Summer Summary

Ok I know we are way into fall, but I still want to post my summer recap. It was a great summer and I wished it would never have ended! Here's an illustrated list of my going-ons:

Summer Highlights:

Sailing at Little Dell Reservoir

Doing field botany

Foraging for mushrooms

Losing weight

Summer Firsts:

Learning to sail

Ice blocking

Driving the back way from Strawberry Reservoir to Springville on treacherous roads in a mini van

Growing lots and lots of zucchini

Going to Capitol Reef National Park and Fantasy Canyon

Summer Activities:

House shopping with Megan

Moving to a new house

Taking hundreds of pictures of plants and the wild

Visiting with Stacey in town from Korea

Riding my Cruiser bike

Composting

Swedish Festival

Art City Days

Collecting thousands of seeds

Getting to know Vernal

Seeing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on stage

Making wheat bread from wheat flour I ground myself! (um, didn't rise very well)

Good News

Hello all two of my readers! ;) I have good news-as of late I have lost 30 lbs! It's been a great experience and easier to do than I thought it would be. I just had to make up my mind to really do it and come up with a good plan that I could stick to. Now I wish I would have decided to do this years ago! So far it's taken 4 months to get to this point and I am still going. Hopefully I can lose another 30 lbs by the end of the year (although it may be hard due to the feeding frenzy which begins with Halloween candy and ends with Christmas treats)! But I'm pretty determined. If you so desire you can check out my new blog: Losing It (http://www.losingitthesensibleway.blogspot.com/). Basically I just post about my weight loss strategies, etc. It may be helpful to someone out there, so pass it along if you feel the desire.

I Can't Believe It's Not Apple!

Lately I've had an excess of zucchini lying around so I've been looking for every recipe I can that uses the stuff. This one I tried today was great. It pretty much tastes like apple crisp, but there's not a single apple in it! I'm going to give it two thumbs up. (ps I put in a little extra sugar and halfed the recipe)

ZUCCHINI CRISP

from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

8 cups cubed peeled zucchini
3/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Topping:
1 1/3 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cold butter or margarine

Directions:
In a bowl, combine the zucchini, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg; mix well. Pour into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish.
For topping, combine brown sugar, oats and flour in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over the zucchini mixture. Bake at 375 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until bubbly and the zucchini is tender.

I Knew It!

Check this article out, it makes me happy: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

Cruisin' and Compostin'

I enjoy the simple things in life and few things in life are simpler than compost and cruising on a bike through your neighborhood, especially in summer. Take a look at the pictures below and feel my joy.

A Murray Cruiser bike, circa 1992. I thought it was the most hideous thing back then. But now it's cool, go figure.

Compost of my own making. I started it almost two years ago, but since the addition of a box and a pitchfork to the process it has really started to get brown and beautiful-can't wait to put it out in my garden.

Dinosaurland

Hello All. I'm still doing the botanical gig every week in Vernal and then coming home on the weekends. Vernal is an interesting place. It's a small town with one main road, but the population of residents is probably matched by the number of tourists in town and people coming in for work-especially those working for the oil and gas industrial complex. There are many hotels and motels in town and they can all charge high rates, because the demand is high. We are staying a fairly nice motel for which we pay $130.00 a night before taxes! Vernal is known as Dinorsaurland because of all the dinosaur bones and fossil fuels that are found in the area and you will not fail to notice this fact while you're in town because of all the dinosaurs everywhere. One of my favorites is the one found above. This brontosaurus lights up and moves its arms up and down beckoning people to stay and swim at the local motel. There is also a huge pink dinosaur on one side of town welcoming people and there is another huge dinosaur sculpture in the middle of town that has changing accessories depending on the time of year. During high school graduation it was wearing a large graduation cap and holding a diploma. Now that it is fishing season it is holding a fishing rod with a fish on the end and wearing a fishing hat. It's unreal. Take a look below.Things are going well with the plants too. We have been surveying areas looking for our penstemon plants. We've been going down a lot of dirt roads, getting soaked by many rain storms, running from lightening and seeing some awesome views. Here I am at the top of a mountain ridge (don't laugh at my field clothes).

Wandering in the Desert

I've been out working in the field twice this month and it's great. Take a look at some of the places and things I'm seeing. The Uinta Basin is more beautiful than I ever imagined. I love the desert.
One of our research sites

This is the Penstemon plant we are studying, looks like it's sticking it tongue out us, doesn't it?

"Willa crick" (Willow creek)

An evening primrose and our Jeep Rubicon that gets us down all the dirt roads we follow

Me in the field, glamorous, no?

