Cranial Massage

Other than the occasional toothache or hangover, I've never really suffered from headaches until the last year.  All of a sudden, I started getting 3 or 4 bad headaches a week.  I wouldn't call them migraines, but they are pretty annoying.  

You know when you get a massage how you have to mark all your current aches and pains?  Upon seeing "headaches" marked on my sheet, a massage therapist that I saw last year recommended a CRANIAL MASSAGE.  I had never heard of this type of massage, but I figured hell, why not?  

She proceeded to place her hands in various weird positions around my skull and hold them there for a few minutes.  She explained that my skull is made up of different pieces of bone, and the spots where the bones connect get jammed up with bad energy, kind of like fault lines. 



She showed me how she was moving her hands in various patterns at the connection points, but her movements were so tiny that it didn't feel like she was moving her hands at all.  After 60 minutes of this, I had pretty much decided it was hocus-pocus, and that I had just wasted $39.


Therefore I was very surprised to notice a major improvement in my headaches throughout the next few weeks.  I didn't get any headaches for over a week after the massage.  When I finally got one, it wasn't at bad as previous headaches had been.



Because the benefits were so noticeable, Joe bought me a membership to Massage Envy for Christmas.  Now I get a massage every month -- best Christmas present ever!  I usually have her do 30 minutes on my back/neck and 30 minutes of cranial, but I've had her skip the cranial all together twice now because my headaches keep getting less and less frequent.  

I was so amazed by the benefits that I did some research online about cranial massage.  Wiki basically says that there is no scientific explanation of why it works, but it just seems to make people feel better.  Some people think it's "all in your head" but that's fine with me, as long as it's not a headache that's in my head!  

Our new house :)

Well it's finally official -- our offer was accepted and we're under contract!  We'll be closing sometime in June.  I'll admit this is not my favorite house of all the ones we looked at, but the location cannot be beat.  We are within walking distance to the main Sugarhouse area -- bars, restaurants, shopping, movie theater, frozen yogurt, coffee shops, the library, liquor store, you name it!  Plus, UTA just broke ground on a the new Sugarhouse Trolley that will run east/west from our house directly to Trax.  It really could not be better!  We're super excited.  Now, if we only we can make the inside as great as the neighborhood.  We have big plans...

Plan:  expand deck, remove brown stripes, paint green

Plan:  remove wallpaper, replace wooden panels next to door with windows

Plan:  remove wood paneling

Plan:  whole new kitchen :)

Plan:  bye bye wallpaper

Plan: combine master with next bedroom

Plan: combine with master for a master suite

Plan:  paint

Plan:  plant garden & pour patio

Watch for "after" pictures coming soon!

Drunken Oreos

Dear Drunken Oreos from Meditrina,

I can't stop thinking about you.  You are the most delicious thing I have ever eaten.  You combine two of my favorite things, chocolate and red wine, in such a delectable way that I dream about you day and night.  I love you.

Love, Trisha

Ingredients:  Red wine soaked Oreos, port reduction, & Farr-Russell vanilla bean ice cream

Bud Light Fan Camp

One of the benefits of Joe's poker addiction is all the cool stuff he wins at bars.  I will never have to buy pajama tee-shirts, beanies, or neon-alcohol-logo-wall-hangings again!  A few months ago, he won free entry for a 4-person team into the Bud Light Fan Camp competition at the Energy Solutions Arena.  Basically we had to compete in 6 football-themed challenges, and the winning team won a trip to Hawaii to compete in the national playoffs.  We're not the most athletic people, but hey, we're always down for things that involve free beer and a possible trip to Hawaii.  

This was when we still had some hope of winning...

Event 1:  Each team member kicks 2 field goals

Joe--1, Trisha--1, Kyle--1, Devyn--0

FAIL!

Event 2:  Each team member has to catch footballs that come flying out of those 4 windows 

Joe--4, Kyle--3, Trisha--1, Devyn--hit in the face by a football

FAIL!

We had to compete against another team in events 3 and 4, and before I tell you how we fared, I want to point out how unfair this was from the start.  Our opposing team showed up with only 2 males and 1 female, and you can't compete without a full team, so one of the Bud Light Girls joined their team.  This girl was like 6'1" with the most gorgeous, athletic body, and I bet you anything that she had practiced these events for hours.  Bitch!

BudLight Amazon bitch

Event 3:  Madden NFL on Playstation, 1-on-1 against another 4-person team

Joe--LOSE, Trisha--LOSE, Kyle--LOSE, Devyn--LOSE

FAIL!

Event 4:  Flag football on large bouncy balls, 4-on-4 against another team

Our Team--LOSE

FAIL!

At this point, we had basically given up on winning the trip to Hawaii, and Devyn was still crying from getting hit in the face with a football, so we skipped events 5 and 6...

Event 5:  Throw footballs at the moving targets

Event 6:  Run through this obstacle course while carrying a tray of Bud Light.

Zig zag through these blue things...

