The Richest Vegetable in all the Land

So Robyn and I, as part of our budget, we each get some money each month that we call our "fun money." This is money that we get to do whatever we want with, and we don't even have to consult each other to spend it. My fun money is usally squandered in riotous living by the end of the month. I buy things like books, DVDs and computer games. Robyn, however, had a desire to save her money for several months to buy one big ticket item. Now, if I were to do that, it would be a sweet Blu-Ray player, or an awesome DVR but she had very different desires. (It turns out boys are different from girls.) She wanted a toothbrush. Now, this wasn't just any toothbrush that you can buy at the grocery store. This was the super guracious Sonicare toothbrush

The Sonicare toothbrush actually comes in a 2-pack. So, that meant that I got one too. We've had them for a week now and I'm a little more used to it now, but the first time I tried it, I had never experienced an electronic toothbrush before so it was a new and somewhat disconcerting experience. All that vibrating inside my head made me think that it was going to jiggle my brain right out of my head. I happen to like my brain, my job pays me for the right to rent the use of my brain for 40 hours a week. Not only that, but my brain helps me out with important activities I need to perform such as walking, speaking, breathing and various other tasks that I would have trouble performing without a brain.

After reviewing how much I really do appreciate my brain, I brought my concern to Robyn. "What if all this vibrating in my brain causes brain damage?" "What if I can no longer think?" "What if I become a complete vegetable?" Robyn assured me that if I were to become a vegetable, she would raise a serious lawsuit and get millions and millions of dollars from the Sonicare corporation.

'Hmmmm..." I thought to myself, "I may be a vegetable, but I'll be a wealthy vegetable. I could be the richest and most powerful vegetable in all the land!" Take that Mushroom Kingdom! You got nothin on me!

Communication: Key to the future

Valentine’s Day was a little over a week ago. Robyn wrote about what we did on that day, we had a lot of fun together. But since she did a fabulous job of sharing what we did that day, I thought I might share a little bit about what I learned.

Let me start at the beginning. I was extremely nervous about Valentine’s Day. I had heard multiple horror stories about the bad experiences that men had with their wives on this particular holiday. Most of them revolved around wives saying one thing but meaning another. For example, several guys told me that they had learned the hard way that “Don’t buy me a gift” spoken by a woman is, roughly translated, “Buy me a gift or die.” Or “let’s save money and not get each other anything” is actually translated to “I know flowers can be a pretty expensive gift and you are going to need to get me a lot of them, but the good news is I won’t get you anything so the cost will balance out.” (That one had quite a few stories attached; apparently there are many women who don’t think of flowers as a gift.) Many stories lead me to believe that Valentine’s was a very one sided holiday that was strictly for the enjoyment of the wives.

Disclaimer: If you feel I am over-exaggerating the story you told me, understand that I heard dozens of stories from dozens of men. If your story didn’t paint Valentine’s in the light that the above paragraph reflects, I must not have been referring specifically to yours.

I’m not usually a negative person, but I was beginning to feel very negative about the holiday as it approached. Apparently there had been a lot of unmet expectations by both husbands and wives in their early years of marriage. I was concerned because A) I love to surprise Robyn but I didn’t want to put a lot of effort into a fun Holiday if it was going to turn out she hated it because I overlooked some ingredient that I was supposed to “just know” and B) I was a little sad that the expectation was that I was supposed to do something for her and get nothing in return.

I decided to try a pretty crazy tactic to “save” Valentine’s Day. I talked to my wife about it. I know, I know, that’s what the other husbands tried and it backfired for them when their wives said one thing and actually meant something else. But Robyn and I have a secret weapon. We say what we mean and (this part is really crazy) we mean what we say. We try to hold each other accountable for our words. Thus, if she tells me, “I don’t want a gift.” And she gets mad at me for not buying a gift, then I get to pass the buck back to her for not meaning what she said. (or vice versa)

So, like I said, we talked about it. I expressed concern that other husbands felt like it was a one sided holiday. She told me she was planning on doing something for me already. (She’s awesome.) I asked her what her expectations were and she said that she would enjoy flowers or chocolates, and a simple date. Now I could rest easy. I knew exactly where the bar was and could lay my plans to far surpass it.

From there it was great fun picking out what flowers to get her. (The ladies that were standing around as I discussed with myself whether traditional red roses were best, or if I should get another color, were quite amused.) It was fun to plan our date, and to figure out how to surprise her with the love note I wrote her. Most of all it was fun when the day came and I was able to deliver on all the things I had put together and see how happy it made her. It was also fun when she “heart attacked” me. (She dumped a bunch of hearts on my head, each one either said something she loved about me or they were coupons for things she would do for me such as “watch any movie” –it’s totally gonna be a scary one, or “make a steak dinner” or “pick a dvd to buy”.) All in all, it was amazing; we both received what we desired to receive and more. Communication saved the day again.

Nacho Joy, My Joy

As of late Robyn has been doing some magical things with food. She's able to recreate foods from every restaurant imaginable. I'm not sure quite how she does it. For the purpose of seeking truth I will present all of my theories for your judgment.

Theory 1 Blackmail:
It's possible she has some dirt on the higher ups in these different companies. She has blackmailed them and forced them to share their recipes. An offshoot of this theory is that she has dirt on Warren Buffet. Since he owns large portions of virtually every company, he would be the one source that could have trade secrets for every restaurant on earth. Maybe she's blackmailing him.

