celebrating green

last night i attended one cool st patty's party. everyone dutifully wore green - wait - i think the guy next to me was in gray - well, you know how guys are. anyway, there was live entertainment. a professional musician played her piano and sang traditional irish songs for us. she also played a couple jigs on the fiddle. i learned the difference (maybe) between traditional irish music, american irish music, and american wannabe irish music. there was also lots of delicious food! what a great time.

benefits of yoga

last night in the shower i discovered one of the benefits of yoga. i don't know about you all - but my body had aged enough that i couldn't touch my hands behind my back - you know where one goes over the shoulder and the other comes up from below.... anyway, i could grab my hands - i could reach! i tried it the other way - i have NO recollection of ever being able to touch from that angle - you know how one side is weird and doesn't do what the other side does. anyway, they touched! they couldn't grab each other but they touched! i am officially more flexible!

once again - thank you cindy!

TV Reviews

it makes sense - i teach the high school.

wwww

speaking of the famed wwww tours - for the heck of it i feel like posting some photos from trips gone by. way by.
it seems all good trips need a feet photo. i believe this was the inaugural run for my car as chief transportation mode of wwww tours. it may have even been the one where i got my ticket - i learned the hard way that you don't pass a car by exceeding the speed limit.
this is another lava trip - we eventually grew out of our roots and moved on to more glamorous cities like st george. in this photo we're showing off our "tats."

clarification

the good roommate pointed out that some clarification may be necessary. wwww stands for women of the world whirl wind tour. see my trip to st george - that was the latest. in august we hit boston. good times all around!

nephew

i couldn't resist sharing this photo. it's my 2 year old nephew - or maybe only one. anyway, he climbed in this doll cradle at my mother's house and made himself comfortable. quite the photo to live down once he's all grown up i think.

recap

okay, so i'm home from my trip and i realized there may be a couple gaps in the story. i arrived in laramie on friday night and attended the obama rally. it was cool. then before turning in for the night i enjoyed some asphalt pie - it's been a long time since i enjoyed the deliciousness of wingers! saturday was filled with a trip to cheyenne to buy building supplies to make a dog kennel - i know - exciting. it was odd to me, though, to drive an hour to get to a big box store like home depot. saturday night i attended the brown and gold ball - a resurrection of an old tradition at university of wyoming. the ldssa decided to bring back the old glory a few years ago. i couldn't get over the flashback twilight zone feeling of the whole experience. i was surrounded by young college students dressed in a variety of "formal wear." the few couples at our table were fun to chat with - unsure of their majors but having a good time anyway. i saw many girls painfully dressed in bright colors that were either too tight or too short or too weird. of course, there were also the few that made everyone else jealous - even me - who was way too old to care. when the dancing began it was all country music, so we decided to head to the grocery and call it a night. sunday we forgot about daylight savings change so we overslept. not a big deal, but funny. church was great! lots of young marrieds, but smart sharp humble people - i loved all the talks and lessons. we got invited to dinner with by a family that was having missionaries over, so that was a nice treat. the evening ended with a pioneer trek fireside. i was a bit jealous - i kind of want to trek again! this time i'd make a bonnet and skirts instead of wearing the ugly di stuff i had. today i came home, but first i attended a class on land reclamation - the science of restoring natural habitats to areas that have been excessively modified by human use. it was pretty interesting. then a two hour drive back to denver, a two hour wait in the airport, and then an hour long flight home. full day! good adventures all around. oh, and my rental car got renamed "the black panther." i can't say i'm a fan of the chevy mini-suv and there were NO blizzards, but it was fun to have the xm radio and the feeling of driving a "new" car.

ugh - back to work tomorrow.

Chillin'

I'm just having a snack at the mc-d just north of denver. Not bad. I'm headed home now. I'll probably post more laramie stories later, but for now let's just say i'd rather not be headed home. Something about work and life back home just doesn't sound so exciting to me. I do like this outdoor table where I can hear and watch all the bigrigs come and go from the highway. Sort of like plane watching but different.

Obama

I'm a total loser - I forgot to take my cell phone/camera with me tonight. I attended the obama rally in laramie tonight. I know I have no photo to prove it but it's true. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Yes there was the usual rhetoric, but as an english teacher I just focused on how fun it was to identify it. He wasn't as polished, though, as i've imagined him. He was good but there were pauses where he seemed to be struggling to remember what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it. Either way, it felt good to see him and support him and think he'll be president. I did sign a huge "laramie loves michelle" sign. I wonder if she'll get it. Seeing it pass through the rows of the stadium reminded me of combined eq/rs meetings in the chapel.