 ...step through these yellow things...

...push this heavy blue thing and duck under the other blue thing...

...run across the balance beam, and jump over the blue things.

The "best" part of the story happens after we left (or tried to leave):

Someone stole my car from in front of the Energy Solutions Arena!!!!

But that's another story for another blog on another day...

Final standings:  We got 36th place out of about 50 teams (not too bad considering that we skipped 2 events).  Maybe next year we'll win the trip to Hawaii!

Beer School 2011

We made our annual trip to Desert Edge Beer School in December.  We had to wait all year so Little-Miss-1990 could finally come with us.  The food was super tasty (like always) and the beer was...well...I don't really remember ;)  

That is a LOT of beer!

Desert Edge bought a new Beer Bike to make deliveries to local restaurants.  What an awesome job!

Course 1:  White Cheddar Potato Cream Ale Soup (best soup EVER!)

Course 2:  Seared Ahi Tacos with Wasabi Remoulade and Cabbage Slaw (amazing!)

Course 3:  I forgot the fancy title but it was potatoes & sausage with spicy tomato sauce (not my favorite)

Course 4:  Dark Chocolate Raspberry Stout Cake (well it wasn't really cake, but I can't remember what it was, except DELICIOUS)

What a great deal for $32.50.  Beer School is always more fun than I remember from the previous year.  This is a yearly tradition that will definitely not be going away any time soon!

My favorite things

Here are some of the things I can't live without these days.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips

This is the BEST beauty product I have come across in years.  Forget painting your nails or paying for expensive manicures.  These strips take about 10 minutes to put on and they stay for WEEKS without chipping.  They go on dry so there is no drying time so there is no way to smudge them.  They come in tons of cute patterns including special-edition patterns around certain holidays.  Here are some of my favorites:

Spun For You (Limited Edition Halloween)

 Bling It On (Regular Line)

Kitty, Kitty (Regular Line) 

Hot Wired (Limited Edition Halloween)

Winter Funderland (Limited Edition Holiday)

Filtrete Water Station

Joe bought us one of these for Christmas last year, and I love it so much!  You just place the whole base under the tap and it filters the water and fills up the re-usable plastic water bottles.  They are easy to take on the go, and I have been drinking significantly more water since we bought this.  We even bought 4 extra bottles because we go through the water so fast.  The only complaint I have is when people in my house don't fill them up.  Funny story -- I recently did a little experiement to prove to Devyn and Joe that they never fill them up, but I learned in the process that I was actually the culprit!  

Google Calendar

This is the most amazing calendar app I have ever used.  I literally could not function without it.  It lets me color-code appointments into different catergories (work vs home) and use little symbols to break them down even further (court, CFTMs, meetings, etc.)  The BEST part about it is that I can "share" my calendar with people, namely Joe, so instead of calling me to say, "What are we doing on Friday night?" he can just look in his phone!  Or, when I have a late night at work, he doesn't have to worry about me, because he could see my client's address in my calendar if I disappeared.  I haven't tried this yet, but I could even create appointments slots and share the calendar with my workers to schedule meeting times with me.  So cool!

Chevre (Goat Cheese)

I love all types of cheese, but goat cheese is especially marvelous.  Try drizzling a little honey over it and warming it up in the oven.  Heaven!

Google Music

I haven't used this a lot yet, but from what I can tell so far, this is an amazing idea!  Basically you upload all your music from your hardrive to Google's "cloud", download the app to your phone, and then you can play all your music directly from your phone without it clogging up your memory.  That means I can "store" all 100gigs of music on my phone.  Cool!

Frederick's of Hollywood Full-Figure Corset Bra

I swear to God, this is the most comfortable and supportive bra for girls with big boobs!  The lady at Frederick's made me try it on, and I didn't want to because it looks so frumpy on the hanger, but it looks HOT once you put it on!  I buy 2 or 3 now every time I go to Vegas.  They are really reasonably priced, too -- only $36, and frequently on sale on top of that.  Try one out!



Liane Moriarty

I was introduced to one of her books earlier this year in my Book Club and I absolutely loved her.  I immediately when tout and picked up her other 2 books.  Her writing style is smart, sassy, funny, realistic, and heartfelt all at the same time.  I highly recommed her books.

 What Alice Forgot

The Last Anniversary 

Three Wishes

Corona

I don't know what my deal is, but I just really love Corona lately.

Kostizi

This is the world's best discount website!  They sell gift cards to restaurants and bars all over town for huge discounts, sometimes even over 50%.  Joe and I go to The Point After by our house about 2-3 nights a week for dinner because we get the gift cards for so cheap.  I had to invest in an expandable check folder to organize all my awesome gift cards!  The coolest thing about it is that they are trying to get all the restaurants on board with using a card so all balances would be stored in one place rather than seperate paper gift cards.  Some restaurants already use the card and I'm hoping more join soon.  Paperless is the way of the future!  Also check out the sister companies, Big Deal Utah and the CW Store.