Dead Pocket

Quote from this week is from Jim Gaffigan's comedy skit on Hot Pocket's seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9c9lAfXQHs lolol

So this week was really boring. Except NOT. Holy cow was this week busy. This week in brass workshop we finished up on trombone, and began on a tuba/euphonium portion. Those of us who play brass started on the tuba, and non-brass started on euphonium and baritone. As one of our first lessons we learned the difference between the two. If anyone cares, the trombone, baritone and euphonium are actually part of the same family, and are comparable to the trumpet family. The trombone=trumpet, baritone=cornet, and euphonium=flugelhorn. It all has to do with tubing sizes, and other such things. Anyways, so I got my tuba, and it's HUGE. I'm not talking compared to horn. Even compared to trombone it's big. It will be an interesting rest of the semester.

It was homecoming week this week. As such, the marching band played at the BYU devotional on Tuesday. I must say, we did awesomely. Our director said that even President Samuelson was up and rooting after we were playing (at least he was on the inside). There were lots of festivities going on throughout the week. We weren't able to go to any o

f the dances, though, because Brittany got called into work. It was unfortunate, but we had fun at home by renting Ghost of Girlfriends Past and watchin

g it together. It was a classic Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy.

We got a package from Mama M this week. We absolutely loved it! We got Halloween decorations to put up, and some candy! I'm very proud of myself, personally, because under normal circumstances the candy would have been gone in the first day or two, but a majority of it is actually still around! Thanks mom! Here are some pictures of our lovely home with the decorations:

Yesterday (Saturday) the band had TONS to do. We had a call time of 7:00 am so we could play for ESPN's College Game Day show that was held live in Provo this week. That was quite a waste of time for us, as we only ended up playing about 5-10 minutes of the hour and a half that we stood out there. The positive thing, in our (the band's) opinion was that in one of there coming-back-from-commercial intros they had a picture of the Provo Temple. We were impressed that they were willing to put that up there. '

After we left from the ESPN thing, we performed in the annual homecoming parade and pancake breakfast. That went well, and the band got 1st place in performance. Woohoo, we beat the only other band that was in the parade (which was a high school band). I wouldn't have volunteered to do it, but I guess tradition is tradition.

We then had about a three hour break for lunch. Then we had our call time for the homecoming game against TCU. We started out our pre-game practice in a medium-hard freezing cold rain, which continued into our ritual parade to the stadium. Luckily it stopped for the actual game. The rain must have been an omen for BYU, though. In the words of one of the sports announcers on the College Game Day show, BYU got "put over the leg of TCU, and spanked." It was a trouncing. Although, I have to admit that that was as much as the referee's fault as BYU's playing ability. There were lots of terrible calls that was just overall really frustrating. No use in complaining though. *SIGH* I just kinda wish my Saturday was spent in a better way.

On a happier note, about a month ago Brittany and I got an ad for a really cheap student discount deal on a Windows 7 upgrade. We decided to go for it because Brittany's laptop was running exceedingly slow, and we had heard that Windows 7 took up less RAM to run than Vista. We got that this week, and I spent an evening upgrading Brittany's computer. So far everything seems to be running a lot faster, and we are very pleased. We're not sure if we can use the upgrade on two computers, but once we get some more room on my hard drive we'll try upgrading mine.

Well it's very late, and I have to get up early so that I can practice for master class tomorrow. Apparently we're having a guest teacher - some crazy good horn player or something. The recipe this week was inspired by Leslie's giant zucchinis. It is Carrot Zucchini Casserole. It was surprisingly delicious, and didn't need any extra salt or anything in our opinion.

Love you all. Hope you have a good week.

Christian and Brittany.

1/2 lb ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

5 medium zucchini

5 medium carrots

1 can cream of mushroom

grated cheese (we used about 1 or 2 cups of cheddar)

Brown the ground beef and onion together and set aside. Steam the zucchini and carrots until tender. Mix it all together in a 9x13 with the cream of mushroom. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Fast and easy and really delicious! (Cheap and healthy too)

What are you sinking about?

Hello, all! We are officially back on schedule for our blog.

The clip the title of our blog came from, for this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vBn2_ia8zM

LOL.

First exciting news of the week: Christian's grants and scholarships came in!!!.... at a very, very opportune time. He got a Pell grant, a subsidized Stafford loan, and an Academic Competitiveness Grant. This will be extremely helpful in paying for school and other things. :) We're really happy and blessed.

D, the autistic boy I shadow at school, didn't have school on Thursday because of a "fall break" (I'm so jealous...). And Christian didn't have class. So on Thursday we both got a much-needed chance to sleep in. It was soooo nice. We'd been sleep deprived for a while, due to late work hours and homework. It was amazing to finally get a good sleep-in.