A Job, A Job

Ha ha, and just when you thought you'd seen the last of me-I'm back! So anyway, I found a job or should I say I got a job, I found jobs that didn't want me, but finally someone did! My days of searching are over, well at least for a little while. It just for the summer, but I think it will be amazing. I will be working for the Botanical gardens near me in their conservation department as a Field Botanist. Doesn't being a field anything sound great? So I will be travel around the state surveying plant populations, collecting seed, revegetating areas and whatever else a field botanist does. I'm not sure yet because I don't start for a week, but huzzah! I will keep you updated and you'll surely get lots of pictures.

Sharing the Wealth

If you noticed that my background changed lately it's all due a great source for cute blog layouts. Check out my friend Cristi's FREE blog layots. She's awesome! http://cristiscreations.blogspot.com/

Jobs Schmobs

Ok so two things for today. First, the job search isn't going too hot. I know leave it to me to pick the best time to look for a job, but it's too late to go back. I was talking to a guy last night that is also looking for a job nowadays and he described the process as "soul crushing." I would have to agree, that is precisely the way it feels. If anyone would give me the chance I promise I am a very hard, smart worker, really! So if anyone knows of any good or even not so good jobs out there, let me know.
Actually I'll work for a lot less than this, I'm a bargain!

Second, on a lighter note, I found this funny blog http://www.sexypeople-blog.com/ . Don't worry it's nothing dirty, just very funny portraits of people from the 1960's to 1990's, like this:
Haha, these kids crack me up.

Haunting myself

Hah! I just got a message from my past self from one year ago. So amusing. If you go to the site, www.futureme.org, you can write an email to yourself to be delivered at some point in the future. I had kind of forgotten that I had done this, so it was a fun suprise to get my email to me. Try it.

Books on my mind

So at the moment I'm looking for a fulltime job and since I can't spend all my time job hunting (or I'd go crazy), I'm also looking for some good reads. I want to read something enjoyable, it can be poignant, just not depressing and it has to end well. Currently I'm reading John Adams by David McCullough, which I'm thoroughly enjoying but I want a few more books in my queue. Does anyone out there have any suggestions? (Oh and any leads on jobs will be accepted as well :)).

Cool Nerdy Things...

Hello blog buddies,
I know I haven't post in like 5,000 blogging years, but I think I lost my direction in how I wanted the blog to go. I didn't have any cool posting ideas so I just kind of stopped, but now I have renewed my determination to blog. I think my direction will go less to the things that I'm up to-(mostly boring!) and more to the things I'm interested in, including links and ideas, etc. But mostly it will be a random hodgepodge of stuff. So everytime you tune in it will be a suprise. Ok onto the topic at hand...

I was all alone at work today and didn't really feel like listening to music, but I thought it would be cool to listen to a book on tape. So I went online to look for free books on "tape" and found a really cool site, www.librivox.org. People volunteer to record themselves reading chapters of uncopyrighted books and then you can listen to or download them for free! So cool, I started listening to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. It was read by a man with an interesting British accent. Actually the first site I found was one that had free audiobooks, but they were read by a computer and it was strange and discombobulated. Anyway, maybe you had already heard of this site and it's nothing new to you, but I'm excited to have found it. Now I'm going to volunteer to read some chapters, which I've always wanted to do as job.

Another cool thing, I found out at work (I work at a library) we have these Polk City Directories and you can look up by street and house number the name of the the people that lived in the house. So I looked up my house at found that it was most likely built in 1929. The first residents were the Hickoks, then the Croceks, then the Waterfields. I kind of like knowing a little bit the history of my house.

Taggage

Ok I've been tagged twice this week so this is the first of my tag lists.

8 TV shows that I watch
The Office
Heroes
The Biggest Loser
What Not To Wear
Project Runway
American’s Next Top Model
Jeeves and Wooster (reruns)
Sherlock Holmes (reruns)
But I don’t always watch these each week.

