Chris & Jessica Johnson

Basically, Chris didn’t go to some formation/lesson on rifles after school on Monday so for five days, starting yesterday, he’s not allowed to be anywhere except for home and on base. Yesterday, after only 4 hours of sleep to make up for being awake 26 hours straight (PT & class on Thursday, then from 4pm Thursday to 8 am Friday being on CQ duty), they made him go watch other soldiers scrub & sweep from 6-10 pm. Today they made him get there at 9 am so he could sweep until 7 pm, with an hour-long dinner break. Nice! And they’re sweeping outside, under a tree, where pine needles continually fall, thus making it a never-ending job. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday he’s stuck in class all day and then making him come back from 6-10 afterwards to do other stupid, pointless, mind-numbing work. We had a lot of plans for important things we had to do this weekend (stuff that we ended up not being able to do during the week because, you know, he was IN CLASS and the places closed early) so they have to be put off again for YET ANOTHER WEEK. Thank Heavens, only 5 1/2 more months until he’s practically a civilian. He said to me the other night, “Sweetie, remind me not to reinlist, ok?” HA!!! As if he needed to actually tell me that!!! That’s funny…

On a happier note, last night I discovered goodreads.com and have been building up my profile & bookshelf on there. My username is my name–jessicajohnson, so look me up if you get the urge. I’ve been so terrible about reading in the last year. I had school, work, and Church stuff going on so didn’t have very much time to read, but now I’m making it a goal to get back on track and try and get through a book a week, or two or three weeks depending on the book (because I do have some pretty hefty ones on there, War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov to name a couple).

Lastly, I am making some lentil & vegetable soup today in our lovely new crock pot that one of Chris’ relatives sent us. I’m using about half a bag of lentils with peas, carrots, brocolli, greenbeans, and corn. We’re pretty lacking in seasonings right now (we have pepper and some of Chris’ beloved Lawry’s seasoning salt) but hopefully it’ll turn out alright.

The wedding and reception were just beautiful and lovely all around, despite being sunburnt, dehydrated, and shaky by the end of the day. It was worth it though. I liked meeting my new family and seeing old friends and family whom I haven’t seen in a while. Suzanne got us a room (more like an apartment!) at the Tickle Pink Inn in Carmel. I want to live there!

We’ve been busy cleaning out all the trash from our gifts (thank you!!!) a little bit every day. The living room is still a swampland but it’s getting better. We used our gift certificates to go get a shelf (which I was up till midnight organizing last night. I couldn’t sleep!) and something even better…Guitar Hero III for the Wii! Woohoo! Chris’ band is called Yaktar and my band is called Qwerty.

Today is going to be busy for us. I get to go stand in line like a zombie at the DMV for I-don’t-know-how-long so I can get my name changed. After school Chris and I have to go to Verizon so I can get switched onto his account, and then to Wells Fargo to set up our bank account. Sometime eventually, probably not today, I’ll have to go get my military ID and stickers for my car. In the meantime, Chris will be home in about 15 minutes so I need to go get lunch made.

Edit - AAAGGGHHH!!! I went and got all my papers at my dad’s house, sat at the DMV for half an hour, finally got up to get helped with changing my name, and there was no marriage license in my envelope. Just the certificate signed by the witnesses. So the lady said she couldn’t help me so I called my dad and the Temple just mailed the license back on Monday. I called the county clerk and they haven’t received it yet. Greeeat! That totally ruins our plans for today.

We’re getting married in three days. THREE!!! DAYS!!! Ahhh!!! We have everything done now. Dress (needed to be lined and taken in a little), suit, flowers, shoes, hair, everything is all taken care of! Yay! Everything is coming together nicely in the apartment, too. We now have a couch that we got for free on Craigslist (woot!), a bed, sheets, and a book shelf. We still need things to cook with and a couple appliances but at least the furniture is taken care of! The folding camp chair wasn’t all that comfy for two people.

Chris decided to decorate the apartment the other day when I wasn’t there. We now have some blue fuzzy dice (the ones he retired from his car and replaced with red 20-sided D’n'D dice from ThinkGeek.com) hanging from a light hook in the middle of the living room ceiling, a sock stewing in a sauce pan, and a clip-on red & white polka-dotted tie dressing up one of the drawer handles in the kitchen. I love it. My almost-husband totally missed his calling in life…maybe he can study interior decorating instead of computer science & physics.

