The French

A real live french pastry chef came to my baking class today. Don't ask me how you find one of those in Rexburg, Idaho. Apparently he and his wife moved from France a year ago so his wife could teach French at BYU-Idaho. Who does that? Couldn't she have taught English is France. I would never, ever, move to Rexburg from France. Apparently, he can't get a work permit, but someone in the baking class knew him and brought him in as part of a presentation she had to give.

I'll be honest, the presentation was not interesting. His attitude towards Americans was what most people would guess. It seemed as if he took a whole half hour of class to vent about Americans eat and cook. Maybe this was bottled up inside for a while and it was time to tell us how he felt. Now put on your best french accent while you read my favorite quotes from him.

1. "You Americans, you drink your sugar soda, your tacos, your cookies... I don't know how you do it."

2. "Americans, they just think it is a recipe, they just mix it all together, not thinking about it and whal-la, you put it in the oven and eat. BUT ITS NOT JUST A RECIPE! Its chemistry. Its art."

3. "Quantity does not equal quality! You fill up our plate but you do not need all that! You have to think about what is good for your body. Why are you eating so much? It is not even good."

Well, us Americans did live up to the french pastry's chefs bias against us. We joked with the our teacher while he did a presentation on cinnamon rolls and were definitely not paying attention to the beauty and art of the whole process. We just wanted to eat them, as most Americans would. The French chef said Americans touch their food too much when they are baking it. "Less touch is more better and sanitary." At least we are building super immune systems! We can wipe out a whole race with all the disease we carry and not even know it! The chef brought in some version of a croissant/cinnamon roll. I hadn't had anything like it before and probably wouldn't have another one if I had the opportunity. (I don't really like pastries anyways though. Some people thought they were really good.)

The other presenters brought in burnt cookies, Oreos and muffins, once again, living up to our name as American culinary students, especially with the Oreos. But I have decided that I probably would not want to study with a French teacher. My biased against them is that they suck the fun out of it. The french man was way to serious about cooking.

Karma

Do you believe that what goes around comes around? Jacob is doing P90 x at 8:00 in the morning. The neighbors are loving us.

A Pen and 7.75

So, a little bit about my work. I am the secretary for Student Living. www.byui.edu/studentliving/ Its kind of a big deal this semester. The whole model was taken to Salt Lake and approved by President Monson, his first councilors and the rest of the people on the board. So it is official. Room assistants out, Student Living in. That's not what I was going to talk about though. People often ask me about what exactly Student Living is, and the link will give you a brief description of what it is all about.

Today, the other secretary that works next to me and I were told to write down some office supplies that we needed. All we had were sharpies to write with, so we asked for pens, post it notes, a mini fridge and candy. The fact that we were even asked to write what we wanted down is huge. After our bosses reviewed our list, we each got one pen, which just doesn't happen in that office so I had a feeling that this might be a very good day.

Anyways, I have been working there for a year now. A whole year! My boss, Brother Dougherty and I realized that today when we were talking in his office. (He is the one in the back laughing and pointing at the guy who just got hit with water.) (And thank you to Jenni Woodmansee who put a good word in for me a year ago. He even said today, you are the reason I have this job. Thank you Jenni! I hope your rash is getting better!) Today Brother Doughterty asked me to water and prune his ivy. Then he joked about Jacob chapter 5 in the Book of Mormon and asked if I would dung the ivy too. I said, water and pruning I could do, but I might have some problems finding dung, to which he responded, "You know, pray for things and they will come."

Before brother Dougherty left today, I got a message in my inbox from him with the subject line "thank you," and this is what the e-mail said:

Kate, you are now making $7.75/hour. You deserve it. Thank you for all of your great work! Brother Dougherty

I wrote back and promised to dung his plant.

I am pretty sure a raise just doesn't happen for student employees. A 25 cent raise after a year is great. But its really not about the 25 cents. I was just fine with 7.50. Its just that.... this really doesn't happen! So a year later I have 7.75 and a pen. A lot to be happy about and a very good day indeed.

No Pack, No Sack, Big Lunch Mondays!

The new semester is off to a running start! I am enjoying school a lot more than last semester. Last semester was awful. This will mostly be for my parents because I don't like to talk about school on the weekends when we talk, but its Monday now, so I suppose I can take some time to fill them in.

Today, Jacob was so kind. He packed me a lunch and dropped it off at my work this morning before I started classes. My first class this morning was nutrition. Well, turns out, every Monday when we are in the lab, the class will end with a big buffet of samples of nutritious food! Today we sampled different chicken, potatoes, and spinach recipes. There was some food I definitely liked more than others, not to the fault of the students because we had recipes to follow. All this nutritious food must have done me some good, by the way, because I ran 5.5 miles today and I feel great.

