Dear Freshman Hilary,

By the way, attending the game with a group of shirtless (and, I’m sorry to say, extremely unmuscular) freshman boys with BYU painted on their chests does not make you True Blue, especially when neither they nor you are in the seats assigned on your tickets. Here’s a little tip for husband-hunting: don’t hang with guys who argue with the people who say you’re in their seats and then argue again with security when they come to make you move over and then grumble for the rest of the game about how stupid everyone is. You may also want to try watching the game a little more instead of talking on your cell phone and posing in pictures with your friends. I mean, that IS why you stood on the bench seat in front of me, wasn’t it? To see the game? Or was it to show off your hair? (more…)

Today is the final day of Kyra’s womanhood. Tomorrow she goes under the knife, and we’ll pick her up on Saturday. We got her in May as a six-week old kitten. Now she’s six months old–a teenager, in people years.

I have to admit that although I was in favor of getting a kitten when we did, I wasn’t sure if we’d regret our decision later. We’d never had a pet before and I was worried about turning our house into pet-hair heaven. We picked her out on a Sunday night at a family’s home in Springville who had a whole litter they needed to give away. We liked Kyra best because she was grey, female, and the smallest. She also had beautiful eyes.

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I’ve been feeling a bit bored with my usual exercise routine. It’s been the same for two years: aerobics from 5:15 p.m. to 6:15 p.m., Monday through Friday (assuming I go all five days). Granted, the classes offer some variety—some days are step, some are interval training, some are kickboxing or hi-lo. But since we moved to our new house in Springville I’ve been struggling to push myself to class every day after work.

So I decided to try something new. I went to a kickboxing class in Springville that starts at 5:45 in the morning. (more…)

Recently I went to a seminar for work about giving and receiving feedback. Actually, it was called “Receiving and Giving the Gift of Feedback,” and it emphasized how feedback is information that helps people align their actions with their goals, and that it is a wonderful, charitable thing to throw around–so long as you’re doing it with the intent to help the victim, I mean other person. One of the main things we talked about is that good feedback is often frank feedback.

The greatest learning disability in organizations today is the inability to give and receive candid feedback.

So then a loud, portly man in a red t-shirt threw up his hand and asked, “Does this apply to spouses, too? I mean, if my wife says, ‘Does this dress make me look fat,’ I can say, ‘Yes’–right?” (more…)

So we thought we had negotiated and signed a contract to buy a new home, now we get a new contract to work with through a third party company, Sirva Relocation, LLC. We were told there was a little addendum that we needed to sign to just change the name to the seller’s LLC. We get faxed back 20 pages, including a blank contract and a 10 page rider of additional contigency clause changes and forms pushing us to use their services–even forcing us to use their services under certain conditions!
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Tonight John and I walked through a seemingly great house. See it here: http://www.utahrealestate.com/482131. We’ll mull things over a bit this weekend. Our realtor friend will be out of town, but he’s taking all the necessary paperwork with him, just in case we decide to go ahead and make an offer.

SR