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.