Friday, July 28, 2006

RAZR Pictures

I finally invested in a program that allows me to get the pics off my RAZR and onto my computer. Thus, there are now finally pictures from the Yard Dogs Road Show up on my Flickr account. Warning, there is one picture not recommended for childrens eyes. Nothing awful, just some girls covered in basically a bikini. There are also to car pictures that I took for Turk. One is a Fiat convertible. Turk owned a couple Fiats in his younger days. The other is a Range Rover that's been repainted and pimped out with some really ugly rims.

You can see it the most in the car pictures, but the phone pics have some very odd focus effects going on. The focus area is very round and small. The edges of the pictures are pretty fuzzy. It's interesting.

Not much else going on. I keep seeing ads for V for Vendetta on dvd on Tuesday. I am SUPER EXCITED about that. I'm definately heading straight over to Best Buy after work on Tuesday to pick that up. I loved that movie.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Pioneer Day and more

Hello there everyone. I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. This time there's been some fun stuff that's happened since I last posted.

The weekend after 4th of July I went down to Lake Powell. This picture is from my first night there. This crazy storm was heading straight for the lake, but then all of a sudden, it parted over the lake and moved around us. A guy working at the campground store said that it always does that. Very strange. Maybe it has something to do with how big the lake is. I don't know.

The weekend at Lake Powell was awesome. My mom and her fiance came up on Sunday to spend the week there. Several of my mom's fiance's friends were there too. They were all cool people. One guy brought jet skis and became my new best friend. hehehe I LOVE jet skis. Monday 4 of the people in our group (of 9) and I spent most of the day on the lake playing with the jet skis. We had a lot of fun. There was a brief hour or so of craziness when a quick but scary storm moved across us, but all in all it was a great day. Tuesday was supposed to be my last day there..... however... more craziness ensued and my glasses are now at the bottom of Lake Powell. My mom had to drive me to the only eye doctor in Page, AZ (the closest town to Lake Powell) to get an emergency contact exam and a pair of trial contacts that were good enough. They didn't fix my astigmatism, but they worked well enough that I could drive home the next morning. Tuesday night we sat around and had some margaritas and talked and listened to some Dane Cook. I'd never heard of him, but it was interesting. I drove home Wednesday and found my old glasses as quickly as possible. It felt really good to get the contacts out of my eyes. I could never wear them. My new goal is Lasik.

So, all that excitement was two weekends ago. Not much went on last weekend, thankfully. After the Lake Powell weekend I was ready for a very quiet weekend at home. I cleaned and went to tennis and not much else. It was lovely. The week was fairly calm as well. We had a group "party" of sorts at work on Thursday. We went to Liberty Park, which I live very close to, and had lunch and played some volleyball. It was a bit chaotic for me (too complicated to explain), but everyone had a great time, so that was nice. Friday was my daddy's birthday!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TURK!!!! I am a totally terrible daughter and didn't plan a present in advance. My excuse is that my father is ridiculously difficult to buy for. He's totally the type who doesn't want much and if he wants something he gets it for himself. Thankfully Bass Pro Shops has e-gift cards that get delivered immediately. They saved my butt. I was able to get him a present on his birthday.

This weekend is funny. It's a HUGE holiday weekend here in Utah. Monday is Pioneer Day. It's bigger than 4th of July here. At the last minute the other week they told us we had the day off on Monday, since probably 80% of the company was taking the day off anyway. There's a huge parade tomorrow and there have been fireworks all weekend. Last night I went to the Gallivan Center to check out a cultural festival and band and fireworks. It was an interesting and fun night. Today I had no idea what to do, so I ended up going on a hike. This picture is of the trail and a patch of wildflowers along the trail. There were wildflowers everywhere. This hike was on a trail that is part of Alta ski area. I hiked the Lake Catherine trail that leads up to Catherine Pass where you can see Lake Catherine. The hike was at an elevation of approximately 10,000 feet. That was a bit difficult. It was a beautiful hike though. There will be more pictures from the hike and other pics on Flickr.