8 favorite restaurants
I don’t know that I have favorites, here are some I’ve been to recently and liked
Panda Express
Costa Vida
Mazza’s
Acme Burger
Belissimo Gelato
Rubio’s
Yanni’s Greek Express

8 Things that happened the day before yesterday
Took an Italian Test-did not too bad
went to Advanced Phonology class (that’s phonology not phrenology)
Studied for my Child Language Acquistion test
Made corn muffins
Talked to my roommates
Made dinner
Watched a movie
That’s it

8 Things that I look forward to
My nieces coming to visit in December
The end of the semester
Getting my paycheck
Saturdays
Hanging out with friends

8 Things I love about fall
Wearing my fall clothes
Crunchy leaves
Leaves changing colors
Halloween candy and autumn treats
Pumpkins!
Cool but not cold weather
Enjoying soup and hot cider or hot chocolate

8 Things on my wish list
Moving to Italy
Learning Italian
Buying a digital SLR camera
Having my own car
Visiting Greece and maybe India
Um other stuff I can’t think of now

Back for Now

Wow, I haven't posted for over a month! I guess school already has me in its evil clutches. I just fnished grading 60 (yes, sixty) exams, bah! So what else have I been doing with myself? Um discovering the joys and frustrations of webcamming with my sister and nieces. Watching the premieres for Heroes and The Office and taking lots of pictures! For my newest project I'm taking photos of all the cool old churches I can find in Salt Lake City. There are a lot of them, but it's so fun to discover them.

Oh also I went target shooting for the first time in my life. My roommate and her friend and I went out to the west desert and shot shotguns, rifles and pistols. I kind of felt a little redneck, but it's not like I was going out to the dump to shoot rats or something right? Anyway, along the way we went to Horseshoe springs and the water looked so nice we just jumped in fully clothed! Also we went to the ghost town of Iosepha. This place like an hour from SLC where the polynesian immigrants to Utah settled. All that is left now is a monument and a graveyard. Ok that is all for now. Over and out.

Summer Days Drifting Away...

So school starts tomorrow-blah! Where oh where has my carefree summer gone? It was a nice low key summer. I'm not really ready for deadlines and commitments, but oh well. Let's go ahead and do a recap of the summer-so if anyone asks, “what in the world did you spend you're time on” I'll have something to say. p.s. This is a work in progress.

Highlights:

Playing with my nieces

Visiting the Cotswolds and wandering through fields of Lavendar

All of the things I did for the first time this summer

Firsts:

Went to the San Rafael Swell.

Visited Northern Ireland

Drove in England on the wrong side of the road

Toured the Salt Lake Cemetery


Went to a play at the Cedar City Shakespearean Festival

Hit golf balls at the driving range

Swam in the Great Salt Lake

Went boating and swam in the Utah Lake

Became a Relief Society teacher

Festivals Visited:
Art City Days

Swedish Festival

Books read (ok not exactly classics, but very fun):
The Thursday Next Series: The Eyre Affair; Lost in a Good Book;
Well of Lost Plots; Something Rotten

Twilight

Reunions with friends I hadn’t seen for at least a year:
College friends Leslye, Andrew, Lia, and Jenn

Aunt Cherry and Uncle Dave

Holly, friend from Boston

Jackie, just back from her mission

Heather, Heather and Christy, friends from high school:

How I made money this summer:

Worked part-time at the University Library

How I whiled away my time:

Facebook, Email, Blogging

Taking thousands of photos

Playing the piano (mostly songs from the Jane Austen movies soundtracks)

Talking to my roommates

Sitting in my Party Pool

Watching the Olympics

Ward activities

Eating out

Working on Genealogy

New Friends made:

Lindsey, Emily, Holly, Jessi, Cristi

England, it's like a whole other country

Ang and Baby on Beacon Hill

I'm back! I just returned from visiting my sister in England and every time I go I learn new things about the way the Brits live over there. Sometimes I forget and think they are just like Americans, since no other country is probably more like us aside from Canada, but the truth is just because they speak English or at least a dialect of English, doesn't mean they do things the same way. And there will always be an endless debate as to who does and says things the "right" way.

Obviously we know they drive on the "wrong" or left side of the road. Last week I got to drive in England for the first time ever and I felt just like a teenager learning to drive for the first time. Not only do they drive on the left, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and shift with your left hand (good for lefties, a little more difficult for the rest of us). I think I scared her because I kept hugging the curb (kerb in Englandese) and she thought I was going to hit it, but I thought it was better than hitting oncoming traffic. And the roads are so terribly narrow over there it just adds to the difficulty. But once I got the hang of driving, it was exhilarating. Although I don't think I went of 40 miles an hour.

