corn chowder

i just tried this recipe and both randy and i loved it. if you're interested, you should be able to click on the picture and it will be large enough for you to read. i served it with bread and it was delicious. perfect for soup season. i used 3 cups of the frozen organic sweet corn from costco and it worked great, with a lot less hassle.

haircut

about once a year i get fed up with my hair and chop it off. it's usually in november or december, but this year, it came a little early. i got my hair cut yesterday and i think i like it. it's one of those haircuts you have to get used to. i'm going to need some practice styling it as well. as in, instead of taking one minute to do my hair every day, i may up it to 3-5 minutes. but don't hold your breath.

madeleine is getting used to it too. when she saw me for the first time after the haircut yesterday, i went to pick her up and she started crying. throughout the day yesterday, she kept giving me this weird look as if to say, "you sound like my mommy, but you don't look like my mommy." today has been better, with less of those looks. we're all getting used to it.

peek-a-boo and the weed whacker man

madeleine loves playing peek-a-boo right now. she doesn't seem to care whether she actually goes from being hidden to being seen, so much as whether there is some kind of a change of scenery for her. in this picture, she was playing peek-a-boo by switching from above the seat to below the seat:

audrey's boys were over at our house yesterday, so i decided that i would try to get a picture of all three of the linford grandchildren. i got them all set up on my front steps (austin insisted on making the photo seasonal by including the pumpkin) and then tried to take a picture with all three of them looking at me. ha! unfortunately, i was competing for attention with a neighbor who was weed whacking. if only it could have been the neighbor directly across the street from us...

i tried switching positions so that he was kind of behind me, but it still didn't work too well.

rules

i just read the book, "rules," by cynthia lord. it was a fun, quick, and easy read - i read it in one day without completely neglecting all of my responsibilities. this was a juvenile lit book that my mom recommended i read. interestingly, it had a lot of the same themes as the last juvenile lit book i read. both books have main characters that have siblings with autism and deal with the difficulties that come along with being a child with a disabled sibling.

this was a touching book and was very well written. i felt like i got a lot out of the book as an adult and it made me think, which i hadn't really planned on. i think that it's good to read juvenile literature every once in a while so that we are transported back to those feelings of reading as a kid.

donut shop

it's 6:45 am and i am craving a chocolate bar. big time. problem is, provo doesn't have any donut shops. i'm not talking about a krispy kreme, with their overly sugared donuts. i'm talking about a mom and pop's donut shop. where they make their 6 year old get up at 3:30 in the morning to work dangerously close to large vats of hot oil and help with the family business.

unspectacular quirks

my friend, erin, asked me to post about a few of my unspectacular quirks that people may not know about. here goes...

i am obsessive about keeping a journal. i was going to try to tone down the word obsessive, but i think that it is probably appropriate in this case. i have a written account for every day of my life since i was 12 years old. dead serious. i used to write individual entries for each day, but now, i usually write weekly, while still accounting for the events of each day. my journals are probably terribly boring. almost certainly, actually. they are not a diary so much, but really are an account of my day to day activities. a travel log. it's not that they are emotionless, but for the most part, they are not terribly thrilling, either. but i have stopped caring what they may be like for other people to read because other people don't read them, and when they will, i will probably be dead and i won't care. the main reason that i do it is because it is therapeutic for me.

i am abnormally prone to wearing holes in the armpits of my shirts. i have no idea why, but that is probably the number one reason that i end up getting rid of shirts. maybe it is because i insist on doing 100 jumping jacks a day... okay, that was a joke. hopefully you already knew that.

one of my most prized possessions is my ti-83 calculator. the silly thing is, i rarely used it as a graphing calculator, even when i was pursuing my math degree. i don't know how to use approximately 75% of the functions on the calculator, but i prefer it over any other lesser calculator. i think it is because of the screen that allows me to see the steps i've taken. and the memories of mr. haldane's calculus class.

i love making lists. i undoubtedly get this from my mother. lists make me feel so much better in life because they quantify and bound the tasks that float about in my head and make me feel overwhelmed when they are so uncontained. i often make lists that never get looked at again, but made me feel better just to make them.

i have a thing for ticonderoga no. 2 pencils. mechanical pencils will not do. they squeak and scratch when they write and their erasers are insubstantial. but a ticonderoga... now there's a pencil you can depend on. and if you give me one that has just been sharpened to a pristine point in an electric pencil sharpener...

winter upon us

the weather has been cooling down significantly for the past couple weeks, but afternoons were still pretty warm and it just felt like a crisp fall. but last weekend, we went to boise and found winter there. and having returned to provo, it seems that winter has found provo as well.

on the drive up to boise, we had clear roads and clear skies until about half an hour outside of boise, when it started to snow pretty heavily. it's always hard when the last stretch of your long road trip takes longer than expected when you are already anxious to get there and be done with the drive.

the weekend was cold up in boise, and of course, i was underprepared. i always bring a coat when we go at christmas, but whenever we go in fall or spring, i think, "i won't need a coat," and it always ends up being record-breaking cold that weekend and randy always ends up giving up his coat for me when we go outside. this trip was no exception.

we got back sunday night, and although the roads were clear, the interstate was lined with new snow. utah had gotten snow too. because we got back late at night, it was dark and i didn't see the garden. but when i went out to check on it the next morning, i was shocked. i knew that because of the deep cold, gardening was pretty much over and it was time to dig things up, but i didn't expect to see this:

dead, dead, dead.

everything was wilted, and ugly.

winter is upon us.