Thoughts on a night out...

Did you listen to that song?  If not, please stop reading for a second, scroll back up, and click play.  Then you may continue reading.

Tonight I attended the Punch Brother's show in Park City.  The song you should now be listening to was the song with which they opened their set and it was, if you can believe it, even better in person than that recording.

I was able to attend because of the truly magnificent generosity of my dear Matt, who decided that I needed to experience Punch Brothers live and so bought me a ticket as a birthday gift (somewhat prematurely, as my birthday is not till September).

Technically he bought me two tickets, though I intend to repay him for the second.  The goal was for me to bring someone to the show with me.  Unfortunately, it turns out that none of my friends love me enough to come see a band in Park City that most of them have never heard of, which hurt to discover, btw you guys (or, in the case of a few, they HAD heard of the band, they just had lame excuses like poverty or hanging out with their wife's sister who was in town for a short while).

As such, I ended up attending alone.  Which was fine except for the part where all of my witty conversation and observations were wasted with no one to hear and inevitably appreciate them. Which is why I'm sharing them with you all now.

So, without further ado, here is a small selection of the conversations I WOULD have had tonight, had I had anyone to have them with....

....wow...it turns out I did not need to leave nearly so early to get up here.  How shall I pass the hour and 45 minutes until the show starts?  Staring at nothing?  Sounds good....

....these people in front of me literally just pulled out 5 bottles of wine...

....This opening act is so boring that I'm daydreaming about getting a blood clot in my leg from this chair so I can leave to go take care of it...

....HOLY COW I LITERALLY CANNOT HANDLE WHAT AMAZING MUSICIANS THESE MEN ARE!!!....

mostly a picture of the drunk people in front of me, but also of the band all tiny at the front

....dude seriously, this song is so great....

....Chris Thile!  So nerdy!  So adorable!  Might very possibly be the most awkward dancer in the entire world.  Half the time he dances like Scott Pilgrim, the other half like he just needs to pee reeeeeally bad.  He is an even more awkward dancer than Chris Martin....

....Dear Utah, please stop being so tacky and leaving 10-40 minutes early so you can "beat the traffic"....

....And THAT is how you play a bass solo!....

....My mind is still being blown by these guys.  Totes 100% worth it!....

....WHAAAA????  Is he seriously busting out his Bach right now?!  From memory of course.  And this huge crowd of drunk people is actually digging it?  Aw yissssss....


....they drank all five bottles of wine, one bottle per person.  How are they getting home?....

....SHIRT!....

....Oh crap.  I may never get home.  I am 1000% lost on this mountain.  I will die here.  I wonder if anyone besides my mom will miss me.  Oh, this is the road I'm supposed to be on.  Ok, we're good....

....Dear Heber McDonald's:  You might have very fancy bathrooms and a confusing layout, but you gave me diet Dr. Pepper (so nasty) and onions on my hamburger.  We are not friends.....

....Who knew driving Heber canyon at night would be so fun!  I should maybe slow down?  I'll probably definitely get a ticket if a cop sees me.  And animals?  But...Gypsy Kings are singing "I Did It My Way" in Spanish and my speeds remain marginally safe and if I do crash at least there's no one else in the car to die with me! WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Prompt 5: A Photo Of Myself Two Years Ago

This is, quite possibly, the best picture of me to exist in the entire world.  It was inspired by this blog post from The Bloggess.  If you don't know who the Bloggess is then I really have to question our friendship.  Well, I say inspired by, but who are we kidding.  The minute I saw this gigantic metal chicken just hanging out on the side of the road I knew I was going to have a picture with it.  It was whole minutes after that that I remembered The Bloggess and Beyonce.  There was actually a whole series of photos taken that day, featuring, in addition to myself, the wonderful Callie and Summer.  We literally drove out to Home Depot with no other goal in life but to take pictures with this vast menagerie of cast iron/aluminum (the chicken was aluminum) creatures that this man had put out for purchase.  It was the best possible use of a day.  And for good measure, here are pictures of Callie and Summer posing with some of the other, slightly more reasonably sized animals

This was Summer and the Bear's engagement shoot

Callie cradling a baby t-rex...presh!

