Puppymania!

We got our new puppy last weekend before I came home from school. We have yet to name her. Our last dog was named Lizzy (in honor of our favorite heroine Elizabeth Bennett) and have been searching for another name that we like. We had wanted to do Ellie, short for Eleanor Dashwood of the Sense and Sensibility Dashwoods, but that one fell short. So we are searching for names. Any ideas?

Here is her photo debut (with her favorite sister):

I leave for Jerusalem Tuesday and am procrastinating packing for it. I am the world's best procrastinator. I'll do anything to get out of what I really should do. So I decided to go take pictures of the puppy (which we all just call Pups) and update the dear blog.

Stained Glass

I took a class on Stained Glass making this Spring term and here are the two windows I made. I haven't named the pieces. I didn't end up fixing the broken piece of glass either. If you look closely on the first one, you can see the crack that runs across the thin green piece on the left side. The first piece was made with solder and the second with lead caming.

Dear Pam

Many of you have heard about my job, I love it. Well today was my last day because I need to take a final and pack tomorrow. It was really sad. I know I'm going to be back in September and have a wonderful new supervisor (Carolyn) but I will miss Pam. I have been so lucky to work with her. I wish I could have worked with her longer, but if I hadn't searched for a job when I did I wouldn't have gotten to work with her anyway! So this is a little tribute (David Letterman Style) to her and how great she is:

10. You make delicious treats (I'm still eating today's Scoobies.)
9. You are such a cute little pregnant Pam.
8. We think the same things are funny: Robert's going away email. So great!
7. You genuinely care about the lives of those you work with/around.
6. You love your husband, and I hope to have a good relationship like that someday.
5. You like my stories and get into them, giving me wonderful facial expressions and feedback.
4. You teach me how to do things in a loving way.
3. You build up others, and help them notice their strengths.
2. You are my dear friend.
1. I love you!

She'll probably be embarrassed that I put these pictures up but too late! Actually I should be embarrassed! I'm not.

Musings of me

So we're getting a puppy. I'm so excited. I can't wait to go home and wish I was leaving this weekend! She is so adorable:

I love her little black ear. These pictures are kind of old, so when we get her she'll be a lot more grown up. She's a mini-Australian Shepherd and will likely be named Eleanor with Ellie for short.

I'm also gearing up to go to Jerusalem. I'm so excited. Today I decided to go to the Jerusalem Center website and saw a link for virtual tour of the center. Here is a little picture of what a possible little apartment setting looks like:

I hope it really ends up being like this because it looks so picturesque! I don't know what I'm more excited for, Jerusalem or Egypt. I have always wanted to go to Egypt, but I've also always wanted to go to Jerusalem. It's a toss up. I do dread the weather though. Every time it gets in the 80s in Utah I'm roasting, so who knows how I'm going to handle it in the sauna called the Middle East. I even put up a link on my iGoogle page for weather in Jerusalem. It's in the 80s today with 69% humidity.

People keep asking me if I'm nervous living there with the current political situation. I'm not really. I'm actually more nervous about buying things off the street from pushy vendors. Seriously, I have a really hard time saying no. I can't contain my excitement or pity, whichever it is. For example, a few weeks ago I bought a month's subscription for the newspaper because if I did $15 would go to the boys selling it for their college tuition. Lacy was horrified when I came back to my room to grab my check book. I don't have money for stupid things like the paper! I need it for useless trinkets from the Holy Land. So terrorists, I'm not afraid of you! Street vendors, don't come near me... please.

On a side note. We had our candy making lab today in cooking and my body is on sugar overload. Was it worth it? I'm not sure yet. But my taste buds were happy.

I was tagged.

So Liv "tagged" me and now I'm doing this little survey of sorts. Post two for the day. I'm on a roll.

What I was doing 10 years ago.
So it’s 2008, 1998…I was finishing up 8^th grade getting geared up for high school and thinking I was cool. We probably took a summer trip out to Utah and I think we went down to Yosemite. Long time ago, can’t completely remember.