One of the knitting blogs I visit religiously just showed how to make yeastless yogurt-based flatbread. Chris and I love flat bread (especially garlic naan bread) so I had to try it. Today after Chris and I had lunch we went to Trader Joe’s and picked up some flour and plain yogurt and when I got home I started on making a practice loaf. And because I also like food blogs, I took pictures of the whole process.

The ‘recipe’ posted on the knitting blog said just to mix flour (unspecified amount) and yogurt (”enough to make the flour into a dough”) with a couple teaspoons of baking soda. I did that (plus added some ground flax seeds, which explains the brown speckles in the dough), but it turned out spikey and overly sticky as shown above.

So I added a little more yogurt and a bit of extra virgin olive oil and it made everything okay. I covered my hands with some extra flour and rolled it a little bit more (call me weird but I love the feel of rolling dough)…

Then spread it out flat onto some foil with a bit of Pam to keep it from sticking…

And 15 minutes later it was ready and my house smells heavenly! The whole process took less than half an hour, thanks to the lack of yeast. I would have never thought that you could use yogurt to make bread. Genius! This is just beautiful because we can eat it plain or make stuff like mini pizzas as the bloggist who shared the recipe did…and it doesn’t take hours to do!

Here’s my slightly altered recipe, with amounts for those of you who don’t like to guess. The flour and yogurt are exact amounts but the other stuff I just eyeballed. Luckily this is the sort of thing, if you add a little too much of one thing just add in a tea-or-tablespoon of everything else to even it out.

1 cup flour
3/4 cup plain yogurt
4 tbsp ground flax seeds
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Spread out on a Pam-ified & foiled baking dish and bake for 15 minutes on 350 degrees fahrenheit. I have some ideas for variations of this bread. I want to try it with garlic, onions, sun-dried tomatoes, black pepper, bell peppers, cheese, and zucchini. I’d like to try them all together in pizza form, or individually and baked into the bread instead of just layered on top. I think it’d be delicious.

We got our temple recommends today after Church! We’re going to talk to President Jacobs sometime this week so we can go receive our endowments. We’re hoping to go to the Temple this Saturday. All we need now are to go pick up Chris’ suit (’twill be ready tomorrow), a tiny bit of altering of my dress, and a marriage license. Hurray!!!

Happy Father’s Day, everyone!

Today while Chris and I had lunch together, we looked at a couple apartments and found one we like. It’s about half a mile from one of the entrances to DLI, so not too far from Chris’ class room. It’s also just a couple blocks up from Trader Joe’s, which is incredibly convenient. The size is perfect for us. I like the kitchen; it’s nice and roomy (and the floor is very ’70s). The window lets in a ton of light that spills into the living room quite nicely. There’s also a lot of storage space and the living room is on the smaller side but big enough to have people come over and not be too cramped. Anyway, after work we went and filled out an applicated and we got it! I will be taking over the deposit and first month’s rent tomorrow (the cool thing is that they’re only charging us for half a month). Chris is going to move his stuff in this weekend. I’ve found a couch and a set of matching table & chairs on Craigslist that we’re going to pick up on Saturday.

I already have a set of nice dishes for 4 people but I got some more tonight at World Market. Each set of 6 dishes was $5 but they were on sale for 50% off so we snatched them up. I figured it would be good to have plastic dishes so when our friends with young children come over I won’t be on pins and needles as things get knocked off the table. Aren’t they cute?!

I also got these mugs. “But we don’t drink coffee OR tea!” said Chris. Yes, but they were cute, they’ll be good for ice cream or hot chocolate, they match the neat-o bamboo placemats, and it’ll help to calm down the red overload in our kitchen! I wanted the theme of the kitchen to be red but went quite a bit over-the-top with the red while we were doing our Target wedding registry. Oops!

I haven’t been in a writing mood or had much to write about lately, sorry! We had a lot o’ fun at the Haddads’ house and at farmer’s market with them earlier this week. They’re good chiggies.

Yesterday we went on a bike ride and then looked at an apartment. It’s a studio in the upper level of some old dude’s house. It’s in Pacific Grove, just a couple blocks up from the beach. It’s pretty cute and just the right size for the two of us. The room is, at least. The kitchen is smaller than what I’d prefer (as in, hotel-sized fridge, no oven or stove–just a hot plate and toaster oven are provided; Chris has a microwave) but it’s ok. We filled out an application and will be submitting it tomorrow. I really hope we get this place!