Come back tomorrow to find out what kind of animal I wish I had for a pet.  Feel free to post guesses in the comments...

How life is these days...

I was asked to write a review for the movie The Host, and I will.  But first I'm feeling like I ought to post a general update on my life and things.  Sort of a philosophical update though, cause this is me we're talking about.

First for the update part.  Most momentous update of my life is that I will likely be graduating either in August or December.  I will be taking one final gen ed class (an "advanced writing" class that is completely unnecessary but required...bleh) through independent study and then I will be done.  This means that I will have my Humanities degree, but no minor.  It also means that, for all practical purposes, I am basically done with school right now.

The other major thing in my life is my recent decision to really get serious about buying a car.  It is a thing that I am putting a lot of time and thought into, going so far as to spend actual time physically in the library researching the best used cars.  My ideal purchase (with reservations as I've not actually driven one) is the 09 Honda Fit

yes, I am aware that it looks like a baby mini-van...

I didn't really imagine that my college career would end quite so...anticlimactically.  I expected I would take my last year of classes like any normal student and I would walk out of the testing center from my last final and I would feel that lifting of the weight of school I get at the end of every year, but multiplied several times as I realized that I wasn't just done for the year, I was done forever!  I'd have a big graduation and I'd send out invitations and my parents would come down and go to the ceremony and it would be a great moment in my life.  That's how I imagined it.

I did not imagine that I would be in school for 7 years.  I didn't imagine that I would be graduating due half and half to a lack of money to continue and to an intense (and I do mean intense) aversion to continuing.  I didn't expect that my student experience, rather than ending with a definitive bang! would trickle down like a faucet with a weak nob.  I didn't imagine that, by the time I finally did graduate I would be so sick of school and tired of the entire stress of it that I would want nothing more than to let the bloody event pass with as little notice as was humanly possible.  No big graduation ceremony, no invitations, no family gathering.  I just want it to be done already.

just stop.

Ironically enough, my own apathy about the entire process makes me sad and kind of makes me wish I still wanted to do it all up proper.  College is the last possible bastion of juvenile life.  Sure, they say it is supposed to be your first steps into adulthood, but really it is your last steps as a child.  You're still in a highly structured environment over which you have only some control.  You still have a host of precautions in place to catch you just in case you crash and burn.  Perhaps this sense of extended adolescence is exaggerated due to the fact that I went to a Mormon school, or perhaps it was just a different sort of adolescence (no one will ever convince me that drinking unto shit-facedness is a mature thing to do, which is the only stereotypical college behavior I can think of just now).  The point is that when you finish college you theoretically are really and truly and for once and all stepping out on your own.  You're to get a "real" job and buy a "real" car and finally have a "real" relationship.  All the things are suddenly becoming real.  That transition deserves to have at least some sort of deal made over it--big or otherwise.

But I find that it is happening very gradually.  Last year was supposed to be a year of working and earning money to go back to school.  It wasn't supposed to be my first "post-college" year.  But that is exactly what it was.  And now, here I am, having made the decision to be done with the whole thing.  I'm looking at my life and slowly grasping that it is no longer divided into 4 month segments, after each of which my schedule and the entire structure of my life gets jiggled around.  I'm not "working till I go back to school" now.  I'm just....working.  It's both liberating and frightening.  On the one hand, I have always struggled to commit to things in my life when I know that in a few weeks or a couple of months I'll probably have to ditch it to accommodate a new class schedule or whatever.  That is no longer the case.  My schedule is pretty much set for the foreseeable future.  But that in itself is quite scary.  Now, if I get bored it's not just "well, you can hang in there through the next two months and then things will change."  If I want something to change in my life I will have to actively change it.

