People That Make You Go "Hmmm"

Today at work I spoke with someone in Texas who said to me, "Now, you guys are an hour and a half ahead of us, right?" Wow. Maybe his area of Texas, like Arizona, rejected the traditional daylight savings schedule. But even so, the last time I checked, the difference in U.S. time zones are still by the hour, never by the half hour. Most adults are aware of this.

This doesn't bode well for the library given the fact I was calling to get a refund on products I ordered 2 months ago that have not arrived. An hour later he called back to tell me they never charged the library for the products. I informed him that they had indeed charged us, since I was looking at our most recent credit card statement and there was the charge. He didn't believe me, so I faxed over a copy(after blacking out, and then whiting out all information besides the charge from them).

Still waiting for a response on that refund... any chance I'll get it?

**Addendum to Karma**

Hello Karma,

This is Daniel's wife and I am angry. Very angry. I am almost 100% positive my engagement ring got flushed down the toilet. Now that is literally flushing thousands of dollars down the toilet. There is a chance Lexie's parent's cat ate my ring, but that is just a made-up, unrealistic hope. Luckily, Lexie's parents are generously paying a plumber to take apart the toilet and sink in that bathroom in the hopes that my ring got caught somewhere it can be found.

That would be a rough day for most people. You must think I am not like most people. No, no, you had to provide an inordinate amount of traffic in Portland at the exact time I was trying to get to the airport. I sprinted up to the Delta counter 25 minutes before my flight only to find out I was 5 minutes too late to check my bag. The Delta employee offered me no help, just told me I was too late. I asked what I should do and he said, "uh, I think Southwest has another flight to SLC tonight. Go check there." I ran over to Southwest to find out a new ticket would be $200. So I returned to Delta, hoping I could get put on another flight in the morning. Yes, I could get on another flight but it would be $150. I dejectedly returned to Southwest and purchased a $200 ticket to fly home tonight. (The original fare for my round trip was $121 including tax)

Congratulations, Karma, this has been the unluckiest, stinkiest, stupidest 3 days of our marriage. You have succeeded in using up all my patience and level-headedness. It is so used up that when Daniel's car slid as he tried to back out of our parking lot tonight that I started crying. He didn't hit anything this time, but the threat sent me over the edge.

Are you just creeping us on us since we have had pretty nice lives thus far? Or are you in debt to us now? Somehow I can't imagine a 3/4 carat, solitaire, emerald-cut diamond ring just falling into my lap in the near future. I still can't believe it is gone.

Sincerely, Carly

Strange Week--Watch Your Back Karma

Warning****Very long post, but if you can laugh at yourself you will appreciate it because as I wrote this I laughed pretty hard at myself.****

My whole life I have been superstitious before playing or coaching in a big basketball game. I always think I can make deals with karma or fate or what ever you want to call it. I figure if I eat and shower at certain times it changes the universe in a positive way for my team or if I wear a specific tie it makes us score more. It sounds crazy because it is crazy. Going into this week we knew it would be important for us since we were playing two of the best teams in our league. I should have known that all my made up deals with karma this year would catch up to me.

We won our first big game of the week on the road by 20 over a very good TCU team. We had won 10 games in a row. Things were looking up. My family came to the game and it was a great trip overall (don't be fooled by Tyler's fake smile, they had fun).



I frequently think things like, "If we can win this game I am willing to have something embarrassing happen to me," or something along those lines. As soon as we got back to Provo karma decided to start cashing in on all of my deals I have made with it. Karma started slow, but built up like a tidal wave, a real jerky tidal wave. Here are the things that karma has done to me this week to cash in on all of my pleas for victories this year.

1. I had an intramural basketball game and the team we played looked like 4th graders. We won by 80, and that was only because we played with 4 for most of the game. It was not fun and I look forward to getting to play competitive basketball games. At this point I didn't realize that the karma monster was involved, I simply thought that we wasted our night playing a crappy team.

2. The next day Carly left to go visit Lexie in Oregon. It was like karma knew it couldn't hit me with full force with Carly around so it had her leave me so I would be helpless against what was coming. I still didn't think things were going badly since Carly had planned this trip for a while, but I did get suspicious on the way home from the airport when I was stuck in traffic for 2 hours due to a fender bender and stupid Utah drivers.