So what else is different? Well they speak a different dialect than americans altogether, it's usually understandable, but sometimes you get a word throw in there that you don't know. Here's a little list of English to English translations.

the boot -trunk of a car

nappy- diaper

to let- for rent (like an apt)

for hire- to rent ( like a car or video)

on holiday- on vacation

torch- flashlight

footpath- sidewalk

chips- fat french fries with fish

crisps- potato chips

biscuits/digestives- cookies

rubbish bin- trash can

toilet- restroom (to an American this is a bit too descriptive, we like euphemisms like restroom or bathroom, but they just say it like it is 'which way to the toilet?')

aubergine-eggplant

to chuck something- to throw it away

lie in -sleep in

trousers-pants

girls underwear- knickers

pudding-any kind of dessert

Anyway, the list could go on and on. They also use different phrases than us. Instead of answering a question like 'Did you go to the store?' with 'I did' they would say, 'I did do.' In the region I was in they also say 'Hiya' a lot instead of just 'Hi'. They also spell things differently, besides little differences like colour and centre, they also have gaol (jail). My sister and her husband have pretty much adopted most of these saying and my little 3 year old niece pretty much has a Bristish accent.

Haha-the English way to say raised pedestrian crossing

And some things over there truly just aren't as good as American thing, take for instance plumbing. There sinks have two faucets, one for hot and one for cold. You can see how this could make it hard for washing your hands, face, contacts, etc. Also the service in restaurants and other places is not as good as in the states. Oh and everything costs twice as much for an American since the dollar to pound rate is two to one. Yikes.

But what do they do better? For one thing Chocolate. Hands down I like Cadbury's chocolate better than any other chocolate anywhere. On my last visit I got to go to Cadbury's World! Ah delicious. Also public transportation is really good and they are better at being environmentally friendly. They've also got the beautiful quaint little village thing down.

Mostly the things I miss when I'm away from England are foods-Yorkshire pudding (it's like a savory puff pastry covered in gravy, so so good), Sticky toffee pudding (this is actualy a sweet cake with dates and caramel in cake served with cream, very rich), Hob Nobs (chocolate covered digestive cookies), new potatoes, parsnips and scones. yes you can get some of these things over here, but they are just better there.

All in all it's fun to visit my ancestral land and I love finding the little differences, it's refreshing really. So although technically it is a different country it's really kind of like a second home.

Fare thee well...

For those of you that don't know, I depart for Dublin tomorrow morning! That's Dublin, Ireland, I'm jumping the pond and then hopping over to England to stay with my Sister and family. It should be fun, we have lots of plans. We are going to have a Red Neck 4th of July BBQ and we are going to photograph her tiny village in England and then we are all flying back to Dublin right before I leave and driving around Ireland for four days.



I'm excited to see my nieces, I'm excited to see the Northern half of Ireland this time ( I went in '03) and I'm excited to get away for a vacation for a little while. Not that my summer has been too taxing or anything, but sometimes it's just nice to have a change of scenery. So wish me luck, the only thing I'm not looking forward to is 24 hours of traveling tomorrow, yuck. I hate airports and planes. But I guess they are necessary evils. To entertain me I have bought the 2nd in the Twilight series and the second in the Thursday Next series.



If you haven't heard of Thursday Next she's a character in a series of books by Jasper Fforde. There are really charming and fun, not like really any genre you've read-almost sci fi/fantasy/ mystery but not, with a little romance and a lot of humor and literary illusions thrown in. The first in the series is The Eyre Affair.

Ok so that's what's going on with my life lately. So I may not be blogging much, we'll see. Ciao!

Getting Back to My Roots

I am 1/4 Swedish, I am more Swedish than I am any other nationality and I'm very proud of it. So this Saturday I participated in a holiday of my forefathers and foremothers-Midsummers. Midsummers is a celebration held at the Summer solstice, the longest day of the year. There is music and dancing and food. You wear flowers in your hair and there is also a Midsummers' pole which you dance around. I was never raised with any Swedish traditions so it was fun to go to this festival and learn something about my heritage and feel at least a little Swedish. Here are some pics.

There were a lot of darling little girls dressed up in Swedish garb with floral wreaths, so sweet.

.

I made this flower wreath myself with Birch twigs and Scabiosa, Valerian and Coreopsis Flowers.

I Want Answers

So today I discovered a really fun place on the internet. A place to go to get answers to just about any topic you can think of. I wanted to know what kind of food my sister in England and I could serve at her 4th of July party that was really really American, so I asked the millions of people online and in minutes I got many answers, ranging from apple pie to 3 Musketeers to fried okra. So what is this site called? It's simply Yahoo! answers (http://answers.yahoo.com). If you already have a yahoo account you're set, if not it's free to sign up.

Then I started to answer questions. It's fun and what a great idea to share knowledge. I mean two heads are better than one and millions are better than one too! It's really fun so give it a try, whatever you wanted to know the world is your oyster!