On Thursday afternoon, we got a knock on our door, which is actually unusual because you need an entry code to even get in to knock on our door. We answered it, and it was the plumber. He informed us that every time we drained water out of our kitchen sink, it released noxious gases out of our neighbor's bathroom sink (!?!?!). But he said he wasn't going to come fix it until Monday. Figures. So now apparently we are to avoid draining water from our kitchen sink for 5 days. Since we don't have a dishwasher, if we want to do the dishes we pretty much have to run (and drain) water in our sink. It's been really obnoxious trying to do the dishes without killing our neighbors with poison gas. We tried to do dishes in the bathtub, but it was gross and didn't work too well. So now we have settled with plugging the drain, filling our sink with water, and letting our dirty dishes soak in the water. There are only two of us, but we have a small sink and our sink is filling up fast. The plumber had better come tomorrow if he knows what's good for him. It's getting gross around here.

On Friday we both came home from class and conked out again. We slept from about 3 til 6 in the evening. It was a great nap, and then we woke up and went to the temple and did some sealings. It was nice to be reminded of our wedding day and do service at the same time.

On Saturday I had to work, but Christian got together with a bunch of his roommates from his freshman year at BYU. They had a great time reminiscing, eating chips and salsa, watching the football game, playing video games, and watching homemade movies. I was glad he finally got some interaction time with them; he's been missing them a lot. When we both came home we went over to Chris's house (Christian's friend) and hung out there for a while. We made dinner there. Note for all to remember: Never buy the 99-cent big family-size packages of store-brand egg noodles. We figured it was a good deal, and so we bought it, thinking the 99-cent kind of noodles couldn't be that much different than the regular kind; noodles are all made from the same basic stuff, right? We found out that apparently it can be VERY different. Those noodles turn straight from crunchy to slimy soggy mush. There is no in-between. It was kind of gross and we ended up throwing the leftover noodles away.

Now.... *drumroll* are you ready.... for the most delicious, mouthwatering meal that I have eaten in a VERY, VERY long time???? It made me want to do the scene from What About Bob, where he just keeps saying "Mmmmm... MMM!!! Mmm. Mmmmm, mmmm!" (clip is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvVKFCP5cCA) I just couldn't stop raving about how yummy it was!!! And it was super easy and only takes about 5-10 minutes of prep time, and you only bake it for 35 minutes! Start to finish in 40-45 minutes... AWESOME! You'll definitely want to add this one to the family cookbook once you try it. Behold.... the recipe for....

Chicken Parmigiana!!!

(courtesy of our "Taste of Home" cookbook... is it legal to re-type this?)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

3/4 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 oz each)

1 jar (26 oz) meatless spaghetti sauce

3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 375. In a shallow bowl, combine the bread crumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning, garlic powder and salt. In another bowl, lightly beat the egg. Dip chicken in egg, then roll in crumb mixture.

2) Place in a 13x9x2 baking dish, coated with cooking spray. Bake, uncovered, at 375 for 10 minutes on each side.

3) Pour spaghetti sauce over chicken; bake for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with shredded cheeses; bake 10 minutes longer or until chicken juices run clear. Serves 4.

Our Alterations:

Instead of 3/4 cup mozzarella and 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan, we bought a bag of shredded "Italian Five Cheese Blend", which included mozzarella, provolone, romano, asiago, and parmesan, and just used a cup of that. We also used Italian-seasoned bread crumbs. Both were divine!

Believe me, guys, this recipe is to DIE FOR.

=============

Anyway, now that I'm done ranting about that recipe, I'll call it a blog. Hope everyone's doing well! Love you all!

Brittany and Christian

"Any two for elevennis?" - from Victor Borge's "Inflationary Language"

The link from which the title comes from is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY6kElOYcd8. VERY HILARIOUS! :) :)

Anywho, sorry about writing so late this week. It's all my fault. Brittany has been badgering me about it since Sunday, but I've just been crazy busy (more like crazy lazy).

The weekdays never really are very exciting. Mostly just class, work, class, and more work. Oh, and add in a little homework there too. We did have some reprieve over the week, though, because Lanie was in town for recruiting for Exxon. Brittany, on one of the days, went to one of her class/lecture/things and got a bunch of free pizza. lol. We invited Lanie over for dinner, where we made ratatouille (recipe to follow), and then went to the creamery for ice cream. We had lots of fun! We love you Lanie! Thanks for having work in Provo! :)

Friday night we went and spent the night at Leslie's house again. Mike flew in for the weekend to see everyone, again, and we all hung out and stayed up until crazy o'clock playing games. That was lots of fun. We really enjoy going up there. So much, in fact, that I left some clothes up there so that we would have a reason to come up again. More on that later, though.

