I Like Feeling Good

Today was the first time in ages that I woke up without lower back pain. I usually have a baseline pain level around 2/10, but to my shock, I was a cozy 0/10. Woohoo! My physical therapist said it would take about four weeks for consistent strength exercises to help, and I'm definitely starting to feel it. Now to work on my upper back, eh?

I also did a lot of reminiscing today about third, fourth, and fifth grade. I had a wonderful teacher and I've decided to write her a letter. The problem will be getting it to her. I have an address which I suspect is correct, but may not be. She stopped teaching recently, so it's even harder to find contact info online now. Oh well.

Happy general conference weekend!

I Like Sexy Bass Voices

And James has one. The only problem is, about a month or so ago he damaged his voice by breathing too much smoke and er... being too LOUD. As per Rosalind Hall's recommendation, he is not supposed to sing at all for THREE WHOLE TORTUROUS MONTHS. Sigh. Thankfully, he's already about a month into this, so it's already partly over... but still. Now he whistles in sacrament meeting to the hymns.

Anyway, on a slightly related note, James has some archival BYU Men's Chorus CDs. One of the songs is awesome: The Impossible Dream.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

In still other news, I finally grew a melon in MineCraft!

I Like Couches

I like couches because they are places to sit and because they make my apartment more homey. For reals. We actually came into possession of two couches today (although a third one was available). One is a hide-a-bed couch which is blue. The other is black leather and a little bit beat up, but still comfy. So NOW when someone visits they can sit on ze couch. And/or sleep over on a bed. :)

James passed quals officially! Which means he is a legit PhD student. :)

I worked for four hours today in the Women's Care warehouse filing old paper charts. It's enough to make one grateful for computers. Yikes, man. SO MUCH STUFF. And computers don't give you paper cuts either. But I've worked for 10 hours for two days in a row, so I'm happy. And so is my bank account. :)

I Like Ice Cream

I like having a job... more like having an income. Today I got up at 5:30am (ew) and got to work at 6:30. Sigh. Well, I worked for 10.5 hours... Woo. A little tired, I is.

This evening James taught family night. Our ward has an FHE night for the neighborhood kids. Today James taught about the Book of Mormon. It went well. It went a little too long for the younger kids, so I took a few into the next room to color. I drew a giraffe! Our treat was Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Om nom nom.

Maybe tomorrow I will be more energetic?

I Like Free Furniture

I like getting free stuff, particularly when buying this stuff would have cost us lots of moneys. I plucked up the courage to ask the Relief Society president if she knew of anyone in the ward who had any furniture they didn't want. And guess what? Success! Sister Barnhurst is getting a new loveseat and is letting us have her old one. And Sister Mitchell's neighbor is giving us a couch with the hidden bed inside. I'm going to put the loveseat in our living room downstairs and the sleeper couch in the other bedroom upstairs. Which means we'll actually have a place for someone to sleep if they came over. And a place to sit. w00t!

I officially have Mondays off and will be working from 6:30am to 5:30pm Tuesdays through Fridays. Three-day weekend every week! Yay! Today I stayed home and read my book and learned physics and slept. :)

I now have pictures of that cat as some of you were requesting. It was super hard to get any good pictures of him though, because HE WOULD NOT SIT STILL. Yup... he's a Turkish Angora through and through.

Tonight I got really sad about not having the money to go out to eat very often. I really, really like all kinds of food. I keep imagining a ginormous juicy burger with sautéed onions and mushrooms and with tomatoes and my favorite kind of cheese. I also keep imagining a white sauce pizza with garlic, tomatoes, and spinach. Chewy, scrumptious, white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. Honey walnut shrimp. Cinnabon. REAL Mexican food. And sometimes soft-serve. Cherry lime cream slush.

I do know that we can make many of these things, but let's be honest... it would cost just as much, if not more, simply because they usually don't sell small servings of many ingredients. And James doesn't particularly like some of these things, so he would rather not buy things like shrimp or mushrooms. Ga'augh.

Anyway, we ARE currently baking some tasty battered fries which are comparable to (but quite as good as) Popeye's fries. I feel though, that these are kind of like nicotine patches for a smoking addict.

Burek Recipe!

Here we go. I'll be essentially following this blog. Problem is, it's in Serbian. So...

I'll explain the dough first, and talk about the insides later.

