Only made possible with border collies

Brad here, posting on Julie's blog. Just thought I'd share this vid, as it pretty much sums up why Julie and I are nuts about border collies. If you're a fan of the unique combination of sheep, herding, sheepherding, LEDs, border collies, timelapse photography, and crazy Welshies with too much time on their hands, you'll like this video:

My Daily Rambling

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7945569.stm


An intriguing and worrisome article that states our brains embark on its descending journey at age 27?!?

There was one thing I looked forward to in the blasted aging process – wising up!

However, I must have genetics on my side (I hope). My dad is still the genius he was at 27 (or more so), and look at my grandparents who celebrated their 80th birthdays last year! You can’t find a sassier Nanny than mine and come on people she is my friend on Facebook AND her picture is uploaded! This should be a good sign for me right?

Possibly, I know there was a chance that I inherited the right genes to keep my brain from spiraling downward at such an early age, but did I?

When I was a snotty teenager, I was gloating to my brother that I was smarter than him because I got a higher score on my SATs. I continued to give him concrete evidence to support my theory that I was, indeed, smarter than he. After my gloating came to an end Jeff (exasperated and eyes rolling) told me, “Yes, Julie you have book smarts but you don’t have common sense.”

I believe my mouth dropped open in an attempt to retaliate but had nothing. He had a point. I was a ditz. Even now, at 24, I have said/done/believed the ditziest (see I even made that word up) things that a person should never have said/done/believed in a single lifetime. My family even made a name for such ditziness (my cousin Eric to be exact) “Julieisms”. I even remember a time when my mom did something ditzy and my dad said, “You just had a Julieism”.

Now I feel I need to add a comment and defend my family in case someone finds this offensive (or my family feels bad) – I am not offended by such things. I think if you can’t laugh at yourself than you need to get off your high horse. I know my family loves me and would never want to hurt me. I like that my family knows they can tease me and I will laugh along with them. I can honestly say I quite enjoy it myself.

That being said; my “Julieisms” make me wonder if I inherited the good brain genes.

Did You Know...

I feel bad when I'm neglectful so I decided to start a new weekly blog post. Every Friday I will post a useless trivial fact. I figured this would be easy since Brad is an encyclopedia of knowledge.

To kick off the first post I thought I would give you some trivia about us humans.

Our Lifetime in Numbers (Approximates)

Life expectancy – 78.5 years or 2,475,576,000 seconds
Words Spoken in Lifetime - 123,205,750
Friendships – 1,700
Baths – 7,163
Dreams – 104,390
Beef and Veal consumed – 4.5 cows per person
Chickens consumed – 1,201 per person
Potatoes consumed – 5130 pounds
Chocolate – 10,354 bars
Baked Beans – 845 cans
Soap – 656 bars
Toothpaste – 276 tubes
Deodorant – 272 cans
Shampoo – 198 bottles
Vomit produced – 149 liters
Holidays - 59 trips

For Brad

I just love this blog http://www.cardboardlove.com/.

My Happy List

1. Brad is currently on his way home from his business trip

2. Jogging on my lunch break to the Capitol with my Nancy friend.

3. Not passing out on said jog.

4. Tomorrow is the last day of February!

5. It's a sunny beau-ti-ful day!

6. My two delightful dogs who keep me company and my incredibly intuitive Sydney who when Brad is away 1. Rarely sleeps because she feels it's her responsibility to protect the house and me. 2. Never leaves me alone. 3. Hates when I'm in the laundry room because she cannot be with me and near the stairs (to hear the sounds upstairs) at the same time so she runs back and forth.

7. String Cheese

8. Our family

9. Cheesy jokes

10. Mint herbal tea with milk - it has become my new remedy to sleep well. The mint soothes my insides and the warm milk helps me sleep.

11. It's FRIDAY!

Priceless

This is Molly and me, my first roommate at BYU. This picture was taken by her dad, after he took us back from Molly's grandpa's 80th birthday party. I asked Molly for the photo because there is some sentimental value - this is the day I met Brad. In fact, this photo does not do the justice for just how terrible I looked that day. Obviously, you can see the hair (roots 3 inches long and two "Minnie" buns) no make up, and a Rain Forest Cafe shirt, but the other half of me you can't see so let me describe it.

Shorts = Men's black Adidas soccer shorts

Shoes = Red, white, and blue flip flops (And I mean they were very patriotic)

And yes, he still asked me out on a date looking like this! As I got ready for our first date, I knew no matter what I did as long as some effort was involved, it would be major improvement from when Brad saw me last.

As for the title of this post: When Molly asked her dad to look for the picutre he asked, "How much is this worth to her?" Molly told him "It's priceless."

Valentine's Day

I know I've been neglectful, I've hit the winter slump. We haven't done anything blog worthy nor can I come up with something to blog about. It's mid-February I'm tired of the snow, the cold, the gray sky, and the shorten day times - I just want it to be SPRING! Anyway, enough complaining. Along with the blue moods that February brings, it also brings Valentine's Day which brings me to my blog post. The Thursday before Valentine's I decided on the perfect gift - a Border collie shirt- and not just any Border collie shirt, but a shirt with my Border collies on it! Well, I searched and searched and found nothing, so then I thought why don't I get it custom made? So I called the local tee-shirt place to see what they could do and...

VOILA!

Here is a close up

It reads:

BORDER COLLIES

Because one just isn't enough

P.S. Brad LOVED it. And a big THANKS shout out to my amazing, talented and beautiful s-i-l, Andrea who helped with the pics of the doggies. THANKS!

If I Were President...

So I was reading in the newspaper (bear in mind the newspaper I read is a few days old - I read it after my boss is done with it, sloppy seconds I know, but it's free!) so back to my original thought, I was reading an article about the Gitmo Policies, and I couldn't help but think of methods of interrogation I thought were appropriate and it hit me... an interrogation that could be deemed human-rights friendly but down right torture... FLUFFY FINGERS!!! (If you don't watch the Office this will make zero sense)

House Update

I'm sure most of you know by now, but just in case, I thought I would give you another disappointing update on a house. Well, we terminated the contract to the house. Four days before we were to close we had the house inspected, which became an apparent blessing. The house was not winterized properly and when the water was turned on again there was a pipe break in the basement and a room flooded. We notified the bank right away with terms on the repair. We heard nothing until the next day when they said they fixed it, they even went so far to say the carpet pad was changed. Brad and I were skeptical that flood damage repair only took 24 hours, so we went back to the house to investigate. And to our great disappointment the bank did NOTHING, no attempted repair was made, oh wait I'm exaggerating, they fixed the pipe and cranked the furnace up. So by this point water had been sitting there for 72 hours, and we felt it best to terminate the contract. To be honest I'm very happy about it, so I really shouldn't call it disappointing; we are better off, but we are back a square one.

Where in the world is Brad?

It's been awhile for this game because HP is limiting the traveling due to the economy, but alas problems arose and Brad is once again somewhere in the world other than Utah.

This city had the first professional fire department.