But most of all, I am noticing a gradual but distinct change just in the way I view and interact with the world in general.  Last night I actually said the words "well, and I'm sort of in a different part of my life than you" to my roommate Karissa...and it was quite obviously true.  I think I always sort of filed phrases like "different part of my life" and even "adulthood" into a folder clearly marked "married and making babies".  That has always been the great life event that changes my relationship with my friends--that makes me feel like we're no longer in the same part of life and we have less in common to talk about.  I have one friend in particular--she has been married now for 6 or 7 years; she lost one baby, and another spent the first couple of months of his life in the NICU; she has bought and sold a house; she is living a completely adult life.  When we get together I ask her all about her life and she tells me about her husband's job and her kids and what she is doing to utilize her talents and skills as a mother and it is a completely different world.  So when she asks me what's new in my life (she always does, she is always interested in what I'm doing) I feel absurd.  She just told me how incredibly difficult it has been for her to deal with the death of her child and I'm now going to tell her how hard it was for me to...what?  Get over a boy who didn't like me back?  Her life contains deeper sorrows (and thus deeper joys) than I am experiencing yet and I simply can't help but feel the contrast.  So I usually just say that there's not really anything new with me (which is usually true) and turn the conversation back to her.

That has been my perception of true adulthood.  Things are more serious, more poignant.  But last night I was talking to Karissa about buying a new car.  She is also looking to buy a car.  She wants something cheap that will get her from home to work.  It doesn't need to be pretty, or even run especially well.  It just needs to get the job done.  I, on the other hand, am looking for, as she put it, "a grown-up car".  I'm ready to have a car that I can count on, one that is going to last me several years without ever once refusing to start due to high or low temperatures.  In the most pragmatic of terms, I'm ready to buy a car that I can't simply pay for straight out of pocket.  I'm going to have to get a loan and have a monthly car payment.  Like you do when you're an adult.  This is an idea that I wouldn't have even considered while I was in school.  There was just no way.  But the prospect of working full time...full time (not just for four months of summer) changes things.  It quite literally changes the way I look at my life.  I'm no longer looking a maximum of four months ahead.  I'm planning now without an enforced deadline.

I may not have moved to the part of life that is being married and making babies.  That level of adulthood is still before me.  But I am done with school now.  I am finished with the very last days of my adolescence and I have, without quite realizing it, stepped fully into the murky waters of being grown up.  The wait for my life after college is over and I'm now living it.  It is both scary and wonderful...

A slice of life may or may not be as good as a slice of fresh peach pie...

This summer was meant to be the Summer of Sewing.  However, since I didn't actually have a sewing machine (a sad fact which has only just been remedied by my awesome mother) that didn't end up happening.  Instead it became the Summer of Adventure and Travel...and let's face it, that's totally as awesome, if not more so, than sewing.

so excited to use this sucker!  Thanks mom!

Things got started with my absolutely awesome trip to Europe in March (a trip which I have been really terrible about documenting...I think I only made it through the first two days of the German leg... :-/ ).  This trip, unfortunately, took rather a toll on the rest of my summer, though this wasn't instantly evident.  Alas, when you spend that much money at the beginning of your summer, the end of your summer can wind up quite poverty stricken--but we'll get to that.  Especially since I regret nothing.  Well, I regret one pair of shoes, but not very much.

you can see why I don't regret them very much....

After Europe I took a month or two break from Travelling (you know, out of the state) but I continued to go on adventures.  I went to...well, nearly to Spiral Jetty.  I went to the Hogle Zoo where I discovered that my childhood enjoyment of zoos has been somewhat tempered in my old age and that now I find them both fascinating and quite depressing (particularly the monkeys...shoot!).  I also learned that carousels will always be awesome, especially ones where you get to ride exotic animals.  

there is no part of riding a bald eagle that is not awesome

It was at this point in my life that I started being aware of those repercussions of that super expensive Europe trip.  Adventures that included lots of gas and/or entrance fees were abandoned.  On the other hand, I promised Anneke that I would attend her wedding reception in Montana.  I couldn't bail on that!  So instead I brought two of her roommates to help pay for gas (and cause they're great girls and stuff) and nearly killed my car and got me to Montana.  I can't find any pictures of that trip (seriously?) so instead I'll post these three pictures I have of Anneke being adorable and awesome

How cute is this girl?