The second class is Baking. Not so nutritious. My teacher is Neal Ricks. He's the one that taught the candy class. Next semester I'll be taking a pastry making class from Brother Ricks too. We like him. I'll be making french bread, cookies, donuts, pie, cake, you name it! I know what my dad is thinking, "Better run another lap." Well, I found out today that I could play for my bosses 4th - 5th football team that he coaches. And they do have a weight limit. He's ready to suit me up! I would be a bit tall though. Anyways, I am really looking forward to learning new skills this semester, especially on Monday.

A Whole New World!

Labor day weekend feels like a really long time ago and I haven't written about our adventures yet, so here we go. We got to Boise past mid-night as usual. On the way we talked about the ideas of nature vs. nurture, if people are inherently good or bad (kind of a Hobbes vs. Locke debate), and a a lot of other different philosophical ideas to prep me for my upcoming philosophy class and all the talking made the drive feel 1/2 as long.

On Saturday we went zip lining. Jacob and I had both never been before. The best zip line was 1700 feet long and it felt like you were flying! Everything was just whooshing by and all the trees blurred into one big green mass until you finally slowed down at the end. We had a lot of fun, but I don't think it was worth as much as they were asking for. Thankfully, we didn't have to because Jacob won this trip from Melaleuca. I can't find our camera stuff right now, so I will have to add pictures later. I thought the harness made my butt look big anyways. So here is a picture of a tree house, so the blog doesn't look so plain.That is quite the engineering accomplishment.

On Saturday night we watched the BYU game vs. Oklahoma. Now I am hooked on BYU football for the rest of the season. On Sunday we had a thanksgiving dinner with the Smith's. The only thing that was missing was the sauerkraut :). On Monday, we went shopping at the outlet mall. Remember the gross feet pictures? The Curtis' took pitty on me and bought me some new shoes. Cheryl had a great deal to a store at the outlet mall so she got a new pair too, and after all was said and done, it ended up being almost 2 shoes for the price of one! Thank you Harold and Cheryl. I have ran everyday this week and my feet have never felt better! Its like having a new pair of feet and my blisters are slowly going away. Jacob got a new button down shirt from Eddie Bauer and I got a new skirt and sweater. I also got a new oven mit. We watched Forever Strong that night and took off early Tuesday morning. Jacob and I both had to go back to work that afternoon, but we both had a fabulous time, and a relaxing weekend.

Pillow Talk

Jacob and I have had some interesting conversations while he's asleep and some funny things to laugh about when we wake up. The first one happened right after we got married. Sometimes Jacob sleeps on his back with his hands behind his head and his elbows out to the side. He was moving into this position one night and he hit my nose pretty hard. It sent stinging tears to my eyes. (Not that I was actually going to cry. It just happened. You know the feeling?) Anyways, I woke him up and told him he hit my nose really hard. He said, "What?" and I told him again that he hit my nose really hard with his elbow. Once he figured out what he had done after a couple more explanations he wouldn't stop apologizing and petting my head. I now stay on my side of the bed with my nose facing away from him.

Conversation #2. Jacob never snores and thank goodness because I can't sleep with noise, unless I fall asleep watching TV. One night he must have had his head in a funny position because he started snoring, and it wasn't just a little snore, he could have woken up the people above and below us. I poked him and asked him to change positions so he would stop snoring. His response, "Oh... Hmm... Anything else?" I hope this wasn't some kind of Freudian slip while he was half asleep, but ever since then I have been careful not to sound too bossy. He claims he doesn't remember this.

Conversation #3. This one happened more recently. Before we went to bed Jacob was saying that he had a headache. In the middle of the night he starting poking me and telling me that he didn't want to get up yet because he felt "blah." I started looking around the room and out the window. It was still very dark out so I looked at my clock. I told him he had plenty of time to sleep because it was only 2:43 am. He asked me what in the world I was talking about and I had to tell him about our conversation. He said, "I don't remember any of this," like I was absolutely out of my mind and rolled over.

Needless to say, I like Jacob during the day a lot more than at night. But we always have a good laugh in the morning when I tell him what we talked about while he was asleep.

The Destroyer

One Sunday morning a couple of months back, I noticed a hornet buzzing around our living room. Let me just say... I hate bugs. So while I yelled at the bug to get out Jacob killed it. The next Saturday Jacob was at work and there was another hornet perched on the window. I smashed it with a DVD player box and ran out outside to the car. Thankfully, there were a lot of errands to run that day.

Where were all these hornets coming from?? Well, I got brave enough to go outside and look. There were HUGE hornets nests built into the top of our windows. So, being brave, I bought some hornet spray and went crazy. I used a whole can on one nest. Those hornets didn't stand a chance.

Later that night Jacob took off the window screens and knocked the nests out. All those hornets were definitely dead after went to town spraying the nests. These are all the hornet nests he knocked down.
Now these silly hornets are coming back again. Jacob doesn't believe me when I tell him that you have to spray the area every couple of weeks to keep them from coming back. It would be nice if maybe someone else could try to convince him, because these hornets are definitely trying to rebuild their home in our window again.