Independence Day!

I know I'm a little late on this blogpost but here's my Independence Day post. The 4th of July is one of my most favorite holidays! I love everything about it. The food, the fireworks, the music, friends and family and of course, the reason we celebrate the 4th of July! Overall, it's just an awesome holiday! This year was no exception.

I was invited by one of my friends to the rehearsal concert on the lawn of the Capitol on July 3. You get to hear the music and speeches that they do on the 4th without all of the crowds.

Some of the performers there were Barry Manilow, Lang Lang, Alabama, Hunter Hayes, Ronan Tynan, Nicole Scherzinger etc. It was really good! I was a little surprised by the lack of patriotic music performed at the concert (there was some, just not a lot), but it was still fun!

In the picture above you can see a blurry form of Lang Lang, who is an amazing pianist!

This year, I decided I wanted to host a BBQ over at my house on Independence Day. I checked some friends availability for an evening BBQ for that night and I was happy that some people could come!

In order to host this BBQ, I needed to go out and buy a grill, since I did not own one yet. I didn't want to spend too much money (meaning no gas grills yet) so I did some research online and found this charcoal grill at WalMart for pretty cheap and it had all of the features I wanted, so I bought it.

I am pleased to say it worked. :) We had some pretty good burgers and bratwursts!

I attempted to make a red, white, and blue drink, and this was about as separated as I got the colors. We had a ton of food: burgers, bratwursts, coleslaw, corn, chips and dip, watermelon, dessert etc.

This was our Independence Day group waiting for the firework show to start! We went to the Falls Church fireworks and the display was pretty awesome, a little long, but awesome!

Overall I think the Independence Day get-together was a success and I hope to have another BBQ soon with friends, old and new.

False Advertising

At work, we moved a bunch of filing cabinets and boxes into a storage unit to make more room for desks in the office for all the new people we are hiring. I was put in charge of measuring all of the filing cabinets and boxes that needed to go into the storage unit and then getting them all to fit into the unit while still having access to everything. My supervisor reserved a 10' by 10' (120" by 120") unit for our stuff.

To make sure all the stuff we wanted to get in there would fit, I drew a to-scale layout (on graph paper) of the storage room. I planned for 120" by 120" and I got everything drawn in that we needed. But a couple of days before the big move, we decided to go and measure the room just to make sure it was the size that it was supposed to be. Guess what. When we measured it, it was only 108" by 118" and I was so mad.

You have no idea how mad I was about this. I had spent a lot of time on that floor plan and the unit ended up being A WHOLE FOOT LESS than what it was advertised as and not even quite 10' on the longer side. We went and complained about it and the only thing the man said was, the sizes are approximate. Sure I understand a couple inches off, for approximate, but NOT A WHOLE FOOT. I realize that most people probably would not even notice the size difference if they're just throwing in boxes and other random things, but it mattered to us.

Since they offered no change of the storage unit, we just had to deal with the 108" by 118". So I had to rework the floor plan to make it work again. Although I only had to take out one of the filing cabinets in the reworking, to me it's the principle of the matter. If a storage unit is advertised as 10' by 10', it should be 10' by 10' with maybe a couple inches of leeway, but that's it.

(I wrote this post right after it happened and now it's been a month or so and I'm over it and relieved that it's all over.) :)

Here's a picture of my floor plan. Although it looks nice on the paper, it took multiple drafts before I found the most efficient way to get all of the filing cabinets in there and still have space to open the drawers. Each square equals 3" and the scribbly out part on the top is the WHOLE FOOT LESS that I had to take out after we measured the unit.

NYC in a day!

Did you know it's possible to travel from DC to NYC, NYC to DC, see two Broadway shows, eat good food, visit FAO Schwartz, walk to the Rockefeller Center, go to the Lego Store, walk around Times Square, visit Toys R Us at Times Square all in a 24 hour period without paying for a hotel?

Well you can and my younger brother, Tim, one of my friends, Kara, and I did just that a couple of weeks ago.

I got to meet Sven from Frozen at one of the toy stores. I think this was at Toys R Us.

The Lego Store at the Rockefeller Center was really cool! I had never been in there before. The building (in the picture above) is made out of Legos.

You can tell more in this picture that it's made of Legos.

I loved this dragon in store!  Parts of it's body made appearances around the store. It was pretty awesome!

How much do you think this 3800 piece Lego set cost? Any guesses?

Another view of the dragon!

At the Rockefeller Center, they had a pile of fake oranges on the grass and if I turned around in this picture, there was a pile of limes. I'm guessing it was some sort of piece of art or something.

I had been wanting to see A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder for a while now and I finally got to see it and I really enjoyed it! The songs were fantastic and it was pretty dang funny and my seat wasn't too bad either! :)

I sat on the red steps on Times Square while waiting for Tim and Kara to get out of their shows.

As we were walking to find dinner, a large crowd was gathering outside of this building blocking the sidewalk. We asked someone what the deal was and we learned that Lady Gaga was going to be coming out of the building at any moment.

