1 Down

Yesterday was our official one year mark of moving back to Las Vegas. One year down, 3 more to go.

We like it here and we are really enjoying this chapter of life. However, we are really looking forward to seeing where chapter 3 takes us in a few years.

The Big Fat Persian/Mormon Wedding

I remember going to many bar mitzvahs in junior high school and being in complete awe of the new and unfamiliar traditions and celebrations. I had a similar feeling last summer when we went inside the Hagia Sophia and some of the other mosques in Turkey and we watched local people partake in their praying rituals.

I actually have always been naturally curious about the affairs and lifestyles of different people and different cultures. Some may call it being nosy, and it sort of is. But not in a bad way - well at least I think so. Perhaps this explains why I enjoy blog stalking, or "BLALK-ing" so much, and yes I just admitted that (you do it too).

So what I'm really trying to get at here is that we went to an Iranian/Mormon wedding last weekend. It was hands-down one of the cooler events we have ever attended. Our friend Brigham (um, can you tell he's LDS?) went to high school with me and Niels. And his wife Sameen is a dental student with Niels at UNLV. They had dated for 5+ years and finally sealed the deal.

Both Niels and I were pretty intrigued to see how it would all go down because Brigham and Sameen are both very pious in their respective religions. Needless to say we were both really impressed by the whole spectacle.

They started with the present day Iranian wedding ceremony. Basically there was a bench that faced a long table with several different objects and foods traditionally associated with marriage in their culture.

There are way too many to name, but some of the most interesting items were: The Koran, golden fertility eggs and walnuts, live goldfish, real sugar crystals and the mirror of fate.




They sat on the bench under what they call a wedding cloth where different members of her family rubbed sugar cubes together over their heads in order to wish them a sweet life together. Thankfully there was a paper on our table that explained all the symbolism of the items, as well as the translation of the entire ceremony as it was performed in the Farsi language.



My favorite part of the whole ceremony is when the celebrant asked Sameen if she would be Brigham's wife. As part of the ceremony, she didn't answer and was silent and her family members replied to the celebrant that she was too busy to answer because she was out picking rose petals. So the celebrant asked Sameen a second time if she would be Brighams wife. Again, she was silent for a moment and her family members replied in Farsi that she was out feeding the sparrows and couldn't be bothered right now. The celebrant asks Sameen for a third and final time and she says, "Baleh!" (yes). The entire room went nuts. Everyone started making all sorts of loud clicking and rolling noises with their tongues and hands - It was fantastic.



Mr. & Mrs. Brigham Joffs

After everyone calmed down from witnessing the lively Iranian celebration, they had everyone sit down and the Bishop came up and civilly and lawfully married them. Talk about a tough act to follow! He did a great job, and both ceremonies were done so tactfully.



We truly had a great time. I really can't think of any other wedding we have stayed at for five hours like we did for this one. We danced to ethnic music intertwined with Michael Jackson, we had great food and saw some old friends from high school. Persians definitely know how to throw a great party!




Specialty drinks menu. So classic.

Financial Cuts

As of late, most everyone I know is trying to find small shortcuts to save a little bit of cash here and there. For some it is out of pure necessity, and for others it is for pure enjoyment of having a little extra padding left in the checking account at the end of the month. For us it is a good mixture of both.

I have found it very interesting and telling to hear what things or services some of my friends and family are cutting back on, or completely axing out of their budgets. I have learned that what is deemed as an absolute necessary/can’t live without thing or service on one persons list, can be a totally disposable or vain thing on another persons.

For example . . . my sister called me last month to inform me that she was getting rid of her cell phone completely. Thankfully her shenanigans only lasted 6 days. Then there is my friend who cut back on her cable package so she could keep her tanning membership. Another friend has to have her bi-monthly pedicure, but can't dish out the dough to go grab some lunch.

Let me be clear . . . I’m not judging here - I am simply noting that everyone has their own financial priorities and quirks, myself included!

I’m just saying that I could never get rid of my phone, and I am destined to be pasty for the rest of my life so I can live without the tanning membership. Sure I love a good pedicure, but I enjoy a few good lunches a LOT more.