Today we had week two of our three-week-long Temple prep class. We were given this lovely pamphlet written by Elder Boyd K. Packer to read (which I read a few years ago right after joining the Church and then gave away to someone and never got back!). In just a couple of weeks we’ll go and receive our endowments, and a couple more weeks after that, we’ll be married! People keep asking me if I’m nervous. I have never, not once, not even for a split second!, been nervous about getting married. I don’t know what there is to be nervous about. I know that married couples get into little arguments and that our bank account will be almost completely off-limits for a while. That’s to be expected. I’m still not nervous, though.

My eyelids are getting heavy and my eye balls keep glazing over. Goodnight, all!

~Jessica.

Nothing too exciting has happened lately. We had the Sister missionaries over for dinner last night. I cooked up some broccoli, carrots, eggplant, and mushrooms in a skillet and served it over brown rice with soy sauce over it. We had strawberries on the side. It was good. The strawberries were there for vitamin C, because I read that for your body to be able to absorb all the calcium that’s in broccoli, you have to have some vitamin C with it. Interesting!

I’m all moved in to my new and temporary apartment with my dad. This saves all of us a lot of driving time and gas. I’m able to ride my bike to work, and am just a few minutes away from Church, DLI, the store, Ford Ord, and I’m just a couple blocks up from the beach and the bike path.

Chris and I were thinking of living in the Fort Ord housing but we’ve decided to get an apartment instead, somewhere close to DLI. We realised there’s no point in us living in FO. We really wanted to be in the Seaside Ward though. Oh well! Sorry. Boring, I know. But that’s about all there is for now. Goodnight!

~Jessica.

Well. I just got home a few minutes ago and will be packing away my stuff & weeding out GoodWill stuff all night tonight (my dad and I are moving out this weekend; I will live with my dad in his new apartment for a month then I get to up and move again with Chris! Yipee!). Chris got a bunch of money from his dad for his birthday so he’s at REI right now picking out a new bicycle. I’m so excited. I love riding my bike and have wanted a biking partner for months. My dad’s usually busy on the weekends so we’ve only been able to go a couple times this year. Now that a) I have a biking partner and b) I’m moving closer to the biking trails, I’ll be able to ride all the time! I love it!

I took this video last night.

I could probably ramble on quite a bit more, but I have to go pack. I’ve got all my books and CDs packed away. I need to find a box for my hard-to-stack and/or more delicate things like my necklace bust and my matrioshka dolls (the Russian nesting dolls…I think I’ll take a picture of them sometime) and cram suitcases with all my clothes. Fun fun fun!

~Jessica.

Here’s what we (”we” being my parents and me) did for Chris’ birthday, which was yesterday but we celebrated Saturday. For presents, he got an Ugly Doll from my mom (we discovered them last week in Santa Cruz), and from my dad he got a Star Trek card that plays a sound clip when it’s opened, with a 1923 silver dollar inside for Chris to add to his coin collection. I got him “Command & Conquer”, two 8-bit ties from ThinkGeek.com (they’re ending the 8-bit ties and doing a 2-for-1 sale so get them while you still can!), and I labelled a jar with “How do I love thee?” then filled it with it with a few of the reasons why I think he’s so dang special. I stole the idea from Brother & Sister Hill (our marriage prep teachers); I thought it was so cute! For food, my dad barbecued steak and my mom brought over French bread. We had that with broccoli, cantelope, grapes, tomatoes, oranges, strawberries, and kiwi. Cake followed.

Tonight we are going to play dodgeball at FHE. I’m excited. I loved dodgeball in elementary school (back in the days before they banned it!), except we didn’t play the way they did in the movie Dodgeball (a very stupid and silly movie, yes, but I love it anyway!). The way we played it, one team would be inside a ring or square and the other team would be spread outside of the other team. The outer team would have to pass the ball to another member and try and hit someone from the other team. So it was like a reversed monkey-in-the-middle, trying to hit the person with the ball instead of keeping it away. I hope we’ll play it like that, or some other very simple way, because otherwise I’ll just sit off to the side and feel like a goon.

Quote of the week, courtesy of Chris. “We can name one of our kids Harriet ONLY if we can also have a Spartacus!” Uhh. No.

~Jessica.