. 

She sure is a lot of work, but we’re sure glad to have her as an addition to the family. 

Jon and I have blogged about this place in the past, but we went there last night and had another great experience.  We go there because they take the resturant.com coupons that you can get online sometimes for dirt cheap.  This time we got a small meat nacho appetizer, it was sooooo yummy and huge!!!  It was only $6, a real steal even without a coupon.  Jon ordered a really big burrito and I got an Enchilada platter.  The plate as about a foot wide it was huge!  I only took a couple bites and was stuffed.  We ordered fried ice cream (of course) and the churro plate.  The churro’s weren’t really worth the price considering the fact that you can get a really good churro at Costco for $1.  Next time any of you are in town, we’ll take you here!  We always order enough food for 4~

A couple of weeks ago, Jon and I went with my group of interns to the San Juan Islands.  We got to try sea kayaking for the first time!  When we booked the trip our main reason for going was to see whales, but we weren’t so lucky.  We saw a bunch of other things though like seals, starfish, jellyfish and some cool tide pools.  Kayaking in the open ocean is really hard!  It’s mildly terrifying being tossed around in the ocean like a little cork top, but it was a lot of fun to see all the cool things we did. 

The beginning of our trip wasn’t very smooth.  We headed out of Redmond a tad bit late and on the way Jon was stopped and we got a speeding ticket   It was a big trick, there was one cop radaring people and then about 10 cops lined up behind her just pulling people over.  After that we were really late so we didn’t have time to park our car before the ferry left, we drove the car on and it cost $90!  Rip off!  Everything with the trip went smoothly after that though.