3. I figured things would get better since I had a city league game that night. Like I said I love competitive basketball so I was excited. We played ok and traded the lead back and forth throughout the game, but then karma got dirty, like below the belt dirty. I beat someone on a drive (I should have stopped right then because I never drive around ANYONE. This was very suspicious looking back on it.) and pulled up for a jumper and the guy I drove around took me out football style right on the side of my right knee. Long story short, our trainer says she is 95% sure I tore my ACL. I don't care how you abbreviate it, it hurts and is really annoying. At this point I still thought it was just a bad day.

4. So after I get home from my game and attempt to shower without falling over I decide to go to the store to get some food since we didn't have much. How bad could this be? I was driving half a mile to get some cereal and milk. Well it was bad because my parking lot is like an ice skating rink as soon as I put my car in reverse and it hit the ice it slid down hill into the front of my other car. Yes I hit my own car with my other car. Now all it did was put a small crack in the front bumper, but this is still infuriating. I finally started thinking that karma had something to do with this all. I mean I really wanted to win at TCU, but this was getting to be a bit much.

****Intermission***********Yes there is more.********

5. Before our game on Saturday we went to eat pregame meal and it took FOREVER to get our food. Plus their credit card machine wouldn't work so I alread knew I would have to return later to pay for our food even though we were upset about that same food. Then before the game I was walking around in the Marriott and my knee gave out. I went down like a sack of hammers. Now I did appreciate the humor of someone falling down, but it hurt at the same time so I was angry.

6. So then we played New Mexico which was another huge game. We played pretty well, not great, but good enough we whould have won. However that did not happen because one team shot 31 free throws and the other shot 9. Go ahead and guess who shot what. We lost by four and at this point I knew karma was the culprit, but it had gone too far as if it was going for everything in one week. I started to put a positive twist on things like if I use all my bad luck right now then for the rest of the season we will be awesome. I mean I had to do something to start fighting back.

7. Karma continued its onslaught with unrelenting force when I returned to pay for our pregame meal after our game and upon turning on my car it would not shift out of park. Why you ask? I still have no clue, but after figuring out the shift lock release (yes Hyundai has a shift lock release because apparently they know that there is a chance your car will just decide to lock up) I was able to get home. The thing is now I am paranoid that there is something wrong with the car even though all the reviews I have read say it just happens in the cold sometimes. Who knows.

8. Now I realize that this is a very long post, but hopefully all 2 of you who read this realize that I simply need to vent a little bit. Anyway after getting my car to work I watched a movie with a couple of friends and it was terrible. So bad that I don't even remember the name. Last night I went to watch another movie and it was essentially the same level of crap as the movie from the night before.

9. At this point I figure things can't get worse, but great news, things did get a little worse. Carly just called me before she left to go to the airport and said she thinks her wedding ring got flushed down the toilet. In all honesty I really don't care that much, but this made Carly upset which is not good for me. Hopefully she will just be happy to get back home. Pretty low karma, pretty low mister.

Well with all of my complaining out of the way maybe now karma owes me and everything will go my way for a while. Maybe we will find Carly's ring, find out my knee is just fake hurt, and my team will go to the final four. These probably wont happen, but at least I know that when I make my next plea for victory that karma owes me and he had better pay up...or else.

Specimen of the Day: Kimberlee L.H. Viera

It's time for me to get back to spotlighting some of my favorite people on this here blog. Today I am featuring a friend I got to spend some time with in Boston. We hadn't seen each other in years- literally- and it was great to catch up a bit. (I apologize for the low-quality photos. We don't have a scanner, so I had to take digital pictures of old pictures.)

Name: Kim (or Kimmy as my mother called her for years) Heaps (yes, as in Heaps of Pizza all you Provo-ites) Viera (as in she recently got married to a Viera)

Husband: Marty- I just got to meet him for the first time. He encouraged me to eat dessert so I like him.

