Life is Beautiful (Scott)

Yeah, the decision to tie up our affairs, leave our jobs, and move out of our apartment two months early has, so far, been a stroke of genius. We're back in Walnut at the moment. My parents have been awesome and they have spoiled us rotten. We have a really nice set-up here -- pretty much our own section of the house complete with a freshly painted and newly furnished bedroom and adjoining bathroom. We may never leave...just kidding, Mom -- I don't want to play with your heart like that. Jokes aside, our time here has been wonderful.

Some of you may be wondering what the heck we are getting up to without those pesky jobs of ours. Well, to be honest, we're not doing anything at all. Our first Monday was consumed with getting ol' Hamish the Hyundai ready for the open highway (really all he needed was an oil change), Tuesday we spent most of the day traveling down to the Irvine Spectrum to meet Dad Pool for lunch, and yesterday we made a little trip to Disneyland where mostly we just ate lots of bad (but oh so delicious!) food. Does anyone else like those stuffed jalapeno cheese pretzels? Ashlee thinks they're divine.

We've also watched a fair number of movies (Marley & Me = good, Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist = good, the original Escape to Witch Mountain = eh, Twilight = fantastic dialogue!). Yesterday we...er...Ashlee treated my parents with one of her specialties: spaghetti. Not to toot my own horn, but the salad was expertly made. Today we're having Shawn and Kay over to celebrate Shawn's birthday. At Shawn's request I'll be making Shepherd's Pie -- I found a recipe online that calls for lots of garlic and Guinness. We'll see how it turns out.

Oh yeah, 24 Hour Fitness will be happy to hear that, here in Walnut, I have found a way to meet my fitness needs: my mom just purchased a Nintendo Wii complete with Wii Fit! It was just delivered yesterday and I helped her set it up. In fact, I think I may spend the rest of morning playing around with it.

Like I said, life is beautiful. We'll be here in Walnut until Sunday morning, when we will be leaving for our two-week Northern California trip.

P.S. - In our Mongolia Welcome Packet, the Peace Corps provided us with a list of email addresses of current volunteers in Mongolia. I contacted two different couples and I've already heard back from one. They had plenty of advice and insight to offer. The main piece of advice concerned expectations: as long as you don't build your expectations too high, you won't be disappointed. Great, I thought, big expectations are my fatal flaw...