No plans yet for tomorrow, except probably a lot of cooking. I have a TON of vegetables from the CSA farm I signed up with that I need to do something with before they go bad. Tomorrow morning is the parade and a free breakfast at the local LDS church. I might go check those out just out of curiousity. We'll see if I'm motivated enough to get out of bed. Tomorrow night there will be fireworks set off from Liberty Park down the street. Supposedly I can see them from right outside my house, so I might just chill out outside and try and take some fireworks pictures. There's a fireworks setting on my awesome digital camera, so I might try and play with that.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Happy Silly mid-week Holiday

Happy 4th of July everyone. Yay for odd days off in the middle of the week. Actually, they bug me. It was such a waste of time to have to work on Monday and then not work today. And now it's like having a three day work week. Not that I mind a short work week. Those are always nice.

Anyway, sorry for the lapse in posting. Life has gotten back into a quasi-normal routine and I'm very bad at posting about my quasi-normal routine. I am however continuing to discover new and wonderful things about Salt Lake City. There's Red Butte Gardens for instance. It's a lovely gardens, much along the lines of Longwood, only smaller, for those of you in PA. They have a summer concert series with a great list of artists. I went to my first concert there the other week, John Hiatt. He was awesome. It was I think my 3rd or 4th time seeing him in concert. It was so much fun. The opening band, North Mississippi All Stars, were great, very high energy. The lead singer looked about 14, but sang like an old black blues singer. So cool. They also served as John's back up band.

Tennis is continuing to go well. This past Saturday was fun since we got to actually play doubles. I got in a group with 3 people who weren't totally clear on scoring, or most of the rules, so I was the official score keeper/rules officianado. That was interesting, since I wasn't 100% sure on all the rules either. I haven't played formal doubles in 9 years. But, none of us really cared, so it was all good. I went and practiced a bit on Sunday and then screwed up my right arm at the shoulder. I think something with the rotator cuff muscles went awry in trying to practice my serves. That hurt a lot on Monday, so I skipped the Monday night workout. I need to get some weights to lift and build up the muscles around my shoulder.

Saturday after tennis I went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" with Mason, a very cool guy that I've been hanging out with. The movie was great, scary, but great. Al Gore is exceptionally well spoken, particularly when you think in comparison with our current president. I've realized that Bush just sounds so uneducated, it's painful to listen to him.

After the movie I ended up waiting around for someone who had asked me earlier in the week to hang out on the weekend, but then ended up bailing. So, I looked at my map of the valley and picked a loop road that looked like it went through a forest area. It ended up being this amazing drive through the mountains south of SLC. It was so beautiful. I want to go camping and hiking and stay there forever. It was so green and cool and smelled wonderful. Then I came home and made potato pancakes, yummmmmmmmm. Sunday I went to see a very strange movie called "Hard Candy" with Jen from work and her husband. Totally strange movie, but good. After the movie we went over to the Gilgal Garden, which is this odd little sculpture garden in the middle of a block in SLC. The guy who did all the sculptures was a really religious LDS bishop (not like a bishop in Catholicism, more like a community leader) and a mason. One of the sculptures is a Joseph Smith sphinx. The guy's idea behind it was that Joseph Smith had all the answers, like the sphinx. There are a lot of LDS scriptures and song quotes carved in stone. It was interesting and led to a fascinating discussion on religion. I'm really enjoying learning so much about a completely new religion and culture here in SLC. I have no desire to become a part of it, but I definately respect it and want to learn more about it.

Today I finally did some more unpacking at the apartment. I'm going camping next weekend at Lake Powell in southern Utah/northern Arizona and I needed to sort out all my camping gear. And now I'm going to go kill my neighbors. They are shooting off some sort of fireworks that I'm sure are completely illegal. Add that to all the other eight million things they do that make me completely bonkers and..... well..... I can't be held responsible for my actions. :) Actually, really I'm going to go watch The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a great movie, I own it on dvd, but it's in Philly. But, it's on tv tonight, yay!!