Current Hobbies: Getting ready to welcome a baby girl in March. Being cool.
Favorite Food: Hard to choose. See food discussion below

Talents: Kim is one of the most creative people I know. She was doing artsy black and white pictures in nature before all of you. Kim is also an amazing dancer. We came up with some great moves at stake dances, like the modesty move (ask me to show you), cowboy moves (circling strangers and lassoing them), and sitting in the middle of the dance floor for songs we didn't like (yes, we were obnoxious). She can do the worm. I can't. Kim also showed me how to do my hair for dances. 1-put some strong products in your hair, 2-blowdry it with your head upside down, 3-use lots of bobby pins to put it up, and 4-curl two pieces on either side of your face.

Above: After step 2 of the dance hair-do process

Place/Date of First Meeting: Girl's Camp '96! At New Hampshire's own Camp Runels

Above: Girl's Camp: I am on the front left and Kim is on the front right.

Mark of True Friendship: Once I sent Kim a letter in an empty Pringles can. We lived a whole hour apart, so until we could drive we were pen pals. Yeah, we could have talked on the phone, but writing letters is much better.

Favorite Memory: We did a lot of strange things at girl's camp and learned some good lessons. Most of those lessons involve somewhat inappropriate/disgusting things. For example: fire and urine smell horrible when mixed, we can easily make ourselves look like boys (all you need is a marker to draw on facial/arm/leg hair!), leaders don't like it when you use party hats as Ariel's top (even with a shirt underneath).

Constant in Our Relationship: Food, and lots of it. In middle school our favorite sleep-over activity was to walk to 7-11, buy the nastiest food (ie- frozen burritos, Dinty Moore stew, hot dogs, Bagel Bites, etc.), and eat all of it. The summer before we went to college we headed to the beach for the day. We got bored and hungry and ended up ordering 2 1/2 breakfasts each at a local diner.

Just Weird: Once we adopted pet logs (kind of like pet rocks) and dragged them behind us for days with a rope attached. They were named Fido 1 and Fido 2. Hilarious, right? Right?

Above: Guess how old we are in this picture? Did you guess 13? You are wrong. Try 18.

Why I Love Her: She is one of the funniest and thoughtful people I know. We were constantly laughing, sometimes at other people and sometimes at ourselves. Kim always felt bad for laughing at other people. I didn't. When I last saw her she was still feeling bad about some of it. On top of that she is one of those people that is just always having fun. She is going to be one amazing mom.

Above: Kim let me bury her at the beach. Proof of her being fun. Then I kind of tortured her by putting my old school walkman and sunglasses and a Texas pride t-shirt on her.

Her blog: KiMarty

Back for the Attack

Well my friends it has been a long time since I have last checked in. I wish I had a real reason why, but the reality is I don't. I have been busy, but I am sure I could have written something. Anyway now that we have all recovered from Carly's last post about me sucking at life and her not wearing deodorant I think it is time to move on. Here is what we have been up to...

1. I went to Hawaii for a tournament where we went 2-0 and had a good time. I was impressed with the north shore and I am very excited to go back next year. I believe this picture says it all.


2. Carly went to work and changed the world all while probably continuing to not wear deodorant on a consistent basis.

3. It began to snow ridiculous amounts leading to our yearly battle with ice in our parking lot. I seriously considered investing in a flame thrower to melt the snow since hammers weren't all too quick last year, but I saw that a man burned his house down doing that this year already.

4. We went to Boston for Christmas which was a grand ol time. I somehow managed to get in and out without any airport delays which was a miracle. In Boston we caroled like no one has ever caroled before and are all better people for having done it. We all got great stuff for Christmas, but no present was better than this...Anthony gave me t shirt from a local high school that he lives by. It may sound boring, but it gets less boring when you find out that the school mascot is a Kickapoo Indian Chief and their slogan is, "Fear the 'Poo." If that isn't funny enough their school colors are brown and yellow. So I now own a yellow and brown shirt that says, Fear the 'Poo." You can't make this stuff up. Well done Anthony.

5. We got to hang out with Nick and Lexie a couple of times and Nick and I destroyed them in spades. It wasn't even close. We have regained our rightful place in the spades community after a bit of a losing streak. And if you just wondered about there being a "spades community" well there is one, and we belong to it. It was great seeing Nick and Lexie even if it was only a couple of times.

6. As you can see we are pretty boring these days. I vote that Carly starts putting up journal entries again. Let her know with full force. All 3 of you that read this comment, call, email, and text her until she gives in and decides to entertain us all.