Juneau

Here's the amazing Juneau once again. This is starting to turn into more of a Juneau blog than a girly and boy blog, but that's ok, because he's girly and boy's boy.

Drama Drama Drama

    This last week has been a bit dramatic to say the least. Right after our last post, Dan's bike was stolen. Yes, that's right. The love-of-his-material-life LeMond. He left for class about ten minutes before I left for work that night - and he took my keys on accident. I had my spare and he was able to lock one of his bike locks so we figured it'd be ok. When Dan walked out of class the bike was right there, perfectly ok. Teresa was nice enough to give him a ride home to pick up his spare lock keys but when they got back to campus fifteen minutes later...it was gone. Poor man was devastated. Dan's even admitted that he'd rather somebody steal his car than his bike!

This event was a catalyst for even more problems over the next few days. Dan was (and still is) checking everything from craigslist to ebay religiously in the hopes to find it up for sale. While perusing for it, he found a great deal on a bike up in Portland. He talked to the guy and finalized the sale with us to head to Portland in the morning to pick it up. I had to call several coworkers to get my shift covered and we purchased a bike rack to take my bike (which was discovered in our hunt for the LeMond and was too good of a deal to pass up) so we could go on a ride through the city after. We'd arranged to call him when he got out of church at one. After getting a bit...lost...in Portland and taking a small stroll around an arboretum we headed into town. We'd just walked into Powell's when we got ahold of the fella and had to turn around. ( Boo! ='( ) Unfortunately...we'd locked the keys in the car. UGH! So we had to call somebody to get us back into the car. Dan called the bike's owner to let him know we'd be a little late and was told he'd received another offer that he was thinking of taking. After a bit of convincing, the guy said he'd still give it to us since it would be rather sketchy of him not too after we'd already driven all the way up there, finalized a deal, etc. The lock smith was a bit late so by the time we hit the road we'd tried calling Al (the bike guy) several times. He'd told us to drive up to WASHINGTON and meet him at a LA Fitness right off the freeway. We got there and waited...and waited...and waited...and tried calling a million times. After sitting there for over forty five minutes we finally headed back south without a bike. The guy had sold it to somebody else and didn't even have the decency to let us know! After we'd taken the day off and driven across state lines! UGH! People!

The next night I come home from work to be told by Dan that he'd sold his car. What?? I hadn't even known he was putting it up! We'd talked about it before, of course, since he doesn't ever drive it and we really don't need it, but he'd decided to put it up that night and sold it just a few hours later. So I hopped back into my car without dinner and we drove 30 minutes south to meet the guy. Turns out...he backed out too. After saying adamantly that he was taking it and Dan had told about a dozen people it wasn't available still. UGH! People! Since Dan had gotten such a great response to the ad, he's put it back up for more money. Hopefully we'll be able to get more out of it after that guy backed out - at least then he would have done us a favor instead of a disservice. 

Between work and school the rest of the week was pretty calm. Friday Dan was invited to go snowboarding with one of the girls in his program and her roommates. He had a blast, of course! I'm sure all of you reading know how much he LOVES his snowboarding. Meanwhile, I headed up to Portland with Teresa and Melissa. Mel's just moving into a new place and wanted to get some things at IKEA. I ended up picking up a small shelving unit for the kitchen (what a difference it's made!) and a couple of small cheap end tables that we use pushed together to make a coffee table. Great purchases! It was a great trip and we spent a little time in Teresa's cute old neighborhood which made her extremely Portland-sick. Oh, and I introduced the girls to mochi ice cream! If you've never tried it, you're missing out! Trader Joe's carries one of my favorite commercially available brands (try the strawberry) or some Whole Foods carry them too. They're my favorite dessert. 

For Vday we did nothing special. We just hung out like we normally do and then I worked in the pm. Sunday night we'd talked about going to the Eugene Ballet's performance of Swan Lake but decided against it when we realized that we could only get the student discounts on Saturday. But we were invited to go play laser tag and get pizza and beer with some coworkers of mine that afternoon. I was so excited! Until I got a migraine. I've been getting a surprising amount of headaches lately even had to call in sick to work once last week because of it. Anyway, we spent the day around the house and made a trip to the store for provisions. It'd been a while since we'd stocked up and our fridge was starting to look kinda sad...Oh, and we made an attempt to eat at PF Chang's since we have that gift card but it was still too much of a wait so we just went to this little mexican place in the Oakway center. It was our first time eating out since probably October. We still need to figure out when we're going to get PF though. We've already almost lost the gift card several times!