Ingredients for dough:

4 cups of white flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/4 cups of water

7 tablespoons of butter

7 tablespoons oil (just under a half cup)

1. Mix flour, salt and water (NOT the oil or butter) together. It should make a smooth dough, and shouldn't be a gooey mess. It should look something like this:

2. Split into five equally sized pieces.

3. Roll each piece to about the size of a CD, as below.

4. In a flat dish (a pie pan works great), mix the oil and melted butter.

5. Submerse the pieces of dough into the oil mixture one at a time. Make sure all sides are covered. Use a spoon to pour more stuff on top if you have to. It'll look kind of like a tower of pancakes, with oil instead of syrup. Make sure the top one is covered as well.

6. Wait for 30 minutes. You may have to spoon a bit more oil on the top one. Also, this is a good time to prepare the filling.

7. On a well oiled, fairly big table, put the first piece of dough. Spread it out a bit at first by smooshing it down.

8. Pull on the sides around and around the edge till it is as big as you can make it without it tearing. You should be able to see through it.

9. Put about a fourth of the fillings (more on what these are in a bit) in the middle of the spread out dough, spread out. We put them too close together and so our burek was too thick to cook through. It won't ruin it though. Maybe the size of the top of a pie pan? Perhaps a rectangular shape for them would be best since we're going to have to cook it in a 9x13 pan.

10. Fold the dough over the fillings till it is covered.

11. Put that one aside, and spread out another piece of dough.

12. Put the last piece we made in the middle, put a fourth of the toppings on top of THAT, then fold it together again. You are making layers of dough and filling this way.

13. Repeat for the rest of the dough and filling. For the fifth piece of dough, you don't add any filling.

14. Put the burek into an ungreased 9x13 pan. Cook at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit) for 35-40 minutes. It should be a delicious golden brown.

Notice how thin theirs is compared to ours. This is what I meant by spreading it out. If it's thick, don't worry, it'll still taste pretty good!

Traditionally you cut it into slices like pizza and just pick it up and eat it. No utensils required! You're also supposed to wash it down with a nice lukewarm glass of thin plain yogurt, but... that's a bit of an acquired taste. Milk will do just fine.

Now, for the fillings. Pretty much you can use anything. The two most traditional is either "young" cheese, like Feta, or a pork filling. For Feta, just use about 400-500 grams (about a pound) of it. For pork, we cooked 400 grams of ground pork, broke into small pieces, added half a medium onion, 2 cloves of garlic and some salt and pepper. You could do it with hamburger too. Or pretty much anything you can put into a pie. Sour cherry and apple are pretty good.

And that, my friends, is burek! Prijatno!

I Like Burek

I like my husband. He made burek today with his own homemade phyllo dough. It seems to me that making phyllo is actually much easier than many would have you believe. Plus, as James pointed out, we think kids would have lots of fun doing it. :) It wasn't perfect yet, but it is still definitely worth making again, but with a few tweaks. :) (Pictures are a little blurry, but you get the idea.)

Today when I showed up at church the bishop whisked me away to ask if I would accept another calling. I did... and then I was sustained, and then I was set apart. I am now officially the Relief Society chorister! w00t! ... Seriously, does something about me SCREAM chorister? I've been a chorister in almost every ward I've been in. Eh?

My lesson on prophets went fantastic. The former bishop complimented me and an investigator wanted a copy of one of the talks I quoted from. Success! Someone in the ward has also offered us a black leather loveseat... more success!

Good day. :)

I Like President Uchtdorf

I like Relief Society. I don't like sleeping through most of the RS broadcast though... and I did that anyway. :/ On the plus side, I was conscious and alert for President Uchtdorf's talk based on the five-petaled flower forget-me-not... He listed five things to forget not:

So yeah. Powerful talk, as can be expected from Sir Dieter. Sister Julie B. Beck's talk also seemed to be pretty good... before I feel asleep anyway. It was about the things she would like her granddaughters to know about Relief Society... And to be honest, I think I slept through the sisters' talks because they were based on the new RS manual "Daughters in My Kingdom"... which I have already read in entirety. Heh.

Tomorrow we've decided to try and make burek, a common food in Serbia. James has often related to me the tastiness which is burek: ground pork (probably with some onions and garlic) in a phyllo dough pastry. What could possibly go wrong? We'll let you know how it turns out. If it's good I might be able to get James to translate the recipe he found into English.

Tomorrow I am also in charge of the gospel principles class for investigators and new members. I've decided to teach about prophets in preparation for general conference. If you'd like to read up on such things, I really like the following: Ezra Taft Benson's 1980 speech "Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet", President Hugh B. Brown's 1955 speech "The Profile of a Prophet", and the 2009 Mormon Message video "God's Words Never Cease" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. Most of my lesson will of course be from Chapter 9 on the Gospel Principles manual.