The drive

Hooray for fancy radio in my car! I can listen to anything I want! But much like cable I found I just kept changing the channel. As you can see, there's snow up here. And wind. But that doesn't show up as well.

Black magic

That's what i've named my rental car. I've rented cars before (3 times I think) but this is the first time I did it alone. I was manhandled by judy, though. She forced me into getting the bigger car with 4 wheel drive. She insisited it's blizzard season and i'll need it. at least she gave me free extended hours. She also told me about her ramen and tuna stash in case I get stranded in denver with her. Really - a bossy woman. So i'm trying to enjoy the luxury of my fancy suv and not think about the waste of gas going on.

Denver temple

Here's the first leg of the lone wwww tour. It's a gorgeous day here - sunny and warm. I'm surprised by the chunks of snow on the fountain. Must be cold water.

The wait

Nothing like the line at the airport. This is my first trip to denver. Like plewe said, all the wwww tours have been good training - wahoo for single wwww tours.

It is finished

Shakespeare is done. And I didn't do as badly on the final as I thought I would. Instead of questions from ALL the plays like it said there would be I only had to deal with the last half of the course material. I was also very impressed with my ability to recognize many of the quotes I had to complete. Hooray!
as I left I saw a collection of paintings of the prophets that I remembered seeing in the halls of the harman building from back in the day when I temped there and attended church there. It was like running into an old friend. I took a photo of the new part - I think president hunter had just become the new prophet during my days there.

crazy

i'm seriously a bit crazy. i just told the byu testing people today that i will come in tonight at 7 and take the horrid shakespeare final. i have NO idea about anything. i better at least gather my books and maybe mark some passages that i was supposed to be familiar with or something. really i just think being done with it means more to me than doing well on it. call me a high school student. or something. did i ever tell you (the general you not really any of you in particular who are reading this) about the time i worked with mentally handicapped adults and realized how they are exactly like the rest of the world? when i taught 7th grade i came to the same conclusion about them. humans are the same. here on earth we look different on the outside and have different ages and stuff, but it seems we're really not at all different. we all suffer from laziness. for example, the one client i worked with would often wet her lazy boy. she would be rocking away in it, just enjoying herself. enjoying herself so much that she couldn't make herself get up and go to the bathroom. i found myself sitting on the couch sometimes, tired beyond belief watching pure lameness on tv and yet i was just too tired/lazy to get up and go to bed. it was like i was "wetting myself" for no good reason. i'll never forget that lesson. and yet, here i go to take a test i'm unprepared for and i just don't seem to care. hmm, my students will be taking a test next friday. i wonder how they'll do.

student sadness

okay, so this isn't really really sad news, but it did get me sort of down. one of my favorite (of ALL time) students just got checked out. i'm not sure where he's going, but i worry about him. he seemed to really be making progress here. i was even trying to get him some glasses so he could read without headaches. he was such a hard and faithful worker. really - a good example to me as well as his classmates.

more food goodness

dainon - this is for you. come on over! i have masaman curry cooking. (or however you spell that first word.) it's a red curry with coconut milk and a bunch of vegetables. normally i'd add chicken but i was too lazy to get any out and thaw it. the taste is the same. i just threw in extra asian eggplant for filler. it is all soooo delicious. hooray for the local asian market for hooking me up with the tasty ingredients.

baked indian pudding

basically it's corn pudding - but i like the romantic sound of "indian pudding." i got the recipe when i was in boston. the restaurant we visited had a brochure with a recipe. since i loved it in the restaurant i decided it was worth trying at home. trouble is i don't have a stone crock, nor do i want to bake anything for 6 hours. i managed to adapt the recipe for my sense of practicality. it's delicious. i'm happy to report i "baked" some today - it's in the fridge - ready to feed me this week. yum!

Nearly spring

Isn't it exciting to see the snow melt? This patch was the thickest part in my yard as it was where I piled it from two sides while shoveling. I wish melting snow wasn't so ugly. It's exposing all kinds of garbage besides dead leaves and dirt.

Lettuce

I love it! Just an evening snack here at the tax job.