As far as the serious stuff goes, Dan's paper is now officially in the review process for possible publication. I'm so proud of him! Plus he's set up a meeting with Jerry Tindal (one of the men he most admires here) about research job possibilities with him next year. Plus he's talked to his old principal at Willow Springs and she told him that they were switching to a traditional school year and that there would likely be job openings next year. Yay! It would be great fun for him to go back to his old school (which his sister Katie also works) and a traditional school year would be better for us than a year round one too. It would leave the summers open to possibly head back to Alaska or somewhere else for the tourism seasons. Especially with my school schedule too. Who knows where we'll end up but things are looking up! Dan's leaving it up to me to decide where we go and I'm waiting to see how my credits transfer and what job opportunities he'll have. Hopefully we'll know for sure in a couple of months. 

In the meantime, here are some cute videos of Juneau from the last week. Oh, and one of Dan drunk and playing on our exercise ball. =) Enjoy!

Updated Hair

So here's the final result. You can't tell much since my hair is so dark but I chopped off about 3 inches and added layers up to my chin. Quite the change!

Our Latest Adventures

    So we've been busy! These last two weeks have been a lot of fun and we've had quite a few mini-adventures along the way. 

    First things first - Dan has submitted a paper for publication! He's been working with Julie Alanzo to refine it a bit more. They've submitted it to a rather prestigious publication first. If that doesn't work out, he'll resubmit to anther journal or two. He won't find out for probably another six months or so. Plus Dan's officially graduating summer term. That means that it's pretty official that we'll be moving back to Salt Lake City this August/September. It'll be an interesting transition to head back but we both think it'll be a good thing. We've even talked about how, as soon as I finish my degree, we might come back so Dan can work on his Ph.D. In the meantime, we're just going to be spending as much time as we can exploring and enjoying Oregon while we're still here. 

    We started out last week with a night of indoor camping. Yup, that's right! It was a bit chilly outside to really go so we pitched our tent in the living room and spent the night mock camping. It was complete with hot dogs, popcorn, even a "fire" via our computer screen. Juneau couldn't figure out what what the hell we were doing and had a tendency to be either on top of, or under, the tent. We'll definitely need to use the rain fly when we actually go out in the wild again because of all the holes he punched in it!

      Saturday morning we had the distinct pleasure of a VERY early employee appreciation party for my work. They had a poker tournament with the top prizes of ipods, digital cameras, etc but...I lost the first round. Oops. At least I got a gift certificate to PF Chang's that we'll lose before we use. After all, we haven't gone out to eat since...October? Unfortunately, the woman selling us the Jazz vs Blazers tickets for Saturday night backed out at the last minute so instead of watching our team play (and get their rear ends handed to them) I ended up working. Ick. 

     Sunday we had some people over for the Super Bowl. A few canceled but Simmyung, Ester, Will, Melissa, Teresa, and Andrew came to drink beer, eat pizza, watch football (and The Office), and just have fun. It was a blast and now we're talking about getting together again to 

go bowling and ice skating sometime soon. You know, I've only gone ice skating once? 

            

  Monday we went to the park and fed the ducks before taking a walk along the river. It was a very pretty day. Later we painted some flower pots. We thought it would be a good time and cheaper than buying pots we didn't like to begin with. Dan took on a very ambitious design of Donald Duck and ended up spending several hours on it through the next two days but his turned out fantastic. Plus, that night I made a drastic move...I dyed my hair. Dark brown. Yes, even darker than what's in the picture below. I decided the next night that I wanted it even darker than that so we dyed it once again. I'm still getting used to it, especially since the last time I dyed my hair I was in Hawaii. That's a long time! Once I get the time I'll be heading to the salon to chop off some length. How much is yet to be decided. I'll put some pictures up once I get it done. 

     See you next week!