We Love Costco

I feel like it’s been a long time since we last posted. This past Friday we went camping up South Fork
Canyon (an offshoot of Provo Canyon). My camping gear is quite limited, so I went to Costco to pick up
some sleeping bags. While shopping for camping equipment, I noticed that they were selling bikes as
well. As mentioned in the previous post, we love taking out our bikes for a casual bike ride around town.
However, Diane’s bike has gear issues so she can’t take full advantage of all of the gears, which makes
riding it difficult at times. We were planning to purchase a pair of bikes once we got to Houston.
However, Costco was selling these Schwinn Midtown Comfort bikes (cross between a mountain bike
and a cruiser) for $220. It was a bargain! (Our budget was $350/bike).

I waited for Diane to come home from school before heading back to Costco. We took them for a test
ride around the store and decided to purchase them. For the type of riding that we will be doing, I think
they’re a great deal. They’re obviously not made for hard-core bikers, but they’re good enough for the
casual biker like us.

The Joys of Owning a Bike

Provo on a different level. We’ve explored neighborhoods and parts of town that we otherwise would never have seen. All in all, it has a been wonderful voyage and we’re excited to make the most of it during our last five weeks in Utah.

Tonight’s adventure took us to the foothills in north Provo. There’s a street (Foothill Dr) that I have been wanting to explore for some time now. I discovered it one day (via work) and it looked like one of the nice neighborhoods of Provo. Personally, it’s fun to go around and check out the nice neighborhoods because I get to see what things people are into. Diane and I find certain things to be quite interesting (ranging from gorgeous gardens to beautiful garage doors). I am also amazed by the magnitude of the homes. Since people get pretty good bang for their buck, people are able to build large, luxury homes ranging from 6,000 to 18,000 square feet. I have to wonder what one does with so much space. A few homes by Rock Canyon park have these huge lots (3-6 acres), which looked fantastic. I can’t imagine trying to mow the lawn, though. Anyway, the ride was fun and worthwhile. It provided us with some beautiful views of Provo and the surrounding area. This evening, Diane and I decided to take a stroll around Provo on our bikes. Yes, we recently acquired some used (read: extremely old) bikes and we’ve been trying to take advantage of the beautiful areas here in Provo. Over the last few weeks, we have taken a few rides that have allowed us to get to know.

Indiana Jones Disappoints

This post contains semi-detailed information about the plot. If you don’t want to know insider tidbits about the storyline, please stop reading.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Personally, I like the Indiana Jones trilogy. Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade were two movies, which I especially enjoyed. The second film (Temple of Doom) was entertaining, but drastically different (and darker) than the other two. So, naturally I was excited to hear that Spielberg decided to make a fourth Indiana Jones movie. Diane and I went to see the movie this evening. I expected the movie to be a little cheesy (they all are) and I expected Indy to kick some butt like he normally does. That said, I still was not as pleased with the movie as I thought I would be.

The beginning of the film starts off well. I was a little confused about why the Soviets are involved (I knew/heard nothing about the movie before watching it —that’s how I like to go into movies). I could deal with it; after all, he had already taken on the Nazis. Why not the reds? As with the other movies, there had to be some hard-core archaeologist working for the enemy who so happened to need Indiana’s help. The movie had the classic depiction of them traveling to far off lands with the turbo-prop plane overlaying a map of their voyage.

I started to lose respect for the movie as it got more and more silly. I ignored the ground hogs (or moles) that seemed to have human characteristics. However, when the giant ants started killing everything in there path (in a matter of seconds) and the wild/cocky son started swinging from the trees like Tarzan, enough was enough. It didn’t help that the monkeys all of a sudden followed the boy and made him their leader; they even knew to attack the crazy, Russian female.

I let the whole alien beings slide; too bad they didn’t really do anything cool other than disappear into their spacecraft that was the size of an ancient pyramid. I was wondering why these aliens had to look like the stereotypical aliens. I was just thinking about the fact that the crazy professor friend of Indy was speaking Mayan to the aliens. I’m no expert in history, but I don’t recall the Mayans ever living in Peru. OK, just one more complaint—the whole love story between Indy and Miriam was a bit much. Enough said.