I'm sure there are some of you that might look at the things that we have chosen to ax and retain in our budget and could feel differently.

Financial tweaks:

• Cut Fancy Cable
• Cut Internet (share with neighbors)
• Cut caller ID (this one is killing me)
• Eliminated soda runs
• I give Niels his haircuts (double standard - this won’t be working both ways)
• I have turned into that annoying lady in front of you at checkout with all the coupons
• I don’t go into Target without an action plan or list.
• Didn’t renew my Costco membership (again, killing me)
• Got rid of the kitten
• I have been very creative with the dusty cans and boxes in our pantry
• Thermostat is kept at 81 in this Vegas summer (poor Niels)
  

Sticking around (for now) :

• Cell phones
• Gym membership
• PEST CONTROL – especially after Jen’s run-in last week!
• Nice-ish shampoo & conditioner
• Nice-ish toilet paper
• Fresh produce
• My hair cuts

Dear Blog

Dear Blog,

Sorry for the recent neglect. I have been too _______ to update. Please accept my apology.

Warmest Regards,

Susie

T-Shirt Logisitics

Looks like there are some people that are interested. In oversight I forgot to mention a few details. . .

Please email me your size that you would like and your home address where you want it shipped. Then I will reply to you with my address where you can send me a check (Don't wnat to post it here for all the ceepos.)

Email me susie.jensen@yahoo.com

Once I receive your check I will send you your shirt, or if you live in Vegas I will just bring it to you.

Thanks for your help!!

Lady Lumps

Flashback to 8th grade health class:

Mrs.Walker, my 6'1" stalky black woman teacher stood in the front of the room and declared to all the boys in her deep military voice, "Gentlemen, they are not boobies . . . they are not hooters and they are certainly not ta-ta's . . . they are breasts. Understand? They are breasts."

My sister-in-law's mother has breast cancer and so she designed these awesomely comical shirts in order to raise money to walk in the Susan G Komen 3-day walk for a cure later this fall.

This is my other sister in-law, Sara modeling the shirt.


If you are interested please let me know and I can make sure you get one. They are $15 (shipping included) and again, it is for a great casue.

I am thinking I should send one to Mrs.Walker.

She Rocks it

"Why is Sydney shaking her butt and singing Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer?" -

The text message I received from my sister Jen the day after her girls slept over at our place and played Rock Band all night.

Perhaps I should claim a small part of responsibility for this . . .



That's right, amidst all the aspiring dressed up doctors, astronauts, police, and _______ (fill in the blank with ordinary occupations) at her kindergarten graduation, she was dec'd out as a rock star.



Are you kidding me with these? So cool.



Future Josie and the Pussycats, 2021.




Love this girl .

On the Wagon

You know, I went many a years without drinking soda when I was in high school and in college. H2O was hands down my drink of choice.

And then I started working in an office where DietCoke was in stock 24/7 in the mini fridge at no personal expense. Overtime, I became that women that I used to mock. You know, the one that prefers Diet Coke for OJ at breakfast, or the one that craves the fizzy 32.oz fountain drink on pebble ice at lunch? Disgusting, I know.

Now that I work from home I don't keep it stocked in my fridge which helps quite a bit. However, anytime I leave my house for anything it is just natural to stop in and fill er' up. Especially because it is so blazing hot here it always sounds refreshing.

Well my friends, I am on the wagon and I am done with the brown sweet nectar for a while. Who's joining me?

Thanks Logan for the great visual aid.

Verdict

So I have decided Mary Murphy unanimously wins the crown on this one.

Although, if you mute her when she is giving commentary and press fast forward on the slowest setting (if you are so lucky to have Tivo), she can be pretty funny to watch.

LOVE the Show . . .

But, I can't decide who is more painful to watch:





You decide.

Peanut Gallery

My favorite shot at last month's family picture session was not the grand kids and the grandparents . . .



But rather, this circus making them smile on the other side of the camera.




Followed by the brother shot with Ben laughing so hard because Trevor is squeezing his tush.

