Ah, what a sweet husband!!

I think Valentine's day needs to be on a Saturday every year!! Isn't it a great idea to have the entire day to celebrate however you want instead of going through your normal activities of work or school all day? Paul was in charge of our activities and he did an amazing job of planning the perfect day!! First, we didn't set our alarms in the morning and it was such an incredible feeling to wake up when we weren't tired anymore!! When I walked into the bathroom the mirror was covered with a big sign that said: "I love everything about you" and then had little sticky notes with individual things that Paul loves about me. It's still up- i definitely prefer seeing that instead of seeing myself early in the morning!!

He then made me stay in our bathroom and get ready while he was doing something in the kitchen/living room. He was finally finished and I was able to see what he had been working so hard at: he set our kitchen table with our china and roses and made the best breakfast ever of crepes and fruit!

We didn't think to take a picture with all of the yummy food but here is a messy one after we were done eating:

Paul gave me a basket with the my favorite candybars, No Reservations, vanilla lotion, a funny dancing lion, and other cute things. He had typed up our schedule for the day which consisted of being sung to by my brother's cute Valentunes group, running some fun errands, going to eat at our favorite Thai restaurant, playing Life which we have wanted to do since the wedding, watching No Reservations, and making Valentine cookies. We were very proud of our frosting abilities!!

It was the perfect day and I'm so grateful to have such an amazing husband!

It's an Obamanation...

We had our intramural basketball game last night, and we got whooped. The team we played was probably the best we've seen in our 2 season career. Our team played well, but we all had our rough spots. At the end of the game I was really grateful for Callie's summary of my performance, "Do you know what your problem is? You can't dribble with your left hand and you know it! And you're playing with your back to the hoop too often." Now that may sound harsh, but if you're a true athlete you love this kind of criticism and she was totally right. I'm going to remember that and focus on improving.

Anybody watch Obama's address to the nation two nights ago? I didn't get to watch it live, but I read a lot of quotes from it and tried to study it enough to be fair. He had some things that I didn't agree with, but I do have to respect him for one of his comments. The conversation went as follows:

Jake: "The American people have seen hundreds of billions of dollars spent already, and still the economy continues to free fall. Beyond avoiding the national catastrophe that you've warned about, once all the legs of your stool are in place, how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working? Can they -- should they be looking at the metric of the stock market, home foreclosures, unemployment? What metric should they use? When? And how will they know if it's working, or whether or not we need to go to a plan B"

Obama: "I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs. That's bottom line number one..."

That's a bold statement and one that can be easily measured. If his plan does create those jobs and bring success, I think we'll see a 2-term president and the opposite is also true. Although I don't see things the way Obama does, and I don't like some of his plans and policies, I respect him for that comment.

Clarification...

I want to clarify that I was the creator of the wedding spreadsheet and that it actually has 21 tabs along with references to separate spreadsheet appendages. Just thought I would support Paul's 12th nerd-like quality!

Hello, my name is Paul Rumsey...and I'm a nerdaholic

This morning I came to the sad realization that I have many "nerd-like" qualities. Many of you may have already recognized this in me, but I have been in denial for many years. Here's some reasons why:

1) Have you heard of the show "Deal or No Deal?" So that show was playing a little while ago, and as the bank gave out the deal I thought to myself, "Self- you're a finance major! You know how to calculate if that's actually a good deal or not!" For your enjoyment, let me show you the formula! Let's say there's 5 cases left with the values of $1,000,000 - $5 -$250,000 - $.01 - $100,000. It's the sum of the probability of opening the case times the value inside as follows:

Expected Value = (.2 * 1,000,000) + (.2 * 5) +(.2 * 250,000) + (.2 * .01) + (.2 * 100,000) = $270,001

So the whole rest of the show I sat there with my financial calculator figuring out expected returns and shouting, "Deal! Deal! It's to your advantage!" -or- "No! No Deal! You're risk-averse!!!"

Thank you Howie Mandel....
2) I'll admit it. I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books, The Eragon Trilogy, and Lord of the Rings.

3) Superman is one of my role-models

4) I have an insatiable desire to know how things work. At the age of 10 I tore apart my computer just to figure it out. Hence why I know a bit about computers now. Correction, I knew...today's world progresses too fast. It's time to tear apart another computer.

5) I ACTUALLY enjoyed math as a kid. Things with rules just make sense to me.

6) When I go shopping I don't look at whole prices to compare for the good deal. Have you ever looked at the bottom left corner of the price tags on the shelves? It gives you the cost per pound, ounce, etc. That's how I know if it's a good deal

7) Let me make one clarifying statement: I am not, I repeat AM NOT in any way a Dungeons and Dragons fan.

8) My laptop runs my life. I pretty much can't go anywhere with out it. Every bit of important information is saved on it. And yes, all the sensitive information is password encrypted. I'm pretty sure I would curl into the fetal position and cry in a corner if my laptop died before I could transfer everything off.

9) For the pure reason that I can use my fingers to control it, I love the iPod Touch.

10) Excel Spreadsheets are my best friends. How did we keep track of all our wedding plans? You should see the giant spreadsheet we used that has like 15 different tabs, ranging from wedding license info to the thank-you card list. Ever since joining the finance core I have opened a spreadsheet at least twice a day. This leads me to #11...

11) I love organization. I'm not a pocket protector kind of guy, but nothing's better than a systematic order for things.

12) Finally, my wife is also a nerd too. We differ here and there on a few things, but most of this holds true for her too :)

Keep on rollin, rollin, rollin

So the day has finally come and gone. We've been married for 17 days, which seems like it was both a long time ago and like it was yesterday. How is that possible? It's been a rush though, trying to get back into the swing of normal and wrapping up all the loose ends. We'll get a bunch of our pictures from the wedding up on here soon though, and Stephen Aldridge has a great video we can post soon too. There's a long list of thank-you's to write, and Tiffany is outdoing me by far on that one...

School is super busy right now, as I'm in the middle of my preview to finals week as I've been calling it. Every single one of my classes this semester (all 5 of them) have a midterm scheduled this week. Needless to say, I can't wait for the weekend!

Random thought for the day: I'm thoroughly enjoying the BYU married ward that we're in. There are some really funny habits this ward has, and I'll just give you a little insight to one of them. Right after Sunday School, all the guys drop off their wives to Relief Society. Then, as soon as Priesthood ends the guys gather outside the Relief Society room and begin to chat fairly loudly to notify the wives that church is now over and it is time to leave. Best of all, the next part is like a game. Each husband waits and hopes that his wife will be the first out the door. As the first wife steps out, her husband swoops in with a smirk on his face (gloating at all the other guys) and rushes her out the building to break their fast. I really just had to laugh. Just so you know, I finished second. That's right- beginner's luck.

P.S. if you think you have it rough when Valentine's Day (Single's Awareness day to others) rolls around, I want you to think about my new Elder's Quorum President. His wife's birthday is the 13th, Valentine's the 14th, and they were married on the 15th. That man had better be on his game during that weekend, or it's going to be a rough 2009.