I’m sorry if this sounds like a very critical review of the movie. It’s just that Spielberg took a perfectly good trilogy and ruined the final movie. If you’re still interested in going to see the movie, expect a lot of over-the-top scenes with countless cheesy lines. With low expectations, you just might like it. It’s definitely not worth a full-price movie ticket. Wait till the dollar theater releases it or watch in on DVD.

The Power of Vinegar

After living for a couple of years at the Enclave apartment complex, my car took a toll.  Besides getting broken into and several dings on the doors, my car acquired calcium deposits.  After taking it to the car wash to remove them (to no avail), I used several products, like Goo Gone, and various types of soaps and sprays.  No matter what I did, I could not remove the hideous stains which caused my car to look like it had leprosy. Finally, we took it to a body shop and the guy told us to use vinegar with a rag and that it would take lots of elbow grease.  Fernando and I headed out to clean my car, fully expecting to be dripping with sweat by the end of the project.  To our amazement, the vinegar worked beautifully! The stains came off with little effort. It also removed rust and tar (I wish I knew this in high school–I used a scouring pad and removed the finish off my car.) Now my car looks disease free! I just wish my hands would stop smelling…

Wedding Website Archived

Now that we’re married, we want to use this domain for our family blog. Don’t worry, the wedding website has not completely disappeared (like anybody cares). Anyway, our wedding website has been relocated into the archives; you can now access it by visiting www.dianeandfernando.com/wedding/.

One Month

Crazy as it may seem, as of today, we’ve been married a whole month! While we were engaged, everybody kept telling us, “Just wait. It will all change once you’re married. You’ll get fat, get sick of each other and want a king-sized bed.” Well, I had my doubts, since Fernando and I had spent every possible moment together and cooked dinner together every night. I pretty much knew what I was getting into.

I just wanted to say that marriage hasn’t changed life a whole lot, except for obvious benefits of course, but I won’t go into that. Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but we still enjoy cooking together, writing on each other’s Facebook wall, playing Nintendo, hanging out at the Enclave, and cuddling. We are still the same couple who couldn’t wait to spend every second of the day together. Amazing as it may seem, Fernando still opens my door! (i told you so mom). And he treats me just as good (if not better) than on our first date.  I haven’t even found any habits of his that are annoying.

But this is all my point of view. Fernando could very well disagree…although I don’t think he does…I hope. There were a few changes that came along with married life however.

Church is definitely different than our old singles ward. Seeing tears in Relief Society is not a foreign concept to me, however it’s a little more disruptive when it’s from very loud children whose mothers refuse to take them out. Sometimes my hopes go up when they stand up, and I think they are leaving, but no, they just go to the back of the room. I dunno, maybe they just get confused and think they’ve left the room and nobody can hear them.  Sometimes when I stand up after sitting for a long period of time the room looks totally different to me. Anyway, I find it annoying, its only the children who I see with tears in their eyes these days, and I secretly wish it was me again.

Fernando and I have kind of found ourselves in a little bit of a social dilemma lately, although this really started when we got engaged.  All of a sudden our single friends didn’t want to hang out with us. But I can’t really blame them. I always thought it was strange to hang out with married people when I was single. It seems like the majority of our ward has children or is pregnant, meaning they constantly talk about their children or having children. Maybe that is the reason so many couples in this area get pregnant so soon after marriage. They just want to be fit into a social category. It doesn’t bother me enough to want to change our situation any, though. We are hosting a house warming party this Wednesday, with both single and married friends, so it will be interesting to see who shows up.

Those seem to be the only changes really. Overall we love married life. With nobody’s mess but our own, matching dishes, knives that actually cut, and waking up next to your best friend. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Welcome!

It was a matter of time before Diane and I got ourselves a new blog. It’s new to both of us, but for different reasons. I will still keep Fernando’s Hideaway alive and I will continue to write about my techie musings and other random posts over there. This new blog will be reserved for family-related posts. It’s still fun to think that we are the newest Mladineo family on the block. As for Diane, this is the first blog that she has been a part of. I am excited to see what she has to say.

If you’re stopping by for the first time or a regular visitor, we’d love to hear from you–so, post a comment! It’s very exciting to learn about our readers. We hope that everybody you enjoy the site!