We waited around for about 10 minutes trying to catch a glimpse of her, but decided that we weren't going to be able to see her over the crowd and that it wasn't worth it, so we continued on our way.

For dinner, we went to the basement of the Plaza Hotel, which had some good, decently priced restaurants (mostly bakeries, but there was an Italian place, a pizza place, and a sushi place.) We entered the hotel through the side door and exited through the beautiful entrance of the hotel (in the picture above).

If you've never been to FAO Schwartz, you should go. It's a fun place to visit and look around! (Apparently FAO Schwartz is closing sometime this year and moving to a different location in NYC). Tim with a stormtrooper made out of legos.

Me with the characters of the Lego movie.

Let us all have HOPE!

For our evening show, Tim and I went to see Something Rotten. I had no idea what this was about before we went to see it, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it!

This was view from my seat for this show, which was not too shabby. :) The show was very funny and the music and dancing was awesome and it was actually a fairly clean show.

Our bus back home didn't leave until 1:30 am, so we had some time to kill after our evening shows were over. Kara had heard of a good place to get cheesecake so we met at that place after our shows and then ate our delicious pieces on the steps at Times Square. We sat on the steps for quite awhile and then started slowly heading toward our bus.

Can I just say it was a very long day? It was a very enjoyable day, but waking up early to catch the bus and then getting an overnight bus back makes for a very long day (especially when it's hard to sleep on buses.) Despite the lack of sleep, it was an awesome trip! Thanks Kara and Tim for the fun day trip!

Russian Party

I served my mission in Ukraine and whenever I meet someone who served in or is from Ukraine or Russia or somewhere with any ties to Russian, I get really excited about it! I like making those type of connections.

In my old YSA ward, there were quite a few Russian speakers and occasionally we would all get together and have a Russian gathering, but as I'd thought about it recently I realized we hadn't gotten together in quite a while. I decided it was time for another Russian party. :)

I got one of my friends and fellow Russian speaker, Diana, in on the party and we started planning.

My sister, Kristina, sent me a picture of some examples of the cute large paper matryoshka dolls (seen in the picture above) to use for picture taking. When I saw the pictures of the dolls, I immediately knew I had to have them at my party. ;) It took me a couple of days to gather the materials and work on them, but I finished the dolls and above are the results.

My friends at the party appeased me and let me take pictures with them and the matryoshka dolls. Above are Armine (from the country of Georgia and Armenia), Nastya (from Russia), and Matt (served in Bulgaria).

Savannah (Hunter's wife), Hunter (served in St. Petersburg, Russia), and Matt.

Armine, Savannah, Hunter, Matt, Nastya and Diana (my friend who hosted the party at her place. served in Novosobirsk, Russia). Everyone at the party except me.

 I'm in the picture now.

Me, Trevor (he came after everyone else had left. served in Rostov na Donu, Russia), and Diana.

I think the party was a success and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We ate lots of delicious Russian food (including borscht, pelmini, pirozhki, plov, oreshki, olivier), talked about Russian culture and news and posed for the cheesy pictures above. :) Thanks Diana for hosting and thanks to those who came! 

I am grateful for...

Willis Carrier, the person who invented the modern air conditioner. Seriously. As summer has been approaching and the heat and humidity has been increasing this year, I have been so grateful for air conditioning in my car, in my house, at work, at other people's houses, at the grocery store (so basically everywhere I go:)

Cell phones

Beware a long and boring post...

I recently had a little incident with my cell phone. No, it did not get dropped in the toilet, but it did get dropped into a tupperware container full of water. Although I took it out very quickly after it fell in, it still caused damage to my phone. It caused issues with my speakers. I couldn't listen to music (which I do all the time on my phone.) I couldn't talk on the phone with the phone to my ear. I couldn't do facetime. I could only talk on speaker phone.

I was highly upset by this all. I use my phone speakers a lot more than I thought I did and I was thinking of the money I would have to spend on getting a new phone. But when I got home after work, I immediately put my phone in rice to see if that trick would work. I was a little nervous because I had tried it before (on another phone) and it did not help. I put it in the rice and left it there that evening and overnight and the next day while I was at work, so I was almost a whole day without a phone.

Can I just say that not having my phone with me made me realize how much I use my phone and how much I am connected to it?

I didn't get my first cell phone until my junior year at BYU. I lived without a cell phone for the first 21 years of my life. Growing up, we always had a land line at home and then when I went off to school we had a land line in the different apartments I lived in. As soon as I stepped out of the house, though, I was no longer available. And you know what, I was okay with that. I mean, of course, I knew no other way, but that was life, when I left the house, no one could get a hold of me.

My cell phone usage has changed over time. My first phone, I only ever used for calling people because it was too hard to text message. My second phone I got the keyboard slide phone, so text messaging became a bigger part of my phone usage. Now I have a smart phone, I not only call and text people on my phone, but I check my email, look up random things on the internet, play Scramble, use the GPS, listen to music etc. etc.

