Curling at the Olympic Oval

I took a trip to the Olympic Oval with some friends this past weekend to try this crazy sport called... curling? I mean who ever though such a crazy event could be considered a sport worthy of the Olympics. Brushing ice with a broom... pushing a stone across the ice?

However, I must admit, it was more enjoyable than expected. We had an instructor that tried to give us the rules, but I wasn't very good at following them. One rule for example was that you aren't supposed to cross your feet over one another as you go down the ice "sweeping" for the stone. I broke that one about every time down.


I much preferred to push the stone for others to sweep then doing the sweeping myself. However, I do have a bruise on my knee... :)

Corrective Eye Surgery

I have to wear goggles to sleep in for a week!













My eyes were pretty swollen that first day...










Peas were the best thing to use for keeping my eyes nice and cool!

I have had glasses since first grade. I remember feeling pretty humiliated when my teacher asked me to read something off of the big chart paper when I was sitting at the kidney table and I couldn't read it. I was only about 7 feet away. This was the event that cause me to get the glasses and from that point on I became known as "four eyes" by many of my peers. I did grow into contacts in the 8th grade, which really helped to keep the name calling to a minimum. Contacts were also nice when it came to running cross country races in the rain among other things. However, I still had the plague of frantically feeling for my glasses in the morning in order to see what the time on my alarm clock, or the plague of getting an eyelash on my contact and having no saline solution to rinse it with.
While it may be an expensive procedure, I decided to bite the bullet and get eye surgery. The procedure I had done is called PRK. It is safe and better procedure than lasik supposedly, but it isn't done as often due to the long and uncomfortable (painful) recovery. The worse part of it is over for me, but here are a few pictures from the 3 days following surgery. I pretty much kept my eyes shut for the whole of three days, alternating between 4 different kinds of eye drops, loritab (bring it on) and putting ice packs on my eye balls. It was a pretty crazy time, but life is starting to come into focus and the pain is starting to subside. All in all, very worth it!

Wicked at the Pantages

I was elated when I heard that the broadway play "Wicked" was coming to Salt Lake. However, due to season ticket holders and pre-sales, tickets were sold out before the box office officially opened them for sale to the public. You can imagine my disappointment after months of awaiting it's arrival. However, I didn't stay down long... I figured I'd just have to go to LA instead. I've always wanted to go to the Pantages Theater, so I figured this gave me good reason. I thought I'd go sometime in the summer, but then I found out that after being in LA for over a year, the last performance of Wicked was to be on January 11th.

I am usually a pretty planned out person, but I pulled a spontaneous move and decided to go over the Christmas break. I knew that my friend Jordan would be up for the adventure and I was right. An hour after making the decision, we had our plane and theater tickets all ready to go. I guess I do have a spontaneous streak to me after all!
So on New Years Eve, Jordan and I flew to CA and saw the long awaited Wicked. It of course was phenomenal and the theater was incredible. Due to many mishaps along the way (such as having our airline tickets being given away and having to fly to San Diego instead) we had a great adventure.

Re-cap of 2008

Here is a "12-month of 2008" countdown that provides a pretty accurate recap of the last year. 2008 has been a good one and I look forward to 2009!

The Twelve Months of 2008 brought to me...

12 days in Israel and Egypt (First time out of North America)

11 turned down proposals (just wanted to see if you were paying attention...)

10 musical productions (Aida, Little Women, 1776, Into the Woods...)

9 outdoor advenutres (Narrows, Subway, Climbing Mt. Timp, Silver Lake...)

8 months until graduation with my Masters Degree in Education

7 running races (Wasatch Back, Utah Marathon Relay, Disneyland 5K...)

6 Ultimate Frisbee Tournaments (my team was ranked 16th in the nation...)

5 months in my NEW job (Alpine School District Office: Data Specialist)

4 Shakespeare plays (... at the Shakespearean Festival)

3 new family members (2 nieces and 1 sister-in-law)

2 trips campaigning for Mitt Romney (Iowa and Las Vegas)

1 basketball championship (BYU Intramurals)

I wish you a wonderful New Year!