...the answer is:

Pretty darn cute

This was, however, the last nail in the coffin of my finances.  For the rest of the summer I've been bouncing between utterly broke (I mean, utterly) and pretty broke (slightly less broke than utterly).  You might think that this put an end to my adventure times...but you would be wrong!

I was lucky enough to join my friend Collin at the Stadium of Fire to see one of my favorite bands since I was about 3--The Beach Boys.  In case any of you were wondering, they may be getting older, but they still put on a truly awesome show.  The fireworks weren't bad either :)

aww...look at us there gettin' ready to rock this show!

At some point my brother decided that he wanted to go home for a visit and he invited me to come with him.  Spontaneous trips are some of my favorite.  And it was great to have the manly bonding the good sibling bonding time with my brother.  Siblings.  They're kind of the best things ever.  And then it was great seeing my family.  I haven't seen my nieces in about a billion years.  They're getting so OLD!  I also drove down to Price to visit Seth and Rachel and Seth's family.  Such great people!  I will always love that place.  And somewhere in there Tori and I drove up to Salt Lake to attend the Obon festival.  We witnessed some really stellar traditional Japanese dancing, and some less stellar traditional Japanese dancing.  I also wandered over to the City Creek Center for the first time and was treated to an awesome fountain show.  

seriously obsessed with this fountain..

Then there was just the ambient awesomeness of my routine life.  I spent my free time watching various movies, several amazing MST3K episodes, and most importantly all three seasons of Avatar with Matt.  

Matt's farewell party paying homage to Avatar, MST3K, and
his orange juice obsession

this is basically the essence of my summer right here.  Beautiful!

I got to (and continue to be so blessed) drive down to Payson every day for work.  I decided to go on an adventure one day on my way home and discovered a backroads-ish route that I take now when I'm feeling scenic.  I am rewarded with sights like this

Turns out 7 o'clock at the end of August = magic time

How lucky am I?  Pretty dang lucky!

Which brings us to August and my last two trips of the summer (this post has turned out much longer than I meant it to).  Way back at the beginning of summer my mom and I made a brilliant plan.  The plan was put in to action in the middle of August and I drove home one more time with my good friend Mike

brilliant conversationalist is Mike...

Callie also hitched a ride for one more visit home as well.  There was dancing and shooting and movie watching and familial bonding and taking of many pictures.  Good times were had by all.  

The final hurrah was last weekend.  The beautiful Laura McNeil and her equally lovely mother were so kind as to invite me to Fort Collins for Labor Day weekend to see none other than the legendary B.B. King in concert.  Which we did.  Among many many other things.  This post was originally destined to document this trip, but I ended up summing up my whole summer, so I think the details will wait for another post (there were some major life plannings that happened) and instead I'll just leave you with a few more pictures

yeah, those are vintage TMNT comics I used to read as a kid.
Plus the most delicious cream soda on the face of the earth.

my "fairy" costume for the Tour de Fat.  Kinda lame, I know...

everyone else's costumes...

one of my favorite costumes!

me and the awesome sunburn I got after the Tour de Fat.
Notice the really awesome raccoon lines where my makeup was...

100% legitimate Vaudville act which ended with a man juggling a real
chainsaw, a 14 pound bowling ball, and one fake egg

Princess Lollipo!  Another of my favorite costumes.
She gave me a butterscotch candy!

I...I wish I'd bought these...

