Seven Things I Have Observed About Erica

1. Erica does not like to have her belly button poked or in any way touched. Seriously. I think her belly button is more sensitive than most people's fingertips, except it only registers one sensation: pain. If my goal is ever to make Erica angry, I know just what button to press.

2. Erica lived her high school years at the base of one of the Cottonwood Canyons in Salt Lake City, mere minutes away from some of the greatest skiing on all of planet Earth, but I think she only went one time.

3. Number 2 was in part due to the fact that she broke her ankle right around the time she moved to Utah. Thanks to some incredibly incompetent rural Texas doctors, who told her it wasn't broken and to just walk it off (advice which necessitated later surgery and pins in her ankle), we are simply grateful she can use that foot. She is now very careful and resists the urge to jump over luggage.

4. Erica loves chocolate. A lot. This could have something do with the fact that she is part American Indian (1/16 I believe). Check out her baby photos for any necessary proof of that lineage. As a baby I think she looked like an Eskimo. A very cute one. Erica is also a descendant of Parley P. Pratt.

5. Erica is the only person I have met who, after being exposed to me for longer than a few weeks, can stand to be in my presence.

6. Erica is very self conscious of her singing, but I think she has a beautiful voice.

7. Erica suffers from what I like to call "worry all the time syndrome" or "WATTS." I happen to suffer from "dimentia of obvious facts ultra syndrome" also known as "DOOFUS." She helps me get to the dentist regularly, ensures we eat healthy and delicious food, reminds me to bathe at somewhat regular intervals, and so on. In turn, I assure her that we will both be alive tomorrow, one day we won't have crushing student loan debt, and that the sky, is in fact, not falling. To sum up, I keep her heart rate below 1,000 and Erica keeps my heart beating (thanks hon).

questions from betsey

Our friends Betsey and Richard posted seven interesting things about each other which I thought was so fascinating that I've decided to do the same thing. I am going to post 7 interesting things about Tom and then (hopefully) Tom will at some point post 7 interesting things about me (he's already asleep).

1. Tom really likes the eggs in the egg carton to be symmetrical. If the egg carton is full and he takes two eggs out, he will take one from each side so that the remaining eggs are symmetrical.

2. One of Tom's favorite foods is a vegetarian Chipotle burrito with black beans and corn salsa. He was (almost) always eat one if it is offered to him.

3. Tom needs A LOT of sleep. I usually feel fine with six or seven hours of sleep, but Tom isn't really happy unless he gets at least nine hours. And he does not like to be woken up.

4. Tom once got a fortune cookie that said "you would make a good lawyer." He carries the fortune around in his wallet.

5. Tom was born in Texas, then lived in Oklahoma before moving to California. When he lived in Oklahoma he fell out of the car while his mom was driving down the road. Somehow he survived.

6. After Tom got home from his mission he went on a lot of first dates, but I was the only second date he went on.

7. Tom has cankles. Seriously, he has the biggest, cutest ankles I've ever seen.

back to school

That's right, on Monday Tom will be back to school. Today was his last day at Irell and I have to admit, I was really sad. And not just because it meant saying goodbye to our temporary dual income. We really met some fantastic people throughout the summer and I am going to miss seeing them all of the time. Since we are near the firm there we will (hopefully) still be going to an occasional dinner with some associates. I am very proud of Tom because he has been asked to come back for a couple weeks next summer which means there is a good chance that he will get a job offer! When we were deciding where Tom should go to law school, I would never guessed how much choosing UCLA would change our lives. We love living in LA, we have an amazing ward, and Tom has been able to participate in this fantastic program. I feel so blessed.

Since we had been busy moving and then we were both sick for several days, we haven't been going to many dinners lately. Let's see. . . in the last few weeks we have tried out Fogo de Chao, Mastro's, Jar, Craft, and Lucques. We also had a couple of kind-of-celebrity-sitings; we saw Eddie Izzard at Jar and Gail Simmons at Craft. Everything was pretty good, except Craft had terrible service (they have only been open for a couple weeks) but they did give us these little blueberry corn muffins to take home with us.

Anyway, we are pretty much settled into our new place and we love it. I'll try to put up pictures soon, once our walls look a little less bare :)

If anyone is interested. . .

My mom (who lives in the Salt Lake City area) is selling purebred lhasa apso puppies. They are soooo cute and they are great dogs (and they lhasas don't shed). Give me a call or leave a comment if you're interested 310-691-9966

Hmmm

It looks like I slept through my first earthquake.

walking

I found this link on David's blog (he is in my ward and I read and enjoy his blog even though I don't think he knows who I am so I hope he doesn't mind). I LOVE walking so I thought it was really interesting. Basically, it uses Google maps to give you a score to rate how walkable your community is. Here are the scores for the communities in which Tom or I have lived:

Los Angeles (90034): 68

suburban Salt Lake City (84121): 26

Bakersfield, CA (93309): 52

London (South Kensington, I know I didn't live there for very long, but it was a great place for walking): 87

Pittsburg, Texas (75686): 28

August . . . already?

