Public Announcement

I am of the firm belief that many of today's styles make girls look stumpy. I see it on blogs, online clothing stores, and in public everywhere, and I have a great fear for society because of it. Please, whatever you do, avoid the stumpiness.

this message brought to you by shirley elizabeth

Noteworthy

Today is Tuesday and it is the last day of my work-week.

*hallelujah*

Tonight Mike and I are skipping town and setting off for places far more cold (regrettably). By this time tomorrow we will be catching up some sleep at my sister’s in Provo, and by sunset Wednesday should be pulling into my Aunt and Uncle’s place in southern Idaho. All of this (minus the cold) puts me into a very good mood, despite the fact that I was up way too late putting audio books on Mike’s iPod for the trip and woke up with just enough time to not put on any make-up and head out the door. For this reason, I am going to take a couple minutes (waiting to use our super slow printer here at work) and will share with you some of the things making me smile:

•My yawns are so big my that throat makes frog noises at the climax.

•I noticed that Jamyn (our intern, “jammin”) looks very good in the boots she is wearing today. She has good shaped legs for boots. I don’t see that often.

•We received more holiday basket magazines today. I love shredding.

•Mike texted me: thanks for not being super lame/trendy at life. I like that about you.
•He is cool

•Thursday night I found these long-sleeved blouses (yes Heidi, I said blouses – but I don’t know what else to call them!) that fit me amazingly comfortably and sexylike for only $6.50 each and I now own four colors and have worn at least one every day since then. And probably will for the rest of winter. I only wish they had more colors.

•I just realized that I haven’t yet zipped my zipper today.

•One of our trades that would like to gain back our favor just walked in the door (as I type) (and zip my zipper) with two boxes of donuts for us. Among two boxes there’s got to be ONE that I won’t turn my nose up at!

•Ooh just think about all the goodies trades will be sending/bringing us for the holidays! One of the pluses of working for a general contractor around Christmas.

•Mike's the smartest guy I know and fixed our speedometer!

•My Aunt and Uncle have an amazing house and yard/field area. It’s been years since I’ve been there! Although…I’ve never visited in the winter….kinda scared.

•Our printer at the office that acts as a perpetual dog whistle will soon be replaced.

•Road tripping with Mike!!

i want

… to not have to sing tonight. or perform at all.

… daylight to stay longer. darn solstices.

… to watch alias. i miss sydney.

… saturday to be here already. for real.

… mike.

… to tell a someone a something secret that i can’t tell yet.

… time to read the library books i’ve got before they’re due.

… to quote hook right now.

… something salty.

… to not have to deal with work.

… a smoothie. or perhaps a mushy.

… sleep. naturally.

For such a special occassion

I’m not really all that inclined to blogging. I often think of things that are noteworthy (I would say), but I’m most likely to either keep it to myself, tell Mike about it, or write it in my journalnotebookthingy. Also, though not often verbally expressed, I have very strong opinions, and writing about very strong opinions requires a well thought and flawlessly written argument. The instances that I have actually taken the time to write out my flawless argument about a topic, I afterward decide that, for various reasons, I am better off keeping it to myself. I have many drafts that will never be posted.

So I then wonder how it is that I have any posts at all, and what circumstances bring me to write one. Today I will attribute it to the fact that I have been super annoyed with work lately, have been super surprised every time that I remember it's still only Wednesday, am super in love with Michael, and am super craving a red-flavored frozen burrito.

During the summer my friend came to me and said, “Shirley I really need your help, come work with me for five days.” So I did. It really was a huge mess, and five days turned into over a month and eventually they offered me a full-time position (although it wasn’t as smooth as that. I worked through lunch and even evenings at home for the small pay I told my friend I’d help him out at, and they finally decided it was time to stop taking advantage of me when I started applying for other jobs.). Since I have worked here, they have fired/lost three people and hired two (not including me). I actually think that the people they have finally settled on can be a very strong and successful team. Let me introduce them to you:

First you have William. He is the fourth (I think) Controller of the company since its birth, two years ago, and my friend from school. We enjoy making swords out of used 10 key tape and discussing the time that we will take over all of the incompetent accounting departments in the world, starting with GRIC. It is probably best to describe him as having the sweetest and most adorable wife and little girl.

Tessa is our Office Manager, whose job it is to respond to the owner’s texts at 3 in the morning on a Sunday and stress over completing the bosses, often silly, demands. Every Tuesday she tells us a new story. My favorite will always be the one where she proudly brought her graham cracker crust pie to a family party to be told by her mother-in-law that you’re supposed to crush the graham crackers, and second is probably the time she tried to cook a steak in the storage drawer under the oven. She just recently found out that she is pregnant with her third and completely unplanned for child and wishes she could talk her husband into naming it Lyric Ryce if it is a boy.

Todd is cool. He is our Estimator and has three daughters under 10 that each probably play softball better than me, not that I’m saying that’s a big feat. He’s an A-league softball man himself and has a goatee. He likes to give me his leftover french-fries from lunch and never tires of staring at me over the half wall that encircles my desk until I notice and jump out of my skin. He has great patience, and I swear I hear him count backwards from ten every time Colby calls him “T-rod.”