What I was doing 5 years ago.
Ok. Five years ago was 2003. Whoa. I had just finished my freshman year at BYU, and look! I’m still here! I had moved home for the summer and was working at my dad’s office. That summer Erin and Liz came out to Oregon to visit me. I think we took a trip down to San Clemente, CA.

What I was doing 5 months ago.
School had just started for Winter Semester and I started my on-campus job as a student secretary in the Plant and Wildlife Sciences department. I’m so glad I work there! I like learning about things that don’t have any relevance to my major (that’s not sarcasm) and keeping my work and school separate. Some might say that is a waste of time but I think it’s genius. I don’t get bored this way.

5 things on my to-do list today
1. Kill someone for wrecking my project.
2. Figure out a color scheme for my new project.
3. Go to the gym.
4. Eat enchiladas.
5. Go to class.

(Not necessarily in this order.)

5 snacks I enjoy
1. Ice cream (or is that a dessert?)
2. Cookie dough (also a dessert?)
3. Chocolate (hm…)
4. Cottage cheese (there we go something less sweet, but I do eat it with fruit. Guess not.)
5. Yogurt (that’s healthy right? Yes. Dairy. Whoops, still sweet.)

5 things I will do when I become a billionaire
1. Travel all over. Places yet to be touched by Lauren Richey: China, India, Greece, Turkey, Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, anywhere in the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Russia (yes even Russia wants visitors), and anywhere with Mayan ruins.
2. Get a beemer. Not sure what type. Five series maybe. Still cute, but more power.
3. Personal chef. I feel like this needs no explanation.
4. Personal trainer. If I’m going to be eating so deliciously, I better make sure my body stays intact.
5. Live abroad. (Does that go with travel all over?) Italian Riviera maybe? Gelato...

5 places I've lived
1. Katowice/Warsaw/Bydgoszcz, Poland
2. Worms/Linden, Germany
3. Aurora, Colorado
4. San Antonio, Texas
5. St. Louis, Missouri

5 things people don't know about me
Since I feel that I’m pretty open and that the only things people don’t know about me are the things that should stay unknown, I’m modifying this to be lesser known things about me.

1. I really really love weddings and everything that entails.
2. I don’t like popcorn. But kettle corn is good, so is caramel corn, but not buttered popcorn. I think it smells bad.
3. I’m kind of afraid of heights. It makes my legs feel funny. But I still sort of want to go skydiving or bungee jumping.
4. After reading The Power of One, I was obsessed with boxing and rented Rocky. Obsession passed.
5. I wish I were a princess. Not the Disney kind but real. I was convinced that if I moved to England and met Prince William, that he’d fall madly in love, and then I'd be a princess. Alas, I didn't even get to see him when I visited the Palace.(Don't judge me, it was 8th grade.)

5 people I am tagging
1. Liz
2. Carly
3. Emma
4. Nathan
5. Pam

Anger Management

Yesterday when in my stained glass class I was struggling to put the finishing border on my piece. (One type of glass was a little bit thicker than the rest and so the lead didn't want to fit.) There is a student in the class who is an absolute know-it-all. She bothers me by acting like she is so much smarter than everyone else because she already knows how to work with glass and offers unsolicited advice regularly. But I chat with her to help me like her better. I liked her ok until yesterday when she came to help me fit the lead on. In her poor attempt to help me with my piece, she cracked one of my panes of glass! I was so in shock, that I didn't even know what to say or do. I know she felt bad, especially because she is blatantly rude to those who come near to touching her work space. Frankly, I'm afraid of her and was too polite to tell her not to touch my work and then too nice to say anything about how I was really feeling when she ruined my piece. (I had lots of mean things to say milling around in my head.) I left class an hour early not wanting to fix my piece because I'm sick of it and now it makes me sick to look at it. I now have only three class periods to finish my old piece and design, pattern, cut, and lead my second piece.

Moral of the story: Don't let anyone touch your special things even if they act like they know what their doing, because chances are they don't and they might break it. And in this case it's not 'you break it, you buy it', it's someone else breaks it, you fix it.