PETA

So I have been trying to help my grandma find homes for her kittens. My grandma is your token cat lady you have heard about. The single old lady who has eleventy cats. She has so many because she never wants to give her kittens away to anyone that she doesn't know. I thought that to be a little extreme and I thought I could easily help her out by using Craig's list as she is very un-tech savvy,

That was until today when I went to post a classified and these words of caution appeared:

"As you may be aware, animals given away for free can, and unfortunately often do, meet gruesome fates. They can end up in the hands of animal abusers like Barry Herbeck, a Wisconsin man who was convicted last year of torturing and killing animals he obtained through "free to good home" ads. He confessed to taking his kids with him when responding to the ads so people would be comfortable turning animals over to him. People known as "bunchers," who obtain animals illegally from random sources to sell to research facilities for profit, often acquire animals by answering "free to good home" ads. Small animals advertised as "free to good home" are sometimes acquired by individuals who intend to use them as bait in training other animals to fight. Gerbils, hamsters, and young kittens are often acquired to be used as snake food."


Maybe the cat lady has point. reason #345,765 I absolutely despise snakes.

Please let me know if you or someone you know is interested in adopting a kitten. Even if you are in Utah, Arizon or California, I will be in these states this summer.

Thanks.

Your Thoughts Please

Among the many things that have changed in Vegas from when we grew up here (aside from Wet n' Wild being gone but that's a whole other entry!) are these large advertisements that scale some of the hotels.

I suppose they do the trick.

I mean who wouldn't want to see Donny and Marie magnified this large?



Or these guys?



But more recently, the Luxor Hotel slapped this on all 4 sides if its physique and it drives me crazy every time I drive by it. Mainly because I don't get it. Yes, I see that it is supposed to look like a video recorder . . . but what of it? Please comment and enlighten me with your deep thoughts about what this campaign might mean.

2 Years ago Today

I was doing this



And a little bit of this




And a whole lot of this



Happy Anniversary Honey

Not your Average Joy Ride Story

**Warning** This is a long post, but it is similar to a real life episode of CSI Las Vegas

I never park in our driveway. So needless to say I was a little violated and overly freaked out by the fact that my car was stolen from my driveway the first and only time I parked in it since we moved here last fall.

2:45 p.m: A friend came over for lunch and left my house at 2:45. I walked her out to her car, stopping at my car first to get something out of my backseat for her. My keyless entry remote has been broken for a good few months so I have had to manually unlock my doors with the key. So I unlocked my car (key in door) grabbed my friend’s things and then we chatted for a few minutes. She then left and I walked back inside my house (keys still in car door).

3:30 p.m.: Niels came home from school and asked me where my car was once he came in the house and saw that I was at my desk (which by the way has a window in front of it that overlooks my driveway!!). I replied with sassiness as I stood up to look out the window, “It’s in the driveway sil . . .ly. Oh my gosh! My car was stolen!” I ran down to my purse only to realize my keys weren’t in it and it suddenly donned on me what I had done. It hadn’t even been an hour window since I had come inside! I immediately called the police and filed a report. Two officers came over to take down some more info and assured me this happens frequently and that it was probably some punk kids on a joy ride since school had just got out. They said it would likely surface in a nearby parking lot soon since I called it in so fast.

4:00: I bought my car from a good friend 3 years ago and she went all out and dropped some pretty cash on a fancy Lo-Jack system on the car. If you are unfamiliar with Lo-Jack, basically it is a wireless tracking device system that is undetectable to the eye. A random number of sensors are installed in a bunch of miscellaneous places in your vehicle so that no two cars are alike. Thus, making it virtually impossible for a crook to uninstall or deactivate – that is if they even know your car has it. So I called Lo-Jack to tell them my dilemma and they proceeded to tell me that b/c I was the secondary owner of the car, they could not guarantee to find my car in 24 hrs. They said they would guarantee it within a week. So at that point I knew I would get it back, now I just had to think about what kind of condition it would be in when they found it in a ditch with the windows bashed in and the tires slashed.


4:15: My shock buzz began to settle (let’s be honest no it didn’t), and I suddenly got all nervous that “they “ had my keys and my garage door opener. I told Niels that we needed to have a locksmith over stat, and then I locked up our garage door system. He told me I was overreacting, and usually he is right with that, but this time I wasn’t having it. Just then that same friend that was over earlier for lunch called and said that her husband had some locks he could come put on right away. That brought my stress level down another notch.

