A penguin walks in a big empty room

This is not Brandon. I'm just too lazy to sign out of his account and back into mine.

I tried to comment on Jackson's Flickr page but it was too big of a hassle to sign in or sign up or something they wanted me to do... (Is anyone else sensing the feeling of extreme lazyness I am experiencing right now?) So I just wanted to say that the picture of Gracie demonstrating her penguin walk is comic genius. That picture is so great for so many reasons, her guesture, her face, her hair, the scrunchee on the side, the empty tile floor behind her - it's all just working for her. I miss her!

Midnight ramblings

I thought I should check in, finally. The whole password fiasco turned me off to the whole blogging thing. Reading, fine, posting, too much work.
So, in the scriptures, God is referred to with many attributes: God of love, mercy, justice, power, omnipotence, etc. But they forgot to mention a God of irony. This has been manifested in my life yet again, as I have been called to be the Enrichment Counselor. I know I have joked many times that this would probably happen to me, since I don't really like enrichment. I felt completely safe in saying this, even knowing about the omni-ironicness, because SURELY God loves the rest of the Relief Society more than he loves making a point to me about keeping my mouth shut. Apparently I was wrong. And apparently I am about to embark on a "growing" phase in my life. Actually, I got the calling before we left for our vacation, but I didn't want to tell anyone because I was sure they'd realize soon that they were actually supposed to call and ask me to GO to enrichment. Ah, well. It seems to be for real. If your RS has any activities that are working well, please send me ideas.
In other news, we just excavated a 6" deep pit in our kitchen during what was supposed to be a quick and simple change of tile in front of the fireplace. Every time Grace walks by, she says, "Daddy BIIIG mess!" And I don't bother to explain that Daddy made that big mess at my request and cursed my name when we discovered the cavern.
So, I just have to say that I am totally addicted to Gilmore Girls. I knew that you liked them, Annie, but I had seen a few episodes and found them boring and annoying. But a friend here also loves them, and so I decided that it must be worth another try. I was in need of a new show to tivo and watch while I fold laundry. So, I suffered through 4 or 5 episodes, and suddenly found myself thinking about them all the time. "When can I watch? Can I get 2 episodes in during Grace's nap? Should I do dishes first? No." I like the long-term relationships, like the mother-daughter bond, and now Logan is on the scene, I like him. It's just a great alternate reality, and a great mix of bitter and sweet. So, Alisa, if you need to find a way to fritter away an hour a day, check your ABCfamily channel for reruns TWICE a day!

Match Anniversary

A few random things.
1. For the guys: you have to check out the match list from Iowa this year. It's on their website. It's fun to see where everybody that used to be in our class ended up (Cari, Phil Wynn, Miran, Tim Eldridge, Chuck Murphy, etc, etc. etc.) as well as the guys like Lee and Drew in that class. What stood out to me is way more of that class did primary care than ours (specifically, the puplished numbers are 50% for them, vs. only 40% of our class). Not much surgical stuff at all for them. Tons of ER. Weird, huh? http://www.medicine.uiowa.edu/osac/programsrecords/match/matchresults.htm
2. Thanks to the Reynolds, I'm hooked on the band Mates of State right now. Thanks for the recommendation. The album Bring It Back is a lot of fun. Specifically, go download the track So Many Ways - it's the coolest male-female harmony or duet (or whatever it's called) I've heard in a long time.
3. A couple of other music related things: I know you all own a bunch of music, but sometimes when I feel like just listening to random stuff, the two following sites are pretty come in really handy.
A)Pandora: This is a site that starts with a favorite song or artist you enter and then it creates a station based on music that it predicts you will like. When a song comes along, you can say whether you like it or not (bonus: you can skip songs you don't care for), and it evolves into a station even more specific to your tastes, based on each song you give the yay or nay to. It's pretty cool, and they seem to have a ton of music on there.http://www.pandora.com/
B)As for internet radio, Yahoo Music may be the best I've found. They have so many stations and I can always find something fun based on my mood. The Coffeehouse, 90's Rock, Indie Rock, Hip Hop's Dopest Debuts, and Gay Club Mix (current top song: SexyBack by Justin Timberlake!) are all top choices (kidding, obviously, about the last two). The only thing that sucks is that they have commercials, and the highest audio quality is only on the "Plus" mode, which I guess you pay for. http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast/stations/default.asp

The splendor

I contribute to several blogs and I'm posting these pictures of our new floor on every single one of them. Go finished the floors this past weekend (actually the baseboards still need to be re-painted) and we are loving them. As you can see, he did a FANTASTIC job. It is times like this when I see him build and/or create something beautiful with his skillful hands that I think "Wow. Someday he's going to make a lot of women very happy with their new boobs."

Washington State Ringger Evacuation

So I thought I would share this bit of news. It doesn't effect any of you, but I'm excited about it. My dad, who has been looking for a new job for about 18-20 months and was even commuting to Chicago for a few months last year before deciding he hated that company, and who we thought at different times may be getting a job in Seattle, Chicago, South Dakota, Palm Springs, Oakland, and Omaha, has now received/decided to accept a job for a company in Redding, CA (2 hrs north of Sacramento by Lake Shasta). It's a big deal for my family who has been in the Seattle area for the last 25 years. It has been a difficult past year and a half. Although we are selfishly kind of glad we have had them close during our year in Spokane because we've had a ton of fun with them this year, especially Caleb and Maryn. So all Ringgers will be leaving the state this summer, which kind of makes me sad to be "losing" my hometown, but my parents are really excited, and that's more important to me. Who knows, this may be the first step in us ending up in Northern CA after residency, which has always been in our list of possibilities.