Nicole's Hair

For some unknown reason* Nicole has recently been experimentally dying her hair. This is what we started with around last October: (and isn't she pretty!)

Apparently, I'm not supposed to take pictures during the dying processes, but I did:And viola` a few hours later:And then around Christmas she did it again, while I was running errands so I couldn't take a picture during:And THEN, for her birthday, we invited these shaddy characters over:
And the result:

Hmm... apparently, we didn't get a picture of her new hair (maybe one of the shaddy characters has the evidence). Nicole's dyed it again since then (but not too much) so I'll see if I can find a picture of that for next time.

*Actually, it is known, we're just not allowed to say. :(

Guess it's time to take matters into my own hands...

:) This is Nicole. You may or may not realize that most of these posts are written by Brent (the pervasive sarcasm is a giveaway). But, busy as life has been, my darling has not had time to keep up, so I'm swooping in to save the day and post an update on the life of the Mellings. (Brent, Nicole, Buster Gabriel, Tabitha Puss (as in Pussy Cat), and Starvin Marvin the oldest living Walmart Goldfish).

One exciting bit of news is that we have tickets to the Comi-Con!

I never dreamt in my life that I would have tickets to the national comic book convention. Our dear friend and soon to be famous artist and author, Heather is going with us. It will be a joyous summer road trip.

In other news, Nicole just completed her fourth and final out of town weekend for the Leadership Course she is taking with Landmark Education. The course completes in March, and we are all looking forward to the finish line. It's been very valuable, awesome actually, but also pretty intense.

Brent is still traveling to Salt Lake twice a week for his internship with the LDS church research department. He is only teaching one class this semester, and it seems to me he's been a little less busy, which has been nice. He is making progress with his disertation also. (I'm pretty sure I spelled that wrong...).

Brent and I have been having some electronic difficulties lately. Our treadmill, dryer and my new computer all went on the fritz at about the same time. We got pretty handy-man the other day and fixed the motor controller (like the motherboard) on our treadmill, so Brent can get back into gear in his bee-line to 200 pounds. :) I also got my computer replaced (after a few months and a lot of hours of phone calls with Dell. Still workin on the dryer, but we're going to run out of clean clothes soon, so I'm sure it won't be long...

Love you all!

Mega Post 2

A few posts ago, (back in August), I mentioned a few things coming up on the horizon. We did all them and more, so much so that catching up on reading blogs, let alone posting to them, has fallen by the wayside. But fear not! I try to keep up on facebook, with mixed results.

I'd also at this time like to promise pictures to go with the following post at some latter date, but while my intentions are good, I don't see that happening any time soon. Still, if I don't post something, we're likely to forget what we did this year and then our end of the year letter will be lame. So...

AUGUST:
* I finished Team-teaching Psychology of Gender. It was certainly an experience and I'm going to continue to take a break from that one for awhile.
* Nicole and I flew to Connecticut and visited with family then drove up to Toronto for APA. Southwest mislaid my one suitcase with all my clothes in it. It didn't make it to Connecticut by the time we had to leave for Canada and they don't fly to Canada, so we make a detour at the Buffalo airport and picked it up! (Luckily we had already finished doubling back to get a forgotten passport and arrived in Toronto without further incidence).
* I got assigned to teach Psych 111 (Intro to Psych) at BYU and History of Psych at UVU. Fortunately, I've taught both before and have been learning what the minimum prep time needed is. Twice (once in each class) I've prepared for the wrong lesson (i.e. a chapter that I hadn't assigned my student's to read). I was able to teach what they had prepared for, however, so I'm feeling pretty comfortable in my role and ability as a university professor.
* I did end up applying to an internship in Salt Lake. It's with the LDS Church in their research information Division. I didn't even know that we had a Research Information Division until they recruited me! All the research is pretty proprietary, so I get to pull the whole secret agent schtick about not being able to talk about my work, but sometimes I really want to.

September
* Nicole finally got her official raise (with compensation) and began transitioning to replace the assistant director at her work. She gets an office, but she'll probably end up sharing it with someone.
* Nicole also began her monthly weekend travels to Denver/Phoenix for her leadership training (As well as Friday night classrooms).
* We sat in a Leadership class in the MBA program. Nicole found it very difficult to not participate.
* I began my last officially required course for my PhD program. After this, nothin' but Dissertation! (and "fun" classes).
* I began to think about my Dissertation topic. I think I've got one, but explaining it will have to wait for a longer post.
* We went to Logan where I ran the "Top of Utah" marathon. I had a great half time, then the pain overwhelmed me (apparently you need to train on pavement more than once a week, the treadmill won't cut it). I survived, but with such a time that I resolved to run another marathon in November to make up for it.
* We went camping with friends and caught what there is of Utah's autumn in the mountains (a better show than from the valley). I had to leave right from work and thus began the trip in a suit.