At that point I had done everything I could do within my control. So I just sat down and tried to absorb what had just happened. A plethora of thoughts surfaced:

• Who was on my street at that time? It is not a through street and there is very little foot traffic if any besides the mail/trash men. Very quiet.
• We live at the end of the street . Who was walking all the way down here?
• How did someone see my keys in a car door within 45 minutes of leaving them there? Call me crazy but I don’t think that would necessarily be an eye sore to the average passerby. (Heebie jeebies started kicking in)
• I was inside my house when this all went down. What if they would have come in? What if I would have seen them taking it from my desk window? Would I have yelled at them?
  

6:00 - 8:00:I needed to get away from the situation so we decided to go catch some dinner. Shortly after we were done I got a call from the Police informing me they had found my vehicle and asked me if I wanted to come get it. They asked how long it was going to take me to get there so I was under the impression they had found it abandoned and they were waiting on me to hurry there so they could leave and take care of another one of the dozens of cars that were probably stolen that day.

Boy was I wrong.

8:30 - 12 am: We arrived to a parking lot of 3 cop cars, 3 under cover cars, and 2 bicycle cops. Now this might be your average car theft scene in a small town like Provo. But like I mentioned before, there are about 1,200 cars stolen each month in Vegas so I knew something was up when I saw all the cars.

The officer greeted us and told us it would be another 40 minutes before the CSI van came to do DNA testing. At that point I looked behind me to see 4 people cuffed on the curb. We got back in Niels’ car and tried to get a peek at my car. At first glance from about 50 ft away, it didn’t look like there was any exterior damage. CSI showed up and did their thing and started taking tons of pictures of my car form every angle you could imagine. I started to get pretty nervous at that point and thought maybe someone had died in my car or something. I couldn’t understand why all the pictures!

The officers came back over after an hour or so and said they found which one did it but that my keys were not on him. Btw, they were undercover cops dressed as tacky tourists and they were awesome. So they ordered a search warrant so they could look inside his motel room for the keys. That cost another 45 minutes. Meanwhile they took all 4 of them off to jail, and then I asked if I could take a look at my car finally.

No damage. In fact ironically enough, everything of monetary value was still in the car. And then, I opened my glove box to find it completely empty. My stomach just sank as I tried to recall what info was in there.

Meanwhile, the cops finally got the warrant to go inside only to find a stolen motorcycle, crystal meth makings, and boxes and boxes of people’s stolen bank statements, personal data, ids, credit cards.The place was an absolute mess. This was a group of identity thieves. They didn’t want my car. They just wanted to be me.

Luckily they had only brought my stuff inside the motel and they did not have time to do anything with it between their meth party and when the cops followed my Lo-Jack to find the car/them. Realistically, the only two concerning things I was missing were my registration and my insurance card, but who knows what kind of tricks they could have pulled off.

We hung around the motel for about another hour as they weeded through all the nastiness to find all my crumpled paperwork and anything else that might have been mine. They finally released us and after 4 hours at a crime scene we were ready to go home.

Sure, it sucks this all happened. However, I feel very fortunate about my outcome: car was found, it was in one piece, keys back, and paperwork back. But I am mostly happy and at peace (kinda) that my stolen car lead the police to find a guy who had been stealing identities of many people all over the country.

I still get nervous if I think too hard about why on earth that man was in front of my house at that very time window, but for now I just have to be grateful for the positive things of this all.

My brother consoled me best:
"You can’t allow yourself to keep beating yourself up with “What if’s.” Such hypotheticals are irrational and they spark unfounded fears. You should be happy you got your car back in one piece and nobody was injured. The thief probably didn’t go into your house because thieves are cowards, unknowing as to whether you were a big guy or you had a dog or you had a gun. This is definitely not Provo and we’re in the midst of a bad economy…these things should almost be expects. Criminals like him are lazy and they contribute nothing to our society. They try to take the easy way out and target hard-working people like you."

Amen, brother.