Saturday, we woke up and had a lazy morning, and then left so that Brittany could go to work. Saturday ended just like that. Lots of work, both homework and the other kind.

Last night (Tuesday) the marching band performed at a high school competition as the exhibition band. We were really pumped, because this is the one show a year that we get to perform for people who actually appreciate what we're doing on the field. It was a very very exciting show, and we performed really well.

I don't know how many of you heard about the American Fork High School marching band, but on the way back from a competition last week one of their buses rolled over, and a few students were injured and one of the directors was killed. Only a week later, they decided to participate in this in spite of what happened. It was a very brave thing for them to do. Lots of the other bands wore American Fork colored arm bands to show support, and the BYU band performed Amazing Grace at the end of our show for them. It was a very sweet moment.

Anyway, Brittany wants to vent some about her STUPID biology teacher/test, and then the recipe. Hope yall have a great week.

Loves,

Christian

____________

So when I signed up for biology at the beginning of the year, I looked on ratemyprofessors.com and figured out the best biology teacher. Students were raving about how easy it was to get an easy A in his class, that the tests were super easy, that he was interesting and fun and had a good personality. So I said, "Great!" and I signed up for his class. It seemed great until I took the first midterm exam. I thought I knew mostly everything he'd talked about in class (at least enough to get a score in the low 90's). But the test was ridiculous. There were at least 3 questions whose answer choices were designed in this format:

A. the answer we talked about in class, that we decided together was the answer to this exact question

B. an answer we never mentioned in class but is true if you look at it the right way

C. an answer we also never mentioned in class but is true

D. only A and C

E. all of the above

I'm not exaggerating. Is that not ridiculous? I knew which statements were true and which ones weren't. I knew the material, which is what the test is SUPPOSED to test you on. The hard part about the question was figuring out whether he was the type of teacher that would choose A or E as the correct answer - you could argue for both. This is a biology test, not a psychology test. If I had known the exam would be like this, I would have spent more time studying the teacher than the material.

So after I received a grade on the test that didn't accurately reflect how well I knew the material, I went to dispute some questions with the teacher (as did pretty much the entire class). Come to find out, this teacher had a hard time understanding why I wanted an A. He considered a C a good grade. And apparently he had purposely designed the test questions to be "tricky" (aka ridiculous) because the biology department had yelled at him last year for having his class average on exams be too high (aka making his tests too easy). I understand that you can't give "easy" exams, but you can give FAIR ones! If a student knows the material, they should be able to get a grade on the exam reflecting that. If they don't know the material, they should get a grade on the exam reflecting that as well. I explained to him why I wanted an A out of the class, and he agreed to give me credit for two of the 3 unfair test questions, which bumped my class average up to barely an A.

Apparently the testing center gives teachers feedback on how "good" their test questions are, based on how well students did on the question: if students with a low score on the rest of the exam got the question wrong, and students with a high score on the rest of the exam got the question right, it was considered a good question because those who know their stuff can get it right, and those who didn't know their stuff can't. My teacher revealed that the testing center rated 90% of his questions as "Poor" questions. If he was taking an exam-question-making test, he would have gotten a 10% on it.

Anyway, I'm done ranting now, so here's the recipe for ratatouille.

Ratatouille

Ingredients:

1 medium sized onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium or large eggplant, diced

1 can stewed tomatoes

2 medium zucchini diced into large chunks

herbs as desired (try basil)

olive oil (enough to saute onion/garlic)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Saute the onion and garlic till tender. Add eggplant and tomatoes, bring to simmer. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Add zucchini. Simmer for 10-15 more minutes until vegetables are suitably soft. Remove from heat, stir in herbs, and season to taste. Serve over rice, egg noodles, pasta, or boiled cubed potatoes.

Our Alterations:

We thought shredded cheese on top would have been great. Also, I think we chopped our zucchini a little tooo large, because it came out a little underdone while the eggplant was just right. We served it over egg noodles and we loved it.

Enjoy!

Love you all!

Brittany

Of Pirates, Potatoes, and Pizza

Sorry, all!!! We missed our Sunday blogging this week.... so, happy belated blog day everyone! This week has actually been an exciting one! Or, at least, the weekend was.... which is our excuse for not blogging on Sunday.

