The tale of our bathroom....

For those of you who know- the light in our bathroom hasn't been working for a few months. Actually, we cannot remember the last time it worked. Our upstairs neighbors (who we love so much :-) ) had a flood a while back and the water from their apartment drained into our bathroom (conveniently over our tub). However, we started to have little trails of water that ran down the walls and then.. the light went out. We tried changing bulbs- and that didn't do us any good. Whenever we turned it on- it would flicker like in horror movie. After a while, the flickering stopped and we had to use the bathroom in the dark. Do you know how hard it is to shower in the dark!? Anyways...

So, we tried to run down our maintenance man for the apartment complex and we left about 3-4 requests to have him take a look at it- and we waited and waited. Then during Jon's INTEX project (I'm sure all you group members remember this) he ran the man down (Lyle) and Lyle came into the house and took a look at it and told us that he couldn't fix it and we'd have to wait until his back got better. So.. the wait continued.. until yesterday.

Jon ran after Lyle while I was at work and they were able to fix the light in the bathroom!!!! The wiring was corroded because of all the water damage. Gross. Then, we found a lovely note on our door later.... Enjoy!! So visitors- you don't have to worry about asking for a lamp when you use our bathroom!!! Hurray!!!


PS: I also wanted to post a picture of a meal we made not too long ago and I thought it was picture worthy... we made mini turkey burgers and sweet potato fries!!! They were soooo good!
If anyone actually wants the recipes I have them :-)

Thankgoodness for updates....

So... we're bad at keeping up with this sometimes- but things around here have just been really busy!!! To give a bit of an update....

-Right after Thanksgiving (I know that turkey looked funny... but it saved me time!) I had my company party. It was held at the Grand America hotel in Salt Lake. If you've never been there- even to just walk around... it was very fancy. Jon picked me up from work and we headed over for "social hour"... it would've been more of a social hour if the people that I usually work with weren't still working. It was fun though. We ran into a few people I knew when dinner was about to be served. We were pretty much stalked by some waitresses and they pulled our chairs out for us and put napkins on our laps... I just hope that we didn't have to tip ;-) The food was delicious and we sat with a lot of my friends from work. After the food they were giving out prizes. We didn't win anything.. but it was free! We left as the dancing started.. people were getting pretty drunk. That was our cue to go home.

-The week after the party Jon had INTEX for school. For those of you who don't know- it's a week long project that is given Monday morning and is due by Friday afternoon of that week and a big presentation is done on Saturday. Every day the group he works with got together and worked from about 8am-11pm or later. We would always get together for dinner- all the wives would come over and spend time together and cook and then we'd either stay or leave depending on the time. They got the job done and they did a very good job (considering they had no idea what they had to do until Monday morning). They ended up getting a 92 on it! Not to mention PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) reps were there to watch all the presentations. They gave a lot of good remarks about the group's presentation.

-This week was Jon's finals and he did really well :-) Hurray!

For me, work has been.. well.. work. Nothing too exciting. I did win $250 from selling Showtime (a premium movie channel). That was pretty exciting. I just help people understand their billing and help them fix their equipment over the phone and I sell as much as I can. I can't tell you how much weight I've gained from working there. My eating habits haven't changed and I don't eat a lot of junk- I just sit all day and when I come home I'm just so exhausted. I don't walk to school anymore or walk around campus all day.. and my running habits have well.. let's just say I don't have a running habit anymore. :-S

For this reason, my sister and I are working on both losing weight to stay healthy. Wish us luck! She started a little earlier than me and she has done a great job thus far. Congrats, Shannon! Jon has set up a plan where when I hit "milestones" we get to celebrate in some way. Like for example, one of them is that I get a cookbook called "Deceptively Delicious". Not sure if you've looked at it- but it gives you tips on how to cook healthier. I know it sounds lame, but I have wanted to get it for a while.

Anyways, we hope that your holidays are safe and that you enjoy it. We miss you all and wish we could be celebrating with our families.