But as I look at the stuff I do on my phone, I sometimes think, is it really necessary for me to have all of these things at my fingertips all the time?  Do I need to have access to the internet every second of the day and do I need people to be able to get a hold of me wherever I am? I've thought a lot about this as I sit in my car at stop lights and decide to check my email which I checked at the last red light 2 minutes ago and as I see people around me (myself included) texting people or looking at some sort of social media as other people are trying to talk to them in person.

Don't get me wrong, I love my smartphone and I don't think I could go back to not having one, but sometimes I just feel like I don't need to be quite so connected to the distractions that a smartphone brings into my life. Because of this, I occasionally leave my phone at home when I run errands and don't always have my phone near me at home on purpose.

Any way, back to the topic of my phone being dropped in water, (because I'm sure you're all waiting to hear what happened to it.) Soaking my phone in rice worked! When I came home from work that day after leaving it in the rice overnight and all day, my phone speakers worked again. Yaaay! Now after writing this post I need to go and check my email on my phone and see if I got anything since the last time I checked it 5 minutes ago.

Europe in a Day

I've lived in the D.C. area for over 4 years now. For the most part, I really like living in the area and a couple of Saturdays ago I was reminded of one of the reasons why I like living here. Two Saturdays in a year, some of the embassies in D.C. open their doors to the public. One Saturday is dedicated to non-EU countries and the other Saturday to EU countries.

This year we went to the EU countries Saturday. (I've been to both the non-EU countries and EU countries in the past.)

Our first stop was the Embassy of the United Kingdom. I've been to this one before, but the person I went with had never been and I definitely thought it was worth it to go again.

They gave us free sunglasses as we walked onto the grounds of the embassy and they had some beautiful cars near the entrance.

The British ambassador's house. When I went to the embassy before, we didn't do the tour of the house, but this time we did. It was pretty cool!

The main hallway in the house. It's pretty fancy!

Look at that huge table. They said it was set for 32 but 34 could fit on there. They also mentioned that they don't usually have it set up for that many people. The table can be broken up into smaller sections and used in smaller rooms in a more intimate setting, but they had it set up to show the largeness of the table and the room. :)

This is a sitting room where they usually retreat to after dinner. I thought the couches looked quite comfortable and inviting. Of course we could not sit on them, but it felt pretty homey.

The grounds of the embassy were beautiful!

These two men were from a bigger group of men who had been playing the bagpipes for the visitors. Sadly we were inside the house when they were actually playing and by the time we were done inside they had already finished their playing.

Of course I had to get a picture with the Matt Smith cutout as Dr. Who. I've seen all of the most recent episodes of Dr. Who through David Tennant and a lot of the Matt Smith ones but only one with the most recent one, Peter Capaldi.

The British flag made out of stones (or at least the blue parts are).

Our next stop on our tour was the Finnish embassy. I had already been to this one too, but I also really liked this one and thought it was worth it to go again. We ended up having to wait in line for an hour to get in, but it was cool. The architecture of the building and the food samples they have in there made it worth it. :)

Inside the Finnish Embassy.

I love this wall of windows in the embassy.

There was this guy playing the accordion to entertain us as we waited in line for the food.

The one selfie Heather and I took together. Heather does not like getting her picture taken, but we decided we needed to get a picture of us in our British sunglasses in front of the Finnish embassy. :)

The final stop of the day was the German embassy (where the French and German embassies combined their cultural information tents.)

I'm not sure what the building is used for, but I liked it!

They had part of the Berlin Wall there. The red lettering on it says "We are the People." I really liked the grounds of the German embassy. Since the embassy was a little ways away from the other embassies and the grounds were larger, I felt a little more like I had stepped into a foreign country. The grounds were really nice!

I liked these old German cars. Aren't they cute?! The building behind them is the German ambassador's house. This house was definitely a more modern style than the British one.

I have no idea what kind of car it is, but it's pretty cool looking. (Notice that the license plate is upside down.)

This is the library inside the German ambassador's house. It's a cozy room, but to me it's not as inviting as the British sitting room.

By the time we got to the end of the German embassy grounds, Heather and I were pretty hungry. It was 3:40ish and we had walked a lot that day and hadn't eaten anything since that morning (except the food samples from the Finnish embassy), so we decided to eat at the German embassy. They had bratwursts and knackwursts and pretzels for sale. They had other things too, but that's what we ended up getting. The food was pretty dang good!

After we were done with the German embassy, the embassies had closed for visitors, so Heather and I walked toward Georgetown to go to Georgetown Cupcake. When we got to Georgetown Cupcake the line was long and it was hot out and we decided we didn't want to wait in line. But we still wanted a treat so we went to a frozen yogurt place across the street instead and it sure did taste good!

After eating our frozen yogurt, it was time to go home. We walked across Key Bridge to catch the metro at Rosslyn.

 Overall it was a fun day! Thank you D.C. embassies for opening your doors to the public one day a year.