The dessert of champions at the Chocolate Cafe.  Mmmmmmmm!

the journal I bought in Dublin and the journal I bought in Fort Collins.
I'm really digging the shorter journals--you fill them up faster and get to buy new ones sooner!

the list I made at the beginning of the summer.  Still plenty of things left on there!

And that is that.  My Summer of Adventure and Travel!  Indeed, this is the good life!

Dancing holes in the soles of my shoes...

Ages back my mom and I concocted a plan.  In this plan I was going to go home for a weekend sometime towards the end of summer and I was going to teach a dance workshop to the youth in my home stake.  Then I was going to DJ a dance for them and suddenly the kids would go to stake dances and they would dance and everything was going to be awesome.  It seemed like a good plan except for the part where we completely ignored that we're talking about a bunch of kids between the ages of 14 and 17 and who are we kidding? The day they dive into a dance workshop and learn to dance is the day Snooki buys herself some pearls and joins the DAR.

so much class happening here!
(photo courtesy of People.com)

That is what I thought about during the bulk of the two hour drive up to Pine Valley.  Lured with the promise of a good time (yes, sometimes I lie to people...I had no idea if it actually would be a good time), I had convinced my friend Mike to come with me to help teach.  As of our arrival in the parking lot that was to be our dance space we still hadn't agreed on what style of dance to teach.  I wanted to teach west coast so that the kids would be able to dance to the regular music that would be played.  Mike was doubtful that was going to happen.  I was forced to agree with him when I was finally confronted by over 150 kids huddled in front of me.  There was no way we were going to teach these kids west coast.  Blues it would be!

I then proceeded to give the most rushed, un-inclusive, non-helpful lesson of my life.  In my own defense, it was enough of a challenge just getting the kids to alternate boy/girl/boy/girl and touch each other.  But Mike and I, in about 25 minutes, went over very basic connection, pulse, and taught them how to do a basic, a right turn and a left turn.  With my mother gesturing me to hurry up every few seconds in the background, we wrapped up the pathetic excuse for a lesson and got the music started.  

The rest of the evening, however, was great fun.  Though I played almost every request I got, I also tried to gently broaden musical horizons.  Of course, this had mixed results as, towards the end of the night, a girl pleadingly asked for a "fast song".  Bemused, Mike and I questioned her what sort of fast song she wanted since we had played quite a few fast songs, including two lindy hops, several country swings, and even some line dances.  She looked at us like we were slow and said "I mean some normal music!"  

I really like that knife...
obtained here

For me, however, the entire experience of the Stake Dance was redeemed.  

When I was in mutual I would go to dances and awkwardly sit off to the side.  Rarely, some intrepid young man would tremblingly approach and ask me to dance.  We would rock back and forth, one sweaty hand slipping embarrassingly between shoulder and waist whilst the other encircled my own in a clammy whisper of a grip.   For three minutes, as our eyes circumnavigated the ceiling, the walls, the floor...anything but look at our partner, we would tamp down a tiny circle on the dance floor.  At last the music would end, releasing us, and we would mumble thanks over our shoulders as we hurried back to our respective places. 

Some intrepid boy just like this one...bless his heart
photo from here

But there I was, on a Saturday night, back at a stake dance.  Only I am now 26 years old.  I know how to dance now.  And best of all, I had a partner there with me who was both willing and able to dance with me.  And dance we did.  To the insufferable and eternal Cottoneye Joe we danced the Polka.  When Open Arms was requested we waltzed.  We even threw in some Cha Cha, though I don't remember which song that one was.  And of course, there was blues and west coast (and some very westified lindy).  It is amazing what a difference those small changes can make in the same event...

We danced the whole night and our post-dance energy buzz completely confounded mom.  I think just listening to us talk was making her and dad tired.  

The next day me, dad, and Mike drove up to go shooting.  Walking across the rock pit to set up targets I realized the full extent of my fun the night before.  

Yes.  That's right.  I danced a hole in my shoe.  