It has been a little while since I have really posted. Moving has taken up most of our spare time, but our keys to the old apartment have been turned in and today we finished unpacking all of our boxes. We have moved and we are very happy. There are pros and cons to the new apartment (mostly pros) here are a few of the wonderful things about the new place:

• MORE ROOM. The new apartment has ~900 square feet compared to the ~425 square feet in the old place.
  
• Air conditioning. Our old apartment had no air conditioning and it was always about 10-20 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. It was an oven.
  
• We are closer to the rest of the ward. Even though we have been in the ward for about a year, we don't know that many people. We have probably met more people in the last two weeks than we have met in the last year.
• We get cell phone reception in our apartment. All five bars.
• We get to park in a garage. Though the garage is tiny and our car barely fits, it is protected from the elements. At our old apartment the car was under a tree that created a sticky coating all over the car.
  
• Paying rent online with a credit card = credit card points
• We have a larger oven. Our old place couldn't even hold a standard-size cookie sheet.
• Our internet, cable, and gas are all paid for.

As I write this something is happening that could not have happened in our old apartment: I am sitting in the living room on the couch typing this and watching TV while Tom is playing video games and neither of us have to wear headphones :) Tom is in the next room so I can listen to the TV and he can have volume on his video game at the SAME TIME.

Anyway, enough about the new apartment. I will try to post pictures tomorrow if I remember/have enough energy. Tom posted a little about our trip to Newport Beach, but here are a few more pictures (sorry I didn't take time to remove the red-eye):
The firm sponsored a night at a hotel in Newport Beach so that the summer associates could see the firm's Newport Beach office. Tom went up a night early so that he could participate in a mock trial activity and I joined him on Friday. Newport is beautiful and we enjoyed a little walking around followed by a dinner and activities like a poker tournament, bull riding, and gambling with fake money. We had a very enjoyable time, even though we were both pretty terrible at poker and we didn't win anything in the raffle.

Since then we have been able to show off our new apartment to a few visitors. Last week Tom's aunt Judy, cousins Rachael and Andrew, and Rachael's daughter Savannah visited our new place. This was the first time I had the opportunity to meet Rachael and Savannah and they are fantastic just like the rest of Tom's family. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner and got to do some catch up. Rachael even brought us a bottle of Ice Cucumber Pepsi from Japan (where she lives). I was actually surprised that I liked it quite a bit; I wouldn't say that it tasted good, but it was very refreshing. Thanks Rachael :)

On Friday we went to Chipotle with Andrew and one of his friends. Tom and Andrew are both Chipotle-lovers and Tom will always take up an opportunity to visit the restaurant. Plus, it was nice to visit with Andrew (who is also at UCLA).

Today Tom's parents and his sister Denise and her husband John had the pleasure of visiting our wonderful apartment. We went to the Breadbar to celebrate Tom's mother's birthday. It is always wonderful to have visitors. After they left we went to a welcome home party for a fellow law school student/ward member/friend who has just returned from working for a firm in Hong Kong. I am definitely suffering from sugar overload. Afterwards we played Cities and Knights of Catan (this really extreme version of Settles of Catan which has even more rules) and had lots of fun with some of our wonderful ward members. I love our ward.

By the way, I walked to work again on Friday and I've decided that I really enjoy it. I may start walking regularly.

early morning

One thing that we were sad about when we decided to move is that we would give up the ability to walk to to and from work/school. Up until today I have been taking the bus (it pretty much stops right in front of my apartment and right in front of my office), but I walked to work today. It really wasn't that bad.

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=from:+3245+Sepulveda+Blvd,+90034+to:+924+Westwood+Blvd,+90024&sll=36.879621,-95.625&sspn=42.824547,94.746094&ie=UTF8&z=13&om=1

CRAZY

So no new posts for a while because we haven't had internet at either the old place (where it was canceled) or the new place (where it will get set up this Saturday...yeah!). The only exciting thing that has happened since the last action packed post, other than the still ongoing process of moving, was the annual firm event in Newport Beach, which is where the other Irell and Manella office is. I went down to the Newport office last Thursday to participate in a Mock Trial with most of the summer associates where I helped defend poor old Wyatt Earp who was accused of wrongfully murdering Ike Clanton. The coolest part of the trial was the live video feed of the jury deliberating over the case. It has confirmed my suspicions from my glorious high school debate years that what you may think is important is usually not what the listener focuses on. They put me us up in a nice hotel and then Erica drove down the next day for the festivities, a wild west themed event complete with a bucking bronco...yes that's me trying to ride one. It was a crazy 4.7 seconds.
Anyway, thanks to all those who helped us move! Pictures of our amazingly furnished (by IKEA) apartment and maybe a few interesting photos from the Newport party are on their way. So stay tuned!

the big move has begun

Well, we at least made one trip today. Tom is going to be in Newport Beach for mock trial tomorrow and then I am going to join him on Friday, so we aren't going to make any substantial process until at least Saturday, but at least we have seen the apartment and we were able to make one trip. We are really happy with the apartment, but we aren't very happy about our garage. After we parked (and squeezed ourselves out of the car) we walked around and noticed that we have the smallest model. Our car BARELY fits. I called and tried to negotiate a new garage, but they wouldn't even listen to me, they just said no. We will have to make it work. The apartment is more the twice as big as our current place (we can actually have visitors now . . .), I don't think these pictures do it justice. In addition to the living room and dining room/kitchen, there are two bedrooms and two bathrooms.
It has been a little while since I updated the blog so I'll fill in what we have been doing.