Thanksgiving Happenins

Crystal's big break from work was given to her for Thanksgiving, not Christmas, so we decided to make to most of it that we could. We were unable to travel anywhere so we planned on enjoying our first thanksgiving as a family here (married family that is).

Before Thanksgiving itself a fellow family here in the ward took pity on our loneliness and invited us over to their house for thanksgiving dinner. One big thing we noticed is that it finally made it feel like the holiday when we went over there. They had 5 extended family over and 3 babies so it was quite the full house (they also live here in Villa Rose). Before we went over it was just Crystal and I. We slept in. We watched the parades. We lounged like on any holiday. Unfortunately it kinda felt like any old Saturday until suddenly we were at a full house of people, babies screaming, people going everywhere, and great smells abounding. We brought a pumpkin pie to add to the mix.

It was fantastic and helped make the holiday absolutely great. The one downside to the whole thing was that Crystal and I already bought all our foods to make our own little 2-person Thanksgiving before we were invited anywhere. We offered to bring any other foods to the dinner but they said to only bring a pie. That left a lot of food still at our house. So the day after Thanksgiving we decided to have our own Thanksgiving dinner on the 23rd. That's right, two Thanksgiving Dinners in two days...and then 2 weeks of turkey sandwitches for lunch. That's a lot of turkey.

The cool part about our turkey is that when we were shopping, we looked and each other and thought "Call it a hunch, but we don't need a 20 pound turkey for us". So we found these mini-sized turkeys where they remove some stuff and cut the turkey in half so that it's not as intense. Anywho, here it is in all it's glory:




And after Crystal gave it a good cookin'


Add some more fixins


And put it all together with eggnog - YUM!



After Thanksgiving we were then able to put up and decorate our Christmas tree. First we went and bought a few really cheap ornaments and here's Crystal bending paperclips for hooks



While she was working on that I was putting up lights

And here's the final product: Criddle Family Tree 2007


And last but not least, Merry Christmas from the Criddles!

Arkansas, here we come!!

Here is a good news update.




This week, Jon was offered an internship with Corporate Wal-Mart!!! He has until Feb. 4th to accept. I realize that this doesn't sound glamorous.. but living in Arkansas is a lot cheaper than living in say, California. Plus- we would get 10% off of everything. It's not Jon's first choice- but he at least has an offer and if other offers come- we'll have to make some decisions. I think Zak could give you better information about living there but... here are some pros about going to AR for the summer-

Pros about living in Arkansas:
*we would be in the NW corner
*we'd have a view of the Ozarks
*we'd be a lot closer to Houston and could visit at least once
*If offered a full time job (and if Jon took it) our kids would be guaranteed to be born with healthy accents and gaps in their front teeth.. okay, so that's not a pro.. but we think it's funny.
*Like I said above we'd be getting 10% off life :-) (c'mon, WalMart sells everything from toenail clippers to tv's.)
*High LDS population
*A mostly paid for furnished apt for the summer and traveling compensation.
*Jon would get to enhance his computer programming skills along with his accounting skills.
*It's paid!

Cons:

*We hear there is such a place called Toadsuck, Arkansas... no really.
*It's WalMart... it's not that prestigious in the business world. (Jon is really sheepish about it... but he will admit that he is excited that he got accepted)


Other places he's looking to apply to: Walt Disney Company for an IT Audit internship (bring on the mouse ears), USAA (an insurance company located in TX), KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young... to name a few.

Happy Halloween!!!

Last night we decided to carve pumpkins! It was snowing and we didn't feel like getting soaked in a corn maze. It was a lot of fun and I'm sure the pictures will show that :-) Oh yes- Jon did the pirate ship and I did the monster.

We decided it was time for aprons...

Comcast is now Big Brother....

I hope this story gives everyone a laugh.

I had a gentleman on the phone the other night at work and he was having problems getting his cable box working. He had a thick Asian accent and I could barely understand him- which can make things a little difficult when giving directions.