As far as an update on the cat goes... we've been trying to come up with a name. I called him Measles at first because he looked rather diseased... But after today's Doctor Who episode, Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All seems to fit the best. That, or Alfie. James was formally introduced to Stormy (we will call him this until further notice). That cat is SUPER affectionate. In fact, it's kind of ridiculous. He wanted inside... but we can't have cats in our apartments, and also, we're pretty sure he would sleep in our bed with us. (Good? Bad?)

James and I are beginning to dream in ponies. Last night I dreamed that Allison Ridley was a unicorn pony and was making a musical gingerbread house for Christmas. The music? "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan. There was also an associated light show. ... James is picturing Book of Mormon characters as ponies when he reads.

Today I started out my day by doing problems out of a physics textbook. And then I read more in Anna Karenina... I'm halfway through! Only 400 pages left!

We decided to have garlic bread for dinner tonight. Here's why:

1. Garlic bread is tastier than alfredo pasta.

2. Garlic bread is faster to make than alfredo pasta.

3. Garlic bread is nutritionally about the same as alfredo pasta.

4. James doesn't like alfredo pasta.

5. James lurves garlic bread.

6. I lurf garlic bread.

As you can see, this was an easy choice.

I Like Breezes

Today I like good weather. Today it was about 70° with a slight breeze... I laid down a blanket on the grass during my lunch break and had a glorious nap. Although... my coworkers are starting to make fun of me, because I'm either working, eating, or sleeping whenever they see me.

I also think my husband is very nice to me. He is being very patient with me and my pain disorder. Sometimes when he touches me (even lightly on my shoulder or somewhere) I interpret it as pain, when it doesn't really hurt. What I think is happening is that I've gotten so used to everything being painful that when I encounter a new stimulus, my brain automatically says, "Ouch! This hurts!" ... when really, it was just my husband lightly putting his hand on my shoulder.

...I promise that actually makes sense. So we've decided to try something new. Here's the thing: when I actually take the time to think about it, I realize, "Oh. That didn't actually hurt." But by the time I actually think this, I've already exclaimed in pain and recoiled away. So, James and I are going to try to reprogram my brain. Dangerous, I know.

It'll go something like this:

James: Touch touch! Hee hee!

My brain: Gasp! Ouch!

James: Your husband is touching you! This feels good!

My brain: ...Eh?

James: Feels goooood...

My brain: ... Oh. ... Really? ... Wat.

James: Yes. Feels goooooood...

My brain: Oh. Huh. This does kind of feel good, doesn't it?

James: Touch touch! Hee hee!

In other news, the white cat with one blue and one green eye turned out to be a man cat--and he had already been neutered. Which, I suppose this is why we didn't know he was a he... you know, what with all his man cat organs removed and such. Anyway, he also had a chip! And it turns out he is a rare and expensive breed... a Turkish Angora, which is the most active breed of cat EVER. They are so active that they are sometimes called the "dog cat". This guy is definitely NOT sedimentary, and lurves hanging out with peeps.

So. Once upon a time, he was a kitten and lived in a happy family. This happy family bought him for bucketloads of money and handfed him with a bottle. Then that happy family had a baby. Then they gave him to a man with Parkinson's disease as a treatment cat. Then that guy died. Then that guy's family dumped him onto the street. Lame. Then my neighbor and I found him! Turns out his original-original family still can't take him home... and we can't keep him because we're not allowed to have cats. Ugh. Dilemma! In better news, he is currently on medicines for mange and ear mites and lots of other bad things. We also got him lots of vaccines. And we tested him for leukemia (there is apparently a berjillion kitties getting leukemia around here... who knew?). He is becoming a happier cat as we speak.

I Like Massages

Today I like physical therapy. (I also like having health insurance.) I've been in a lot of pain since

Sunday or so, and I just got a happy back massage... so of course, I am more comfortable. Brilliant!

I am also glad that James recognizes my "medical" need for occasional sherbet. I currently have a 1.5 gallon bucket of rainbow sherbet in the freezer, and I am definitely liking that he's going to slate that into our medical budget instead of our grocery budget.

There is a cute stray cat that has been hanging out near our apartment. She is white and has one green eye and one blue eye. She does, however, seem a little diseased. Our neighbor is taking her to the vet today to get spayed and er... cleaned up a bit. I gave the neighbor $20 to go towards kitty's hysterectomy.

My excellent friend Allison introduced us to a wonderful show--My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Oh my heck, this show is a masterpiece. If you're afraid to watch it because you're too "grown up", be comforted in the fact that this show does, indeed, have a huge Internet following. And it is SO worth it. If this show isn't a cure for a bad day, I don't know what is. Wheee!