October
* I turned 28 and actually started to feel really old. On my bus commute to and from SLC, I'm finding it harder to read and study without becoming nauseous and running has become even more wearying. I also didn't have a big party. Mostly because most of my friends moved away :(
* In fact, although I had registered for the Mesquite marathon in November, I contacted the coordinator and got switched to the half-marathon. Fortunately, out of all our activities, running is the only one that has really suffered, and even that is still going moderately well.
* We also found out about a new TV show, that so far seems good, clean, and funny, it's "White Collar" on USA (we've just watched the first two episodes so far).

November
* The end is in sight! I'll be doing that half marathon on Saturday and then I have a week off from teaching and taking classes. I hope to get all prepped for the end of the semester. I should mention that in addition to 20 hours a week in SLC (plus 6 hours of commuting), teaching at two universities, and taking a few classes, I'm also doing research at BYU's Faculty Center, TAing for another professor, finishing off some qualitative research on health and religious community of immigrants, working with the editor on the next edition of "Taking Sides in Psychology," doing another research project on daily theistic experience, helping organize the division 24 midwinter meeting, and writing abstracts for several presentations for the next year. And some other stuff. Anyway, as I always say (and always get wrong), next semester should be easier.

Did you know she ran marathons?

For those of you who don't know this, Brent is training for a marathon. 26.2 blistering miles. In order to qualify to even run in the Boston marathon, you have to run this distance ridiculously fast, like in about 1/3 of the time it took me to run it in 2007. (I am and will always be proud of my 5 hour 51 minute time. That means I finished.)

But, Wow! Elaine Dalton qualified for Boston, huh? That's kind of cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIrGKB5nRKE

Bequest of wings

She ate and drank the precious words
Her spirit grew robust;
She knew no more that she was poor,
Nor that her frame was dust.
She danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book.
What liberty a loosened spirit brings!

-Emily Dickinson

Mega Post - The Last Month

We've had a full month, rather than post all the events individually, I thought I'd use this post to catch up with everything:
* I got really sick (the flu) for almost two weeks. Sick enough that I didn't even update the blog :( Although I wasn't able to run for that time, I was still able to stay on track with my running goals. I did an 18-mile run last week and a 20 mile run this past Thursday, so I should be on track for the Marathon on 19 September :) (also National Talk Like a Pirate Day).
* Nicole finished all her work for her Bachelor's Degree. She can be seen here celebrating with the steam cleaner she picked as a reward for finishing all her classes. I call this picture "dualing vacuums." (She also got a bread maker, but we don't have any pictures of that).
* We found some great deals for trips to Ireland and ended up getting tickets! We're going next April with my Mom and Nicole's best friend, Marie.
* Another product that Nicole just had to have is called the defurminator (yeah, I know). It actually did work as advertised, as seen in the picture below. All that white stuff on the lawn is just some of the fur that was defirminated off Gabe. As you can see, it's totals more mass then Teddy (the little dog). Nicole also got Gabe a shock collar on account of the police visit in the middle of the night, but that's another story.

* This month saw a lot of activity on various DYI and home improvement projects. We decided if we keep going to Home Depot, we'll need a bigger car; you can only fit so much into a Corolla. We'll post some before and after pictures later, but we've 1) had a new roof put on the garage 2) new window put in the living room and bedrooms 3) initial painting done in the future "super-office" 3) Nicole repaired the sprinklers and 4) the swamp cooler 5) We're planning a new granite counter-top for the bathroom 6) actually, that's it, but isn't that enough for one month?
* We have continued to eat. I've continued to cook and try and be creative. Here's "Love with a side of meatballs":

* Nicole's also regularly been attending a weekly seminar in Salt Lake.

* In the midst of the defending of the thesis and the finishing of degrees and working full time jobs and home projects and running and eating, we also took the chance to take a long weekend in Cedar. We went camping in the mountains and hiked the beautiful Zion's narrows. Here's the pictures:

Pretty beautiful, huh? We also finished reading a book together (it only took about 8 months) so it was a nice break.

*Oh and we bought a car:

We're thinking of names. Here are the top contenters, place your vote or suggest a new one: Magnum, Prometheus, Remington (Steele), Craigen.