Happiness is in the little things...

In my blog post about the Descendants I mention at the end how I sort of created this future memory for myself.  That is, after watching that scene at the end I decided that I would have such a moment in my life someday, and I became nostalgic for a memory that has not yet happened.  The thing is, I have a lot of these future memories.  I look forward to the rest of my life avidly and I have so many ideas about how I want it to be.  Does anyone else do that?

Last night I had this beautifully displacing moment where I created a future/present memory that fulfilled that anticipatory nostalgia.  I was driving to the airport with Matt to pick up his roommate.  It was late at night, the windows were down and my hair was blowing like crazy, my feet were up on the dash, and Matt was, in his words, "indoctrinating [me] in some of the best music on earth".  That is, he was playing me his favorite songs by New Model Army, telling me how he felt about them when he was in high school.  It was warm outside and there was a great big, orange, half moon rising over the mountains.

Are you ever in the midst of a moment and, just for a flash, you slip outside of yourself and look at where you are and what you're doing and realize that everything is perfect?  Sitting in that car, listening to Matt talk about how much he loved this song and the next song and the next song, with the warm wind....it was a perfect moment.  I was absolutely happy.

And then, it was like I slipped even further back and looked at my life like a story rather than a living breathing series of events.  This moment I was in, it was the sort of moment that people write about in stories or try to depict in movies-- a sort of Platonic Form of a College Memory.  The sort of fabricated "memories" that you almost resent in stories because they're too perfect and too staged and they make you long for things that aren't really even real.  And yet, here I was living in one.  I knew, in that second, that this was the sort of thing that I would look back on, when I have kids getting ready for college, and I would tell them about it to explain to them why college is such a wonderful place and they should be so excited to go there.  And they wouldn't really understand, but I would glow a little bit within myself remembering how happy I was.

After that my night continued to be utterly lovely.  On the way back from the airport we progressed from New Model Army to They Might Be Giants, and then to Nickel Creek.  Matt and I both love this song and we sang it with enthusiasm.  Then, because Matt's roommate Brenden wanted to thank him, we tried to find a Wendy's that was open.  We succeeded at the third one.  Over salted fries and vanilla frosty...

Then we came back to my beloved Campus Plaza and we sat in front of my apartment in the twilight glow of the lamps and we talked.  Matt is leaving soon.  In fact he is leaving on Friday, though he will come back a few times before he leaves forever at the end of the month.  I can't begin to explain how much I will miss him.  He's been my best friend, one of the best I've ever had.  And I'm sure we will continue to be good friends, but it won't be the same.  He won't live 30 feet away.  He will live two thousand miles away.  So when we stay up till 3:30 talking I appreciate every second of it.  And I guess that's how I want to end this post.  With a dedication to Matt (though he'll probably laugh at me for this) and a thank you.  I know it's rather wretchedly sentimental.  But thanks, Matt, for listening to me whine, and for trusting me so much, and for introducing me to Avatar, and for laughing at Frasier with me, and talking to me, and just for being you.

The summer of Emily!

Except that it is the Summer of Emily.

Or, even more accurately, The Summer of Adventure!

I wanted it to be the Summer of Sewing, but I do not yet have a sewing machine.  So I decided to start my Summer of Adventure by making a trip I've been thinking about for a long time.

This is Spiral Jetty.  It's a giant piece of installation artwork on the northern end of The Great Salt Lake

Here's a map, to give you an idea what I mean:

It's not quite 3 hours from Provo.  While I was not aware exactly where the thing was located, I have wanted to see it for a really long time.  So I decided last week that I was going to go.  Even after I found out how far away it is.  Callie was unsure at first, (she said the thought of driving for three hours to a place that was not her home seemed ridiculous) but she eventually decided to come along.

