More Information About Me Than you Probably Ever Wanted to Know
My older and much wiser friend Deb tagged me, so here it goes:

Five Things I was Doing 10 Years Ago:
1. Living the good ole’ High School life
2. Learning how to drive
3. Listening to Mmm Bop by Hanson
4. 4th of July in NYC
5. that’s about it…I guess my life was kinda boring

Five Things on my To-do List Today:
1. Wrapping Christmas presents for my family
2. Go to the symphony with Mom, Dad, and JB
3. Coordinate delivering Christmas presents for the ‘adopted’ families
4. See Jessi’s new car!!
5. Vacuum (like that’s gonna get done)

Five Snacks I Enjoy:
1. Dried pineapple slices from Trader Joe’s.
2. ICE CREAM!
3. Wheat Thins and Cheese (Tillamook, of course)
4. Granola Bars
5. Gum—does that count as a snack?

Five Things I would do if I were a Billionaire:
1. Buy a house in the West Hills and on Maui
2. Retire (and volunteer more)
3. Travel more
4. Establish a scholarship fund
5. Buy the Acres’ compound, tear it down, bring back the horses, and restore the beautiful view at my parent’s house

Five Bad Habits:
1. Biting my nails--I don’t think the last 2 months of not biting cures me. Once an addict, always an addict
2. Doodling during church
3. Talking too much--everywhere
4. Eating too many desserts
5. Analyzing things too much

Five Places I have Lived:
1. Mom and Dad’s House ( Corvallis)
2. Lincoln Ladies Apartment (Corvallis, Oregon)
3. Børglum Kollegiet (Århus, Denmark)
4. Menlor Lane (Tigard, Oregon)
5. “the Dorms” (Portland, Oregon)

Five Jobs that I’ve had:
1. Owner of a berry ‘stand’ at the end of my driveway w/ Jess when we were kids. I think we made less than $20 the whole summer
2. Sterilization/clean up guru at Dad’s office
3. Teaching Assistant & Student athlete tutor. My most ‘famous’ (liberal use of the word) students were Derek Anderson and Bill Swancutt
4. Auditor
5. SEC Compliance Manager (don’t ask, I still don’t know how to explain what it means).

Five Things you may not know about me:
1. I am slightly obsessive about my pencils—0.5 lead is all I will use. If a 0.7 pencil shows up on my desk I will throw it away. I’m not kidding.
2. I LOVE wrapping presents; when I was little I asked my mom if they had professional gift wrappers, because I wanted to be one.
3. I took piano lessons for 11 years--but I can’t really play anything other than Christmas music (all of which was cut to fit into my 45 second allotment for Nancy Johnson’s Christmas concerts)
4. I was born with a tooth
5. I used to read Trivial Pursuit cards to make me fall asleep.

Is it Too Much to Ask...

...that if a guy asks me out he knows that my name is Diana and not Diane?
I guess it's just another one to add to the list.

For my Mother


You can consider this your early Christmas present...

Love ya,

D

p.s. I still maintain that if biting my nails is th worst thing I do, then you have it pretty good!

Coffee, Tea, or Me?

So I've never really been a very big Halloween fan. I read recently that people spend $5 Billion (yes, with a B) a year on Halloween and it just seems kinda wasteful. I also read that people in SLC spend more money on Halloween candy than any other state--Boise was 2nd and both Portland and Seattle were in the top 10. What do you think that means? Anyway, for some weird reason I felt festive this year and decided to celebrate Halloween. Maybe it was my way of protesting the fact that all the stores already have Christmas decorations up!

I am lucky enough to have an amazing friend Allison who used to be a flight attendant who was going to send up one of her old uniforms but then she remembered she had a vintage uniform from the 1960's and decided to send that up! She suggested that it would go nicely with a red pill box hat made out of an oatmeal container. For any normal human being this wouldn't be too hard, but you all know me and my lack of craftiness so I agreed to document the progress of the project which I dubbed--Project Overdose.

It all started with an empty oatmeal container
and of course I had to try to be precise. Try being the operative word.

Next came the hot glue gun and fabric. I only ripped off the fabric and started completely over once. Yeah me (said just like Darin with a chest-fist-pound). Project Overdose complete!

I had so much fun with the hot glue gun on both Thursday night with Project Overdose and on Friday night with another project that on Saturday I thought--why not use the hot glue gun again?! Thanks to the Dollar Store I am now the proud owner of a plastic-made-in-China-spraypainted silver-tray, cup and saucer, and red drink napkins. Thanks to my sweet hot glue-guning skills I had another accessory for my costume. Allison suggested the finishing touch--a button that said "Coffee, Tea, or Me?" Hey--a girl's gotta try right??

I think the costume turned out pretty well--considering that it was ME trying to put the stuff together. Thanks Allison for sending the costume and providing such great ideas! You're definitely the brains of the whole operation!

Russ "Do I have a Deal for You" Swalberg

with Leanne the Fairy Princess

Nichole and me

Casey, me and Matt--apparently they both thought a 'hat' qualified as a costume :0) To his credit, Casey had some nice fringe going on too.

All in all I think it was a pretty great Halloween (well, I guess Halloween's not for another few days but you know what I mean). Now that's it's over maybe I'll be ready to see all those Christmas decorations in the store..

Love ya,

D

Mom--ignore the messy 'bedroom' in the background