On the other hand....No, there is no other hand

50 points if you know where the title of this post came from

So last week I posted about some of the things I'm excited about in our upcoming move to Seattle (this Saturday, YAY!). Here's a post on the flip side: Things That I'm NOT Going To Miss About Utah. What? That's not the flip side? Eh, I don't really care.

UDOT. Enough said.

Snow. While I like white Christmases, I don't like snow starting in October and ending.....well, I'll let you know when it finally ends this year.

Hot summers. This is made worse by the fact I don't sweat, I RASH like crazy.

Annual winter/spring smog. I have to keep a bag in the car because I *literally* get sick sometimes when I leave the house.

The city that I live in. Let's face it, it sucks.

The school district. One of the reasons I pushed for the move so much was because Liam will be entering school soon. The Alpine school district bites, especially for special need kids.

Mountains. They make me feel very claustrophobic. Weird I know.

Mormon culture. Utah people are odd and xenophobic.

The Right Wingers that run this state. While I know there will be Republicans in Washington but Utah ranked third most conservative state in US (the first two were tied). The ones that especially piss me off are the ones that ASSume that since I don't agree with them, I must be stupid/uninformed/emotional. And then (since most of them are Mormon) when I get mad about THEIR rudeness, they'll quote a 2006 conference talk by Elder Bednar about choosing not to be offended and that "I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive...." This does nothing to piss me off less. Apparently I'm not allowed to get offended when YOU say something rude and offensive. Rant over.

Xeroscaping. I hate looking at brown and gray. It's depressing.

Aridness. It's too @#$$%^@# dry here.

This is not a comprehensive list of the things I will not miss about Utah; it's just the least offensive ones. I've turned off the comments because I'm sure I've pissed off someone (see paragraph re: Elder Bednar's talk) and I don't really care what you think. If you're someone to bitch about this list, chances are you are among the reasons I will not be missing Utah.

Things I look forward to in Seattle

Rain. I'll probably get sick of it, but I like rain.

Fresh seafood. The only thing you can get around here is mutant trout from Utah Lake.

The kids being in separate rooms. Then hopefully they will sleep a little better and not tear their room to bits every morning.

A fenced backyard. With no deer running around to strafe the ground.

Furniture buying. I'm excited to have my OWN furniture that is not whatever we could scrounge up while we were in college.

No having to drive forever to get to anything. The closest decent grocery store is 10 minutes through some very nasty construction; Target, Costco, and frankly anything else is 15 minutes plus. The freeway currently takes 30 minutes to get to.

Asians. The area we're moving to is 22% Asian.

I knew I wasn't that creative

Today Google informed me that if he was still alive, Roger Hargreaves would be celebrating his 76th birthday today. Hargreaves is the author of the Mr. Men and Little Miss books. I LOVED these books when I was in Singapore, but when I moved here, no one knew what I was talking about so I started to believe that I had imagined the whole thing. Nice to know that I wasn't crazy.

Hargreaves also inspired me to write my own story about the Heart Family and two siblings named "Sweet" Heart and "Black" Heart. Sweet Heart was a little goody-two-shoes and Black Heart was a criminal (not so) mastermind who often got into trouble leading to cardiac arrest from their uncle "Brave" Heart. Give me a break, I was 10.

Amusing things-geek edition

Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen

So I was ready for a change (other than moving to another state and possibly trying to start my own business) and I decided the best way to do that was to cut my hair.

Let me explain about me hair. I have alternated between having long, silk tresses and making terrible, terrible hair choices. I had long hair until I was 11. I cut it in a blunt cut to about mid-back (that one wasn't so bad). Two years later I cut it up to my shoulders (that was bad). Then I grew it out again. Got it layered which was okay, but had way to many layers around my moon shaped face. Grew it out again until it was lower back and evened out the layers. I had it long from my last year of high school until I got married three years later. It was long and spiral curled at my wedding, which would have looked gorgeous if it hadn't POURED. Donated it to Locks of Love shortly after marriage. Stupid hair person grabbed the whole ponytail and CHOPPED it up to my chin. 18 inches gone in two seconds-I cried. Grew it out a little bit. Then PERMED and dyed it RED. Both really bad mistakes. Grew, and grew, and grew it out again. Dyed it back to black (which looked really funny because it was kind of purplish) and cut off the by this time very fried ends. Forgot about it while I was pregnant. It grew in the meantime over the next four years to this:

My hair isn't stringy normally, it was just wet in this picture. Click on the pic to see that it's past my butt.

So I went with my sister in law to this really cute stylist, Leanne in Orem. She's Japanese so she knows how to deal with Asian hair. Asian hair is more coarse than Caucasian, the shaft is completely round (which is why Asian hair is usually stick straight) and while sometimes not thick, usually has a lot of body. The problem that I have is that stylists try to cut my hair and then just hairspray things like the bangs in place. I wanted to get a lot of layers, but not too choppy and I still wanted longer overall length. I also didn't want a lot of layers around my face, which is really popular with Asians right now, because I didn't want to look like a mushroom. I'm not that great at explaining hair stuff, so I brought some pictures and Leanne seemed to understand what I was trying to get at. I sat down, and she made the initial cut (the hair that is going to Lock of Love) and handed me a foot long ponytail. I was very proud of myself- I didn't cry this time. Leanne is still finishing the salon in her basement, so we had our haircuts in her kitchen and there wasn't a mirror to watch. So after a lot of blind faith and prayer I looked and saw this:

I have a few dark spots on my chin from some recent acne. Anyone know of any good products to take care of that?

I LOVE it. It's exactly what I wanted despite my crappy explaining skills. Here's the back:

It's a little bit shorter than what I want now, but it'll grow quickly. My head feels about 10 pounds lighter and I'm now going to save a fortune on shampoo and conditioner. Yay!

The most effective form of birth control

Today, the kids opened the fridge (child locks are useless against these two), got out a carton of eggs, and practiced cracking the dozen all over the kitchen floor.

Grrrrrr.

Doctor Who + Neil Gaiman = Best Nerd Moment

I'm excited! Neil Gaiman wrote one of the episodes for this coming season!