Last Wednesday we went and saw Harry Potter on the Imax theater with the firm. I wouldn't call myself a Harry Potter fanatic, but I definitely enjoy the books and the movies and this movie was no different. The theater had assigned seats so it was nice to just arrive at the theater a few minutes before the film and not have to worry about getting good seats. We really enjoyed the movie and having the last 15 or so minutes in 3D was fun. I have been listening to the previous books on tape (while I'm at work) to prepare for the new book, I am very excited.

Thursday we went and saw Wicked with Tom's mentor and his wife. I have heard so many people say that they really enjoyed the show that Tom convinced his mentor to take us. We had a lot of fun, even though we were sitting about four rows from the back and there were these two old men in front of us who kept asking each other, "What did they just say?" Before we went to Wicked, we went to this cheap little Thai place down the street that had this HILARIOUS Thai Elvis impersonator who (according to the sign) was not lip syncing.

After our late movie Wednesday and seeing Wicked on Thursday, we were both completely exhausted but we managed to do a little couch shopping on Saturday. Our current couch is a hand-me-down from my sister and while it is ok and it was free, it does not work well for long-term sitting. The cushions are pretty uncomfortable and the couch sits pretty low to the ground so we are in the market for something new. I think we found one we like, we'll see . . . Later Saturday night we met up with Tom's sister Denise and her husband John for a lovely dinner at Natalee Thai. Yum.

Then last night I convinced Tom to set up a dinner for us to go to Spago with some people from the firm. I have been wanting to eat dinner there all summer and I wasn't disappointed (I particularly enjoyed the chocolate torte that I had for dessert). I, of course, managed to get dinner all over myself, but it was worth it.

Anyway, we are going to have a very busy week. We have our Westwood apartment for the rest of the month, but after that we will have a new address so if you want the new address send me an email :)

p.s. My mom's dog just had puppies, aren't they cute?

family reunion

Tom and I spent the last few days at a family reunion with his side of the family. We are now totally exhausted from hikes, children, and heat, but we really had a great time. This is the first time that Tom and I have been around his entire family since our wedding and I enjoyed interacting with them and feeling as if I am a part of their family. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family-in-law and so many cute nieces and nephews. Since Tom is the youngest and I am the oldest, our families have very different dynamics. I am really looking forward to my siblings growing up and getting married, but since I still have a 12-year old sister that will probably be a few years.

Tom's parents rented a cabin in Crestline (near San Bernadino) where Tom's sister lives and we all met up on Wednesday. We chatted, went to the beach, went hiking, and played many hours of Wii games. Here are a few pictures from the weekend. We didn't take very many because Tom gave up and started taking pictures with his mom's (much more portable) camera. We might add more photos when we get those from her. The rest of the photos we took can be seen here.

I Love LA

This evening Tom and I were driving back from Best Buy in Culver City and we spotted a Kwik-E-Mart. We had both read this article on MSNBC earlier today that talked about 7-11 promoting the Simpson's movie by temporarily converting a dozen of its locations into Kwik-E-Marts (this is the name of the convenience store on the Simpson's that makes fun of 7-11) and coincidentally, we ran into one. That is one great thing about living in LA: the things that you read about happen here. We probably would have never noticed but the store was at capacity and there was a huge line of people waiting to get in.

Anyway, we went to Best Buy because Tom's beloved computer chair (which was damaged in our move out from Utah) finally died. He now has a new and improved chair which he is referring to as his throne (which was on sale).
Last week we had a couple of very interesting food experiences. On Thursday we went to Matsuhisa, which is this great sushi place in Beverly Hills and it is definitely my favorite place that we've eaten so far. We had some delicious albacore sashimi, some wonderful pumpkin tempura, and some (surprisingly) little 10 oz, nonrefillable glass bottles of sodas that cost $4 each.

Then on Friday we went to the weirdest place we've eaten so far: Sona. We decided to get the 6 course tasting menu (we've never had a tasting menu before) because we were with this really nice associate who encouraged us to not pay attention to our normal dinner $ limit. The tasting menu just means that we get six courses of whatever the chef thinks is best the day. We had all kinds of things like kimchi, wantons, raw fish, duck, black (not blackened) chicken, steak, and some delicious chocolate desserts. We also had a dessert that looked like a little tiny hamburger, but it tasted like rosemary. It was very bizarre. The food was. . . interesting, but the really interesting thing was the service. It seemed like there were about 50 waiters and I don't think we saw the same one twice. Seriously, it was like we were in the Matrix. They didn't really say anything and it seemed like it took five or six people to bring out every course. Luckily we really enjoyed the company of everyone else at the table and this was probably my most enjoyable dinner experience so far.

Well, starting on Wednesday we will be in Crestline with Tom's family. We are really excited because we haven't seen some of Tom's family in a long time. I will update when we get back, until then have a happy 4th of July :)