On Saturday both Christian and I had to work: me from 2-4, and him from 6-11. For work that day, I wasn't doing actual work but was hired to help with a birthday party for the little boy I work with, who was turning 7. Christian was going to drop me off at work and head over to Leslie's (our cousin's) house and spend time with them before he had to go to work. But when we got to my work, we discovered that TONS more kids than they had expected were showing up. About 15 or 16 very rowdy six-to-seven-year-old boys showed up. And there were only 3 reliable adults there, including me. So Christian decided to stay and help with the party, brave soul that he is. The kids loved him. They all had a great time throwing around pirate-speak, decorating treasure chests, dressing up like pirates, going on a treasure hunt, etc (can you tell it was a pirate-themed party?). After the chaos had subsided, I resolved to make my kids follow my mom's rule of thumb about birthday party guests: you can only invite however many guests as years you are old. 15 six-or-seven-year-olds running around your house, screaming and throwing beach balls at each other, in pirate gear, all on sugar highs, at once.... is way too much chaos for anyone.

After the party, Christian and I went home so that he could go to work. He is enjoying his work since it's very laid back and he has a lot of down time sometimes, where he can do whatever he wants: homework, Facebook, etc. Some days are pretty relaxed but some are insane, with him running around every 5 seconds to a different person who needs help. But he likes it. Apparently everyone else at his job has been in the position for at least from the beginning of the semester (the job that Christian got was because someone had quit). But even as the newbie, Christian is doing a great job.

After he got done with work at 11 pm on Saturday, we ran home, packed our sleepover stuff, and headed over to Leslie's. We had tons of fun playing Rage and Mad Gab with Chris and I, Leslie, Mike, and 3 of Leslie's kids who were still awake. We finally tucked in around 2:30 am. We slept on a double sized air mattress, and I discovered why Christian hates them so much. When ONE person sleeps on an air mattress, it's not so bad. You just wake up in a pit. But when TWO people sleep on one, then whoever is heaviest pushes the mattress down on one side, and the lighter person rolls down the hill and falls on top of the heavier person during the night. Christian woke up during the night as he was falling off the bed, and I was squished right next to him, almost pushing him off. It was really funny. We woke up the next morning and watched Conference and ate delicious homemade monkey bread and quiche and ALL SORTS of things for lunch. There was a ton of food and it was all so yummy!

P.S. Leslie, if you're reading this, please don't feel bad about the mattress. We really do appreciate the room you let us use, and we look forward to seeing you again this weekend! The mattress was no big deal really, it was just funny. :)

We left Leslie's after the Sunday afternoon conference ended, and went over to my aunt Nicole and uncle Tennessee's house to have dinner and hang out with my extended family. My grandma and grandpa were there, and so was my aunt Laura and her daughter Kira, my dad was there (because he had to give a presentation at UVU for his Excel course that he wrote), and of course me and Christian. We helped Nathan (Nicole and Tennessee's son) make his pirate costume for Halloween, and Christian roughhoused with all the kids. We ate a delicious dinner and helped do their dishes, then tried to get out of the way as fast as possible because they were packing to leave in the early morning for a trip to Disneyworld.

Monday was the last night my dad was here, because his plane left early this morning (Tuesday). So he came to pick me up after he did his presentation at UVU, and brought his friend Bro. Abarca (who did a "testimonial" at my dad's presentation about the course) and my grandma and grandpa. We wanted to take Christian with us, but he had school and work almost from dawn till midnight on Monday. So we all went to Brick Oven. It was delicious pizza, and we got lucky because the night we went just so happened to be "Get free root beer with pizza after 5:00 pm on Mondays" night. The pizza was super filling but super good, and I could only eat one slice. We had 3 slices left over when we were done, and we decided to take them to Christian at work. He had been starving pretty much all day and we felt bad that he didn't get to come with us. So since he was working in the library computer lab, and food really... technically... definitely isn't allowed in there, we had to figure out a way to sneak a take-home-sized box of pizza into the library. I ended up sliding it under my hoodie and blocking the squared-off edges of the box with my arms, pretending I was just really cold or something. We got through unnoticed by the security guards, and Christian didn't spill any pizza on the computers. Woot.

Recipe for this week:

Microwave Baked Potatoes

(Brittany's Super Easy, Super Quick, No-Poke, No-Bake, Easy-Peel version)

Directions:

1) Wash the dirt off the potatoes.

2) Put 2 or 3 potatoes on a plate. That's all. No poking, no buttering, no wrapping up.

3) Put that plate of potatoes in the microwave on High for about 8 minutes depending on size of potatoes. Small potatoes will be done in about 7 minutes, large ones may need up to 9 or 10 minutes. Warning: Hissing and worrisome noises may come from the potatoes in the microwave, but I take that to mean that air is escaping instead of being built up inside the potato... I have never had a potato even come close to exploding before, and I've done this a lot... :D cheers!

Potatoes will be soft, easily mashed, and baked all the way through. Skins will be loose, making it very easy to peel the skins off for overly picky children.

Anyway, have fun everyone! We love you all!

Brittany and Christian