ONE DOWN, INFINITY TO GO

April 17, 2010

As of last Sunday the 17th (which we spent in blissful soreness from the SLC race) Zach and I made it through a whopping one year of marriage.  We're old pros now, right?  It's been fun thinking back over the last year and feeling like I've lived a lifetime in a twelve month period.  Between the two of us in that time we have:

• Lived in 4 (soon to be five) 5 apartments
• Driven through 25 states
• Attended 3 different schools: BYU, UVU, and U of U: (Zach actually did all three himself)
• Had 5 (soon to be 7) different jobs
• Run 3 half marathons, 1 marathon, 2 triathalons, and biked 4 100k races
• Successfully made curry: 0 times.

Although being married for a year doesn't really qualify me to give advice, since when has that ever stopped anyone?  These are the "nuggets" I've taken away from this first year:

• Moving is always more work than you think it will be.  Stuff MULTIPLIES.  Exponentially.
• Never make food for company that you haven't successfully made on your own at least twice.
• As long as you love 'em, liking is optional for small periods of time.
• Always pay your tithing.
• When you are both food fanatics, food bills can reach surprisingly astronomical levels.
• Arguments will happen and they aren't fun, but if you resolve them in the right way they can bring you closer faster than anything else. 
• The higher ground is the most easily defended.

My new favorite story that pretty much describes our ever-changing relationship came from this last week.  I was making a cake and needed 3/4 butter, but I only had 1/2 cup of salted butter and 1/2 cup of unsalted.  As I pondered my predicament out loud, Zach lit up.  "We can calculate this babes!"  He looked up the sodium amount per serving of the salted butter, calculated the weight of the sodium and chlorine per mol, took the percentile weight that sodium made up of salt (40%), divided it into the amount of needed butter, and then converted grams to teaspoons and voila!  1/8 tsp.  After all the effort and calculation, I then grabbed a salt shaker and shook what I deemed to be 1/8 tsp into the batter.  Zach was apalled.

The more I see of this world the more I realize what a great guy I somehow convinced to marry me. If this last year is any indicator, we are in for a fantastic life.

DEATH BY 13.1 MILES

As the Salt Lake City half marathon approaches, I can't help asking myself, "Why am I voluntarily putting myself through so much pain?  Again?"  Zach is an old pro at these races, but this is only my second half marathon ever.  During my first one back in September I swore that I would never do it again.  My toes hurt, my calves hurt, my thighs hurt, I couldn't walk right for days, and I don't even want to go into how my gluteus maximus felt.  But then, about a week after normal ambulatory movement was restored, we got this picture from the race website:

 Don't we look happy?  Like all our wildest dreams are coming true?  Wait!  I remember that feeling of accomplishment, the runner's high, and huge race excitement feeling you get.  So I let Zach talk me into signing me up for another one.  I admit that there are times during training when I swear that goofy smile must have really been a grimace of pain, and that no "runner's high" is worth the "runner's knees, hip, and plantar" that I am steadily developing, but there's no turning back now. 

Pheidippides, the original marathoner, DIED after bringing the victory message to Athens, so I think it's pretty safe to assume I'll be half dead this Saturday afternoon, and I'll be out a husband, who is doing the full 26.2 miles.  What a way to celebrate our one year anniversary!

--Note from Zach---
My wife let me read this post before putting it on the blog.  Let me simply say that we're supporting my future profession, as we should increase the need for drugs like celebrex and cyclobenzaprine.  Physicians specializing in knee and hip replacements should be thanking us in about 20-30 years as well.  I love you dear and am excited to spend our one year anniversary with you whether you're in a semi-mortem state or not.

BOULDER OR BUST

Six weeks, forty-six emails and one hundred and two phone calls later, we have decided that Boulder, Colorado is where we want to live this summer.  Why choose Boulder from all the other exotic places we could be going?  Well, for one, Boulder is the number one triathlon city in the nation - Booyah.  Two, I got an internship at the University of Boulder working with their Facilities department where I will spend half my time compiling a large technical volume on hefty machinery and the other half studying the green building techniques on campus.  It's an excellent deal- they'll pay me double my current hourly wage (which says more about BYU student wages than my intern value) and pay for housing to have us live in a biking and backpacking mecca.

Unfortunately, Zach also needed an internship this summer and the Colorado pharmacy market may be the one state that is even more saturated than Utah unless you're looking to practice in a more, um, liberal pain management clinic (apparently Colorado is one of the few legal marijana states). The poor man spent hours on the computer looking up the hundreds of pharmacies, calling them, filling out applications, and sending in resumes.  After three weeks, nothing.  At this point we were getting desperate so I declared war on BYU's no spring break policy and we headed out to Boulder.  It was on that trip that I got my first ever ticket, and I blame it on the fact that when the officer pulled us over, instead of having one of my attractive gal friends in the front seat I had Zach.  Luckily Zach is attractive enough that the Wyoming state trooper only a wrote a ticket for going 6 over instead of the deserved 15.  But honestly, what is there to hit in Wyoming?

The next day I saw more Walgreens, Safeways, King Soopers, and private pharmacies in four hours than the rest of my life combined.  We went EVERYWHERE, but no one sounded committal and by the time we had to go we were getting pretty discouraged.  It looked like the only thing we would take away from this rather expensive trip were pictures of my first ever seal kiss and Zach's... um, seal training.  Navy seal training? 

We left and continued to call to do follow-ups and began looking at other options.  But finally, from the LAST email that Zach sent we got a response, and after another week of back and forth and holding our collective breath we got an official offer.  Zach will be the friendly neighborhood pharmacist in Walgreens and he'll even get paid to do it.  We're so excited for this opportunity and would like to thank everyone for the prayers and fasting on our behalf.

Remember, as Zach says, "Boulder is for lovers".