December 2014

It's December 16 today.

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. I really can't believe it. Time just flies on by the older I get.

Dan and I have been married 10 months. 10!! That's crazy to me.  What's crazier is we we met for the first time 71/2 years ago, and had our first date about 6 years ago.  The past 10 months have been so fun and awesome and part of me wishes we would have gotten married sooner (my fault).  But at the end of the day, I wouldn't change anything if it meant getting me to this place in my life, with Dan.  Being married to my best friend is the greatest.

 At The Roof for dinner.

We currently live in a little 2 bedroom apartment in Cottonwood Heights. It's a cute place and I have tried to organize and decorate to the best of my abilities and budget (home decor crap is expensive!). I sometimes get a little bummed that we don't have a house and get a little panicked about when that will happen, but I try and live the moment and realize all that will come.  It's exciting to think about our future - a little scary too.  I'm realizing there's a lot to life that I cannot control.  All we can do is our best and have faith that whatever Heavenly Father has in store for us, will ultimately be what's right for us. 

Anyways, our life is simple and fun.  We love our ward and enjoy teaching in Relief Society (me) and Elders Quorum (him).  Work is going good for both of us and we try our best to make it to our crossfit gym most nights.

Christmas is next week and we are headed to CA! I'm so excited.

(Our first Christmas tree! It's the real deal,  picked out from our local Home Depot. I went back and forth on colored vs. white lights. I'm glad I went with colored. It's really bright and fun and I love sitting by it at night when it's all lit up.)

We will be spending a couple days in San Francisco before driving over to Sacramento to visit my parents.  We got a killer deal at The Fairmont and I'm so giddy to get there and see it I could burst.  I'm a fan of a fancy hotel.  They are so romantic and pretty and the beds are so cozy. I worked at The Grand America here in Salt Lake for a few months while I was in between jobs.  It was pretty fun. All the NBA teams would stay there when playing the Jazz so I got to see all the big time players come and go.  I checked Dwayne Wade out of this room one time. He used a black AMEX to pay for his incidentals and carried a Louie (Louis?) Vuitton wallet and man-purse. He also smelled really good -not like cologne good, but like naturally good. Like his natural scent was something heavenly. I called him Mr. Wade, even though his room was under a pseudonym. I also had a funny experience with Shaq when the Heat were in town.  He was walking through the lobby one night with one of the other players (don't know who). They looked over to me and my coworker Kim as they passed behind one of the lobby walls that lead to the elevators. 2 seconds later, they walked slowly backward to like, check us out.  We both laughed and they smiled and walked back to the elevator.  It was pretty funny.

Anyway, what was the point of this post?

Oh yes, Christmas is coming and it's crazy and exciting.  I'm looking forward to taking a whole week off work (!) and getting to visit one of my favorite cities with Dan.  I'm also looking forward to seeing my parents and brother. Oh, and we can 't wait to see this movie on Christmas Day:

Already

Ok guys, I’m already struggling with updating my blog because I can’t think of anything interesting to write about. That’s terrible.

Thanksgiving is next week and I’m very excited. I love Thanksgiving. I wish it got more respect than it does.  Nowadays, it’s basically just a barrier to celebrating Christmas.  But I love it and you should too.

This immigration reform stuff is so interesting/crazy.  Why are our elected representatives in Congress so inept at governing? Why do we elect people who refuse to get anything productive done? It makes me really mad.

What else?

I went and saw the Mockingjay movie last night.  One of Dan’s networking groups rented out the theater, so it was free and I didn't get to choose the movie. I read all the books a few years back, but I never was into them that much. I sort of felt like I had to know what all the hoopla was about so that's why I read them.  I was the same with Harry Potter. I only really read them because I felt a cultural obligation.  Anyways, I read the Hunger Games books, but I cant’ really remember anything that happened in them.  I also never saw the second movie (what’s it even called?) so watching this one was a little confusing.  Anyways. The movie was ok.  I still love Jennifer Lawrence though. She’s hilarious.

Speaking of movies….the Pitch Perfect 2 trailer was released this week and it is everything!

Cha-Cha-Changes

I have been fumbling around trying to teach myself Photoshop for the past 2 days. It's so frustrating! I wish I had those skills! But I finally came up with a new header. I seriously had to Google every single thing as I tried to make it (which really didn't involve a lot since I purchased the floral wreath as a stock image).

"How do you import an eps image into Photoshop?"

"How do you change text color in Photoshop?"

"How do you save project to PNG format?"

Seriously, it look forever.

I'll probably keep practicing and change things up as I go.

What else....

After almost 9 months of being married, I finally changed my last name. I have sort of been doing it in incremental steps. First my bank, insurance, etc.Then I officially got a new social security card and today went down to the DMV (nothing worse than the DMV, amirite?!) and applied for a new license. I still haven't changed my work email and such.  I'm not sure how to navigate that quite yet.  Do you send out some sort of email announcement? Should I hyphenate at work so people don't get confused? Tricky.

I always figured I would change my name eventually, but I was a little taken back by how I felt about it when the time finally came.  I sort of felt like my identity was changing.  I have been Brianne Olsen my entire life and now I am not. It felt a little sad in a way to give that up. Am I the only one who has felt like that?

Anyway, I am sure I will get used to it. And I really do love being Brianne Bigelow!

Resurrected

I haven't looked at or touched this blog in like, 3 years or something.

But I have decided to resurrect it.

A lot has happen in my life in the last few years. A lot of it was overwhelming, emotional, crazy....maybe that's why I neglected my blog.  Too hard to write about stuff like that I guess.

I'm assuming blogs are still a thing.  They are, right? I still read quite a few blogs so I think they are still relevant. Either way, I like the idea of sharing parts of my everyday life with my close friends and family. I also got married (!). To Dan (!!). So I want to write about our life together and the life that will come our way. A journal, so to speak.

Anyways, I'm back. Because I have important things to say.  Things I want to share and keep a record of.

Like for example....

Every morning on my way to work I listen to the news on the radio.  The local NPR station here (kuer.org) always gives an air quality report (because people here complain about the bad air, yet do nothing to change their own habits to try and improve it. But that's a blog post for another day). Every day the anchor will say something like, "today's air quality index report is green - good," or "today's air quality index report is red - poor."

Ok, why do you even have a color index system when you are just going to tell me that the air is good? Why not just say "the air quality is good today?" Or if you insist on using a color index system, why not just say "the air quality index today is green" and leave it at that? What's the point of having a color index system if you have to qualify it every single time??

I don't get it. It's really annoying though.

See? Important things to say.

Let's see if I can keep this thing alive.

(I have big plans to give my blog a facelift, too.  Just as soon as I figure out how to use photoshop)