Colby and Jaafe (jayph) are the bosses. I’m not all the way entirely sure what they do. It sometimes seems rare to see them in the office for more than ten minutes at a time, always leaving (if they came in the first place) with the same “hold down the fort, Shirley” joke, and when they are gone often call and ask me to look up directions to somewhere, though they pay for the ability to do that on their phones. I can only assume that they are off making business acquaintances or at job sites. The two think that the sole purpose of their fifty-inch computers (okay that might be an exaggeration) is for watching hunting videos and country westerns on YouTube, and consider “black-tie” to be a cowboy hat, a plaid button-down, and one of their 200 pairs of designer, dry-cleaned jeans. Colby likes to talk about the unwritten "agreements" he has with project owners in regards to profit numbers, and we can always tell when Jaafe has been in the office by the icicles hanging from our desks because he was warm and turned the air down to 50.

I am Shirley and I do stuff and have a zit on my forehead today.

In other news, check out these pictures from my phone:

to answer your question

If I were to say why, half of the world, and very likely you, would be highly offended. I just don't care for or subscribe to any of that, and I'll probably always be a disappointment to you because I don't ever plan to. Indeed, my present self would be ashamed of my future self if I ever were to.
Yet what would my future self know? People aren't the type that, in the moment, consider their actions or ideas to be silly or foolish or needing to be checked; that is why so much silly, foolish, and unchecked things or notions get done or inspired.
Granted, there is much silly- and foolishness that I partake in: like eating crackers and cheese right before bed, spilling milk in the car, or spending an entire week of evenings reading my Austen and Bronte classics instead of attending to the negelcted kitchen or cluttered rooms.
But there are just some types of foolishness I hope to always avoid, and if there are steps I can take to make that hope more certain, then I definitely will take them two at a time.


In other news, I have little regard for my bosses. Luckily the people I work with are respectable.

and, three of my beautiful nails broke today. but the fact that I had them is applaudable. Seven out of ten doesn't look too tacky.

I'M DOING THIS

And I can't frickin' wait! But really I have to. Till February.

Now, as some people may know, I love and live to run. More than Mike does for college football (mine's year round! beat that!). I sometimes truly honestly wish that I could quit work and just concentrate on my running and being awesome. Honestly, I am not very good -- but I absolutely strive to be. I can run for a pretty long time. I have the endurance to be able to pick up and run an hour after not running for a long time, and I have a level enough head (or maybe it's the opposite) to be able to stand/love an upwards of three hour run when in shape and 80 mile weeks (though I haven't done that since getting engaged). Can you imagine how amazing it would be to be a real runner and just run all the time and do 200 mile weeks? makes my shoulders go weak.

SO. My excitement: I am going to be one of a twelve-woman team to run 36 legs of a 202-mile relay race from Prescott to Mesa. One plus of the course is that it's coming back down into the valley, so there'll be plenty of downhill! Looking at the course map, though, there will be plenty of tough legs, too.

TO MY FAMILY: I hope to claim leg 23 because it passes right by my parents' house out in carefree, and I expect everyone to be out there cheering me on - even if it's at three in the morning.

See? The little black circle is their house, and the red line covering the Carefree Highway is leg 23. Just as I said: right by. If you zoom out it looks a lot closer.

TO MIKE'S FAMILY: Lap 36 (the very last lap) runs right by your house -- even more right by than my parents'. I would draw on another map image, but it would be so zoomed in order to see just how close it passes that people would be able to see in your windows, and that's not safe to post on the internet. We'll just suffice it to say that it is within a two-minute's walk of your front door, right on McClellan and Grand. I do not quite feel comfortable asking for the last leg of the race, since I think that might belong to the captain, but I'll be there all the same.

Is this not the coolest thing? If you want to run....I can see if we're still wanting girls. I don't know yet who all is on the team, or if we even have 12 yet.

Also, to be cool and see cool stuff, visit http://www.ragnarrelay.com/.

What I Pass Up

The debut Kate Spade clothing line is out. It's beautiful. I got to research Kate Spade for my entrepreneurship class last semester. It's a pretty cool/interesting story. From an entrepreneur standpoint.


My life would be a little more sweet with this cardigan. I am infatuated with it, quite literally. I keep a window open in one of my tabs at work and sometimes click over to it just to look at it again.

The problem is that I will never own it. The price of ownership is the same as six months of internets, or 13 tanks of gas, or the cost of repairing my laptop keyboard, or about a million dinners, or the collective cost of all of the wedding presents we will buy till this time next year.

I don't think I could ever really feel right about owning/wearing something - just one little article of clothing - with such a high price. Actually I take that back. I've worn expensive gifts and not felt too bad. I don't think I could feel right about actually buying it. It's not just that I would feel guilty about spending so much on myself or one thing, I would feel less personal integrity. There are things to spend money on, and a wardrobe that makes me feel beautiful is one of those, but I know my Heavenly Father (and heck, my earthly father) is counting on me to find a way to use my resources to help my family and others around me, not just me. But with these ideas and feelings, why am I cursed with such expensive taste? It just makes it so I never buy anything.

And maybe I take this too far, or maybe we're just poor, but seriously, I bought some tan pants, a couple pair of jeans, and some tank tops for EFY last summer, and then the next time I bought any clothing, except for my wedding dress, was my graduation outfit (this past May). Is that sad? I'm getting better though, 'cause I bought a few things with my birthday dinero from mis padres a couple weeks ago.

To close this post up, I will tell of my solution to the cardigan problem. I'm sure I could find a good, adorable cardigan with the same bracelet sleeves for $30-50. Then it's all a matter of cutting up felt into those cute flowers, stitching them in with little beads, and probably replacing whatever buttons it has to be as cute as the ones in the picture. And if I ever get around to finding, cutting, and stitching, I could invite you over to make your own. Though it would obviously have to be in different colors.