And then we went to the real Moab:

For when your footwear encroaches on your desire to be one with nature:

Vibram Five Fingers, only they’re for toes, not fingers.

I was going to call the post “quarter life crisis” but then I realised that that may or may not be a John Mayer song lyric, and I have no desire to alienate my three-person reader pool. Plus, I don’t believe Andy experienced any sort of crisis upon turning twenty-five.

Here’s to Andy being a quarter of a century old!
<3

Tua, Courtney’s brother, messaged Andy to make fun of us for this:

So toxic.

Everyone seems to be posting about American Idol (a show I’ve never watched), so it’s only fair I post about Popstars, the 2001 British ‘talent’ show, (another show I’ve never watched).
Popstars produced a ghastly popgroup called “Hear’Say”, who’s chart competition lay with their Popstar opponent group, “Liberty X”. Liberty X had a terrible pop song that my sister Rachel and I were amused by, since the lyrics went something like “sexy, everything about you’s so sexy” yet clearly, the group were a bunch of mingers and no love interest of theirs could have possibly possessed any degree of real sex appeal. Anyway. Everytime I look at this blog, I get that Liberty X song in my head. My favourite pictures are the double exposures, paint-splashed backgrounds, and the feathered hairdos. Who isn’t entertained by an individual enthusiastically sporting a feathered mullet, I ask you. But this one still tops all:

I’m going to use it for the invites to Rachel’s mini Hen-do. It’s inviting, no?

It’s easy to quit a job when you’ve either been in the same job for years, or you hate your employment. You just say “It’s time for me to move on”, or “It’s time for me to move on, Suckers!” depending on the situation. It’s a bit trickier to quit a job when you haven’t been there long, you like the job well enough, and you really like your bosses. I don’t really like disappointing people.

It took ages for me to fall asleep last night because I was fretting about how exactly I give my notice to my bosses the next day. Then, when I finally fell asleep, I spent the night running around after fast cars because we watched Fast and the Furious right before bed. Needless to say I received no subconscious inspiration on how to articulate my quitting. My mind was still a blank this morning while brushing my teeth, and instead of trying to invent a grateful segue, I amused myself by tickling Moses’ feet, which were waving under the bathroom door at me.

It sounds like I’m making a big deal out of nothing and I kind of am, I mean it should be easy to come out with a “hey, I’m going to grad school so I’ll be quitting this job soon – just wanted to give you a heads up on the need of a replacement”. Thing is, I couldn’t figure out which boss to tell first. Or how bad would I feel if they sighed, or acted like I let them down, or felt betrayed because I didn’t tell them I was moving in ten months when they hired me in September of last year. I know they really like how I work in the office, and I don’t like letting people down.

It wasn’t so bad after all though. Lawyer No. 1 arrived in his office first, so I just scurried into his office and said “Oh Hi, can I talk to you for a second?”, spat out the fact I needed to quit so I could go back to school, he congratulated me, and expressed the sentiment that it was a right shame but they’d manage. All in all, not bad. My bosses boss even noted his congratulations on my getting into graduate school.

I think that maybe the stress about quitting had less to do with telling my bosses, and more to do with leaving a secure job I’m happy in and move, jobless, to Recession Central, NY. Nu Skin has been profitably resilient and increasingly stable through this recent recession and I feel quite safe and happy here. Granted, I’m not particularly wild about Provo, or office work, but I like a paycheck, my co-workers, my bosses, and they manner in which Nu Skin does business.

I’m also in a bit of a mental pickle about the decision to stay in the US as opposed to going home. I’ve been expectant of the move home for months now (albeit the details weren’t set in stone) and 180’ing into staying Stateside makes me feel a bit odd. I miss BBQ Hula Hoop crisps, buildings with more than three hundred years history behind them, and cultural nuances I can’t even pinpoint. I don’t think I’ll ever live in England again. Sounds kind of final and sad, but if I’m practical, which I almost always am, that’s how it is. Moving out East is a couple thousand miles closer to home though, I guess. And hopefully a couple thousand miles away from Utahns who say “that’s so funny” instead of laughing and find my “accent” novel (I don’t understand why people say “you have an accent” rather than “you have an English accent”. Everyone has an “accent”. And now I’ve typed the word Accent so many times, it looks funny).

This post sounds a bit whiny really, like several others posts on my blog (just think of it as me trying to decrease my non-virtual whininess) and I’m aware of how horrendously spoiled I might sound complaining about going to New York for grad school rather than London. Especially since grad school is a privilege. Truth be told, the opportunity has been afforded us as a combination result of working hard to stay out of debt, Andy receiving academic scholarships, and good budgeting. My whining has more to do with missing home a bit, and having to go into debt for school, and less to do with a toss up between glamorous existence in London or NY. Because seriously, aside from our holiday this Summer, the closest we’ll get to glamour over the next few years will still be far enough away to fit a monster truck rally and ninety low-income boroughs between us.

Where else can you buy a butt-hammock for $42?

I’ve never felt so un-teenagery as I did on Saturday, when I felt the impulse to decrease the volume of Dizzee Rascal who was blaring out of my wound-down windows when I pulled up at a crossroad populated by middle-age pedestrians.