So, as it turns out, there are actually two jetties out there on the northern end of The Great Salt Lake.  There is the Spiral Jetty, and then there is another, longer, straighter, more nameless jetty just a little before it.  Amusingly enough, I only just learned this a few minutes ago, along with the sad realization that...we never actually made it to Spiral Jetty.

How did I not notice, you may well be wondering, that this jetty did no spiraling whatsoever?  That this jetty was in one tenaciously straight line?  Because it was half underwater is how.  Go look at that picture again, and you'll see that there is a long stretch from shore that is perfectly straight, yes?  Well, I didn't know how big the thing was, so when I saw that the end of the jetty was underwater I just assumed that it was really really big, and underwater and all we could see was the straight bit, with a little bit of a bend at the end.  And I'm not too bright.  So sue me.  The salt flats weren't what I was expecting either when I went to see them last summer because they, too, were underwater so I just figured I had really bad luck...

That being said, the jetty we did see was pretty freakin' amazing!

It was gorgeous and sunny with a fair wind.  My hair spent the entire time rebelling and blowing in my face.  Which was pretty cool I guess...

Callie always looks so adorable...darn her...

Fun fact: seagulls and herons in flight make the most fantastic
squdgy sound as they flap...

this is my favorite picture

In addition to my wish to see Spiral Jetty, I also came up with this strange goal: I wanted to walk out to to the end and I wanted to have my own crazy ipod dance party.  Which I totally did.

I had to pick my way across the "washed out" bit of the jetty
and try to keep my shoes dry.  Totally nailed it.

Callie didn't want to get her shoes wet, so she did not come with me to the very end.  So all by myself I took out my ipod, turned on some Rihanna "We Found Love in a Hopeless Place", and started dancing.  Well, technically it took me about a song to get into it.  But I danced for about three songs out there, waving my arms like a crazy person and trying really hard not to twist my ankles on loose rocks.  It was...pretty fantastic.


Though Spiral Jetty was the primary goal of our trip, we made an unexpected detour on the way there.  The road out led us right past the Golden Spike National Historic Site.  We were planning just driving past, but as we approached it we saw two big, beautiful, steam engines gleaming in the sunlight.  We couldn't resist.  We got there just in time for the end of...the reenactment!  Yeah!  Apparently, for maybe two or three weeks, around the anniversary of the driving of the final nail, they do daily reenactments of the historic moment, and bring out those two fantastic steam engines.  We got to watch them pound the spikes in and Callie got a picture holding one of them.

Then we got to wander around the trains taking pictures of them.  I thought the man on this one looked pretty legitimate.

Then, on the way home, after The Jetty That is Not a Spiral, we realized that the place where we got off the freeway (exit 365, in case you were wondering) was not actually a place where you can also get back on the freeway (who does that?) so we ended up taking an involuntary, but very charming drive through downtown Brigham City.  I wanted to buy some lovely blue flats I'd seen at H&M in London (vainly hoped they would also exist here...not so much) so we stopped there and Callie bought some new butter yellow keds to replace the shoes she had managed to cover with tar on our trip.

Our last stop before finally getting back to Provo was the Asian market, where I bought two bags of the milk-flavored chews I love so much, two boxes of mochi ice cream, and a bag of these really fantastic marshmallows filled with orange jelly.  Oh, and a weird pseudo ice cream cone for Calie

looked like a milkshake that melted and then re-congealed...mmm!

And then it was back to Provo to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with John, Bryan, Summer, and Kat.  I love that movie and I always will.  It is just so fantastic.  It was made even more fantastic when I came home and saw the "super moon" floating over my complex.  Quite beautiful!

So, I guess I'll have to make another trip out to Spiral Jetty one of these days since I still technically haven't seen it.  I'll admit, I'm a little bummed out that we didn't ever actually make it, but really, it's pretty funny.  And luckily, next week's adventure is Hoggle Zoo in Salt Lake.  I don't think there will be any sort of secret "second" zoo to get me confused so I'll have to end up in the right place at the right time.  I'll keep you posted...