So anyway, that's our been our month. Up next: I'll wrap up teaching the Gender class and start teaching History at UVU and some other class at BYU. Nicole starts a Leadership training seminar. We go to Canada, New York and Connecticut and register our new car. Oh and I might apply for an internship in Salt Lake.

(Sore) Green Thumb

We finally got around to buying AND planting some roses for our front yard. We have two "Golden Unicorns" (GU) Three "Kings Randsoms" (KR) a mystery red rose bush (MRR) and a white climber (WC).

We named them:
Dreamweaver (GU)
Moonshadow (GU)
Oberon (KR)
d'Artagnan (WC)
Randor (KR)
Kyrie Eleison (MRR)

Théoden (KR)

We have another white climber in the back, but we don't have a name yet, feel free to post suggestions.

Weighter Matters

I've posted about reaching my weight goal (215 lbs for a month), but in the month or so since then, the lbs. have started inching up again (and my waist has begun to centimeter out again). Partly this was because of a sever foot injury (requiring my first X-rays!) preventing me from running for awhile, but mostly it was just not having a goal.



It was hard thinking of another sufficiently motivating goal, the Wii was a really good one (even if I never have time to play) and I struggled to come up with something else that would entice me to drop another 20-25 lbs or so (5-10 of those being ones I had already lost this year). Then I had it. I'm going to run a marathon!



I know, suffering both mind and body for 4-6 hours doesn't sound like much of a reward for getting in shape, especially when compared to a Wii (note how there's no "Wii Marathon" game), but I know myself and a little reverse psychology* is just what I need right now. The other thing I need is support. I have my eye on the Logan Marathon in September which does give much time for dilly-dallying as they say. If I tell a lot of people, especially in writing, like now, then that'll help motivate me, because you all can keep me honest. So if you chat with me before September, ask how the training's going. The first two weeks have been impressive, although my 10 mile run yesterday was more of a shuffle, still I'm getting faster and more consistent in my running.



*I'm also using some regular old psychology to buy myself some books on Amazon a certain running sub-goals.

Surprised by surprise

There's one thing you should know about my dear sweet wonderful wife. She cannot, for the life of her, pull of a surprise. She's horrible at being sneaky and inevitably drops hints and teases that give things away. Contrast this with my family growing up. One summer day my mom and aunt tell me and my brothers "Let's go to the beach." We all piled in the car, but two hours later we were still on the highway... "Oh, we're going to a different beach than usual," they said (we could reach the beach in an hour and a half from our house normally).



About halfway down the New Jersey Turnpike, they put in a tape that had been put together by a DJ my Aunt knew. It played songs specially dedicated to the family (like "Put Me in Coach" for Seth) and announced the weather plan for Florida... we were going to Disney for two weeks.*



Anyway... Back to Nicole. While I delight in surprising her, she's really more of a "open the presents when you get them and sneak a peak into the kitchen when I'm making a special meal" kind of girl.



So when she surprised me on Wednesday... I was really surprised. Without me suspecting a single thing, she organized a large (and well attended) party to celebrate my thesis defense. We had planned on spending a few hours together that night since she would be out of town for the next four days and I let her plan the date. She brought me to BYU's Museum of Art, but after 10 minutes it closed (there were some really interesting pieces on display too, including the I-Spy guy's stuff). Nicole was believably disappointed that her plan was cut short and we went home to regroup. That's when over a dozen of my friends shouted surprise. In the 15 minutes or so that we had been gone, they had put up decorations, got a stack of pizzas, and set up a chocolate fondue.



So props to Nicole, for a great party and an amazingly successful surprise. While this was a real accomplishment for her (keeping a secret), I don't think it's let to a permanent change. As she put it later, "Lying is hard!"



*Now mine is also a family of planning, another trip we took had weekly family planning meetings for a year with us kids managing the "Vacation Fund" and having a vote as to hotels and destinations.

Masters of the University

Unfortunately, this post is not about He-Man and his Masters of the Universe. However, I did recently hear a fantastic orchestral version of the He-Man and She-Ra themes on youtube that no 80's child should go without watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFM95w4CXT0

No, this post is to announce the completion of my first two years of Grad school through the successful defense of my thesis. My mentor said "That was the least scathed I've ever seen anyone get through the defense." This despite one of the committee members threatening to bring barbecue sauce to roast me...

If it weren't for Matthew 10:10* I bet M.S.'s would insist on being called Master like PhD's insist on being called Doctor.

*My birthday's actually on 10/10... I'm sure there's a message in there for me somewhere, but who knows what it could be...