It once was lost, but now is found...

I spent about a week without my cell phone lately. I couldn't find it last Saturday, and searched EVERYWHERE at least a dozen times. Terrible! Kevin and I only have cell phones, and on Tues/Wed. Kevin had to fly to Georgia for a meeting with his eFolder business partners, so for a couple of days I was without a phone entirely. It was like the dark ages!

But...the good news is, it's back! Kevin found it on Friday. And guess where? In the car, there was a box of crackers, and the phone was *in* the box of crackers. What?? First of all, when I was searching for the lost phone, I didn't really look too hard in that car because I was pretty sure I had taken the other one. Plus, how does a phone end up in a cracker box??? We don't have any toddlers to do weird things like that, so I can only blame myself...WEIRD. But I sure am glad to have it back!

So speaking of cell phones, um....okay, this is totally unrelated to phones, but I can't think of a good way to change the subject, so let's just dive right in. I sang in a big musical presentation thing at church on Sat. It was called "When He comes for me," based on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. I was one of the wise virgins (phew!) It went well overall, but my solo part was NOT as good as I hoped. I was so NERVOUS! My voice sounded all shaky and airy. Argh! I don't think I'll ever learn to not be nervous when singing in front of crowds. I guess it's been a while since I've sung a solo in front of that big of a group, because I was extra nervous...Oh well. It wasn't really about me or my voice anyway--it was about the message, and I think that came across really well--people seemed to be very uplifted. After that we watched the General Relief Society broadcast (the female leaders of our church worldwide do a satelite broadcast once a year), which was excellent. I especially loved President Uchdorf's remarks!

And, in another totally unrelated subject, my neighbors are constantly burning their trash in their back yard. Saturday night the smoke was soooo terrible! I'm so sick of having to deal with their yuckystinky (and unhealthy!) fires--I have called the fire department on them twice before but they told me that since they don't live in the city of Urbana technically (the city line is just past our apartment), they weren't subject to the burning laws. WELL, I found out yesterday that the actual law says they have to be a whole mile away from the city line in order to legally burn. So, I wrote emails to the fire marshal/fire chief, AND the environmental protection agency of Illinois. That ought to get their attention! (I sure hope so anyway.)

A Touch of Ike

This morning I sprinted to my car in my church clothes but didn't escape getting totally drenched by the time I pulled the door closed behind me. But that wasn't where the excitement ended. It had been raining buckets all morning, and we had rivers of water streaming all over the place. Our own apartment complex parking lot was flooded--right as I started out I began wondering if I'd make it to church at all. I rounded the corner of the parking lot and drove straight into a large lake. I honestly thought my car would surely stall--I was thinking, well at least I can just walk back to my apartment! Kevin said I should have gotten out and taken pictures so I could show everyone, but that thought was far from my mind at the time. Besides, I was already running late for church! Anyways, I made it out of the parking lot. Things were crazy after that, too, though. I knew better than to attempt to drive under the underpass near our house--that place always gets washed out in big rain storms--so I took a different route. Kevin said he saw a car there almost completely underwater (maybe 4 inches sticking out) under there on his way home from church (Kevin came home a couple of hours after I did because of all his Elders' Quorom meetings). Even avoiding that area, I couldn't escape at least a dozen drive-through-the-river-that-once was-the-road experiences, although our parking lot was in fact the worst of them. I wondered if we'd end up stranded at the church building if the roads kept getting worse, but luckily the rain let up and had basically stopped by the time we got out. Our parking lot had even drained when I got back.

My latest obsession

In the last few years I have become much more interested in nutrition and cooking, and (hopefully) have gotten much better at both. I take a certain pride in cooking healthful meals that taste great but aren't too time-consuming (I do enjoy cooking but I'm also a graduate student and have limited time--actually, who doesn't?) Anyways, I've been collected recipes from various sources which meet my criteria for being healthful, at least relatively easy, and delicious and was looking for a way to compile them all in one place easily so I don't have to scour through my recipe books every time I want to make something or plan my week's menus.

And now, I have found an amazing program that not only organizes recipes, but has this awesome amazing feature where you just click on a recipe and it adds all the ingredients to a shopping list for you! It can also generate nutritional info for your recipes, and can adjust the recipes for different #s of servings, etc. I know that you can do that on Allrecipes.com too, BUT only for recipes that are already on the website. With this program, I can input my own stash of recipes and then with a few clicks--presto! My shopping list is ready--just print it and go. Awesome. And...it's free! Yay, free-ware! It does take an investment of time to input the recipes up front, but you can copy and paste or upload them from text files or even webpages, so it's not that bad. You just have to tell the program which parts are the ingredients, the instructions, and so on.

And, my awesome amazing husband wrote me a little program to take the shopping list that the program makes and put it into a format on my palm pilot so I can just check off the ingredients on my palm as I go. Man, this is the life! I heart technology! And smart husbands! And free software!