I started to ask him all the standard questions of "Is your box on?", "Have you checked all of your connections?" etc.... I sent a few signals to his box and still, nothing worked. I then asked him for a second time what he was seeing on his tv screen. This was his response:

"The tv is cloudy. I can't see anything. Wait! I can see myself!! What did you do!!??? Are you recording me!!???"

It then dawned on me that I would really have to ask him if his tv was actually on... something you shouldn't ever need to ask. I asked him to press the power button on his tv. As he did so I could hear the volume come on in the background and he was all excited and then said to me,

"I'm gone! What did you do? Did you stop recording me?"

I had to break it to him that he was seeing his reflection and that his tv just needed to be turned on and that we aren't recording him- the red light on his box is just the power light not a camera.

Things like this aren't always often at Comcast, but you do get a few a week that you really have to scratch your head and wonder. hehe.....


Anyways, nothing really new. We're looking forward to seeing Beth, Zak and Jak tomorrow or Sunday. We've been thinking about going to a corn maze but it may snow again and that would squash that plan. So, we're just going to post pone that one and probably carve a pumpkin this weekend!

99.9% of all techincal problems are UE's

Since our last blog- our schedule has changed- hurray! Instead of waking up at 4am we now get up around 6:45am- much better. I work from 1pm-10pm. This company doesn't believe in a half hour lunch... Oh well. However, in the last 3 1/2 months I have realized that the only thing that is constant at my job is change. For example, my schedule is about to change again at the end of this month. I will have an 8:30am-5:30pm schedule (not bad at all!!) however, they told me not to get too comfortable with that schedule... or my desk. That's the part that makes my job less "robotic".

You have to know- I was told that I was going to be in sales, but I seemed to have found myself in billing and technical support. I can get my way around on computers alright- but when it comes to plugging cables into tv's and adding different equipment other than a dvd/vcr player- forget it. Our Bishop said it best when he said "It's like they have to get a urim and thummin when you're asking them how to work all the technical stuff." Hey, if any one knows where I can get one- that would be greatly appreciated. hehe... In training they gave us a 2hr crash course on all the equipment- but during those 2 hours, the trainers were only there for 15 minutes- they had an "emergency"- so I feel completely inadequate. If only I could I could fit Jon in my purse so he could help me...

On a funny note- I did get a call on Friday night that made me laugh all the way home. A gentleman was transfered to me from internet support- they told me he was having problems with his DVR (kind've like tivo). I told her to transfer him and I started to talk with him and I pulled up his account and was looking at all of his services while asking what things he was having problems with. As he was talking I was looking all over his account and I didn't see that he had a DVR at all. Not wanting this gentleman to feel sheepish- I struggled to tell him that he didn't have one and that the box he had was a regular receiver and the only special feature about it was that it was HD compatible. After I did so, he went completely silent. I was afraid that it was the calm before the storm (as what usually happens). However, after a bit of venting from his side he agreed with me after looking at his bill and hung up the phone with an immense amount of bitterness in his voice.

Sorry if this is a bit long- but I do want to give an update on what Jon has been up to. This past week we were invited to a "pre-interview" dinner reception at a five-star restaurant. The food was amazing. There was a lot of sea food- I mean, it is rare to get good sea food in Utah compared to living on the coast (that's why it's rated 5-stars!). Jon and I didn't recognize most of it- seeing as it was decorated to be deceiving. For example, there was "bread" that ended up being made entirely of cheese- Jon was excited about that one. Don't ask me what I ate for desert. All I know is that it had apples and cinnamon in it.

The next day, Jon had his interview with UHY Advisors- and accounting and consulting firm. They are based out of Houston and they also have offices all around the country including New York, Chicago, and Boston. Jon wants me to add that they are currently the 11th largest accounting firm in the nation. This interview was for a summer internship doing digital forensics and litigation and we hope to hear back from them by the end of this week. Jon is really excited and really hopes to get it, however, we'll have more opportunities to see what is available during winter semester- he's just getting a head start.

Other than that, Jon stays really busy with his school work (individual and group work). His group members are great guys and they get along really well. It's lucky to find a group that actually work together well.