Theory 2 Reverse Engineering:
Do you remember the movie Paycheck? The main character was a reverse engineer. They would put him in a room with a competitor's technology and he would take it apart, figure out how it worked, build his own version and often even make improvements. Robyn could be a reverse food engineer. Imagine the possibilities, she could recreate every recipe and improve upon it without ever being told the original ingredients.

Theory 3 Genie:
As of yet, she has only emulated 3 different restaurants. It's possible she specifically wished for knowledge of those three recipes. The Genie theory will be disproved as soon as she does a fourth but at least for now it remains viable.

Theory 4 Cookbook:
I know this one just sound ludicrous, but it's possible she recently purchased a cookbook that had all the recipes that she's recently tried out.

Regardless of how she does it, she has done some amazing things. I'm particularly excited about her most recent. She was able to perfectly copy the meat from Taco Bell. I decided that we should have Nachos. She made the meat and I made my homemade guacamole, I chopped tomatoes and avocadoes, and we had sour cream and cheese and gladness. I was so proud of the result that I just had to take a picture.

Doesn't it look delicious and glorious and happy?

Fourth Moniversary

Yesterday was our Fourth Moniversary. I was uber sleepy so I went to bed instead of blogging. But, don't worry, the Moniversary series is still going strong. Lots has happened this month including miraculous samples, an unexpected party, preparing ourselves for zombies and random hot pictures of Robyn.

Here are a few other stories that have occurred in the past month:

The Favorite Uncle Project continues
We recently got to babysit my niece and nephew for a whole evening. Robyn went over there before I was done with work so I headed straight over after work. When I arrived Ian was standing there waiting for me. As I walked in the door he yelled, "JJJJEEEEEEEEEEEFFFFFFFFFFF!" for approximately 12 years. When he ran out of breath he told me it was time for us to play dinosaurs.

However, later in the same evening, the Favorite Uncle Project almost backfired. I was putting Addie to bed and Robyn was about to change Ian's diaper. Ian insisted that the only person who could do a proper job changing his diaper was me. Robyn amusedly told him to go get me and let me know. Fortunately, I'm a genius and thought of something fast. I proposed that I could talk to him and play with him while Robyn changed his diaper. He and I both agreed this was the best option available. Whew! Crisis narrowly averted!

Robyn Goes Hardcore Gamer
So Robyn and I were talking about games we had played when we were younger. I told her about some ancient games I had played and she mentioned a game called ChexQuest. She downloaded it and stayed up uber late that night playing. It's a game that looks alot like Doom only it used to come in the Chex box like 10 years ago or something. All I can really say is that Robyn is beyond awesome.

Incoherent Robyn Strikes Again
One night she began rubbing my back in the middle of the night. I rolled over and asked if she needed anything and she said nothing. In the morning she remembered nothing. The next night she started cuddling with me. I woke up and cuddled for a few minutes and then she decided she was done and rolled over. I asked her this time if she was going to remember cuddling with me. She responded in some sort of alien tongue. But in the morning the only thing she could remember was that I had asked her a question in the middle of the night.

Robyn Becomes Gourmet Chef
She really kicked it up a notch this month. She has begun emulating restaurants. She can now make the In N Out Burger animal style as well as the Costa Vida Pork Salad. Who knows what she'll do next but we may never need to go out to eat again. She's truly amazing.

Our Sudden Popularity

Robyn and I love being married, and we are each other's best friend so we totally enjoy spending time just the two of us. But we have both discussed how we occasionally miss the time we used to spend with all of our friends. When we were dating and I still had other guys living with me, I would often come home to discover that there was a party happening at my house that I didn't know about. I loved it, it was an effortless way to participate in social events. Robyn and I would often attend for a while and then go have alone time afterward. So we have both missed having unplanned visitors. That brings me to the story of our sudden popularity.

When I got home from church yesterday, there was a voicemail from a girl in our former singles ward. Her message was about one of my former roommates. She said that his current roommates hadn't seen him for several days. Apparently alot of people missed him at church and he wasn't answering his cell phone, so they called his family to see if he had gone home for the weekend, and the family hadn't seen him either. He calls his family, though, every Sunday at 4:00 so everyone was holding their breath to see if he would call at 4. When he didn't, his family filed a missing person report with the police. At the time I didn't know all this was going on because all she said in the message was that she was wondering if I had seen him because they hadn't had any contact with him. I wasn't too worried because I knew that he did enjoy taking little road trips by himself to clear his head.

About 15 minutes after we had gotten the message, he showed up at our house. He was unaware that he was a missing person. He had taken a short trip to Reno to spend some time alone and do some thinking, and he had misplaced his cell phone before he left. He wanted to borrow something to use for his ward FHE and so he stopped by our house before going home. We called the girl back who had left a message and let her know he was here. Well, she immediately came over and told him how she had been in contact with his family and they thought he was dead and what not. He called his mom right then and there and let her know he was okay. She also texted everyone in the world saying that we had found him. We totally got to be the heroes of the day even though all we did was chill at home. We then got to hang out for a bit and there was another knock at the door. It was a member of our old bishopric. He had heard about our heroism and came to see if it was true. It was the most spontaneous visitors we had had in a long time.

We were popular, we were heroes, what more could we ask for? And the best news is that my former roommate was safe and sound. That is the story of our sudden popularity.