My camera and the computer are fighting, so I don't have any Cedar City pics to put up yet. But here's the brief trip recap (eighty-seven years later).

We got to Cedar City and checked in--we stayed at The Anniversary House, just a block or so away from the festival. The owner, Nan, was incredibly nice and even fixed us up a special tray with sparkling cider, champagne flutes, and chocolate-dipped strawberries as a "Happy Anniversary" surprise. She also had chocolate cake and goodies out in the dining room at all times along with a fridge full of bottled water and sodas.

The mistake we made was in scheduling an evening play during our one-night stay. So we didn't really get to appreciate the room, or the treats that were sitting out, or the DVDs you could borrow. Instead we staggered in around 11:30pm, were too full from dinner and the summerberry tart at intermission (mmmmm . . . tarts . . . ) to give the chocolate cake more than a glance, went to the room and crashed because we knew we had to be up for breakfast at 8:30am. Poor planning on our (read: my) part.

The play was great, though. We saw Much Ado about Nothing in the outdoor Shakespearean-style theatre. But first we watched The Greenshow. It was Irish Night, apparently. (Unofficial title: Where two guys will do cheesy comedy in quasi-Irish accents until 5 minutes in when they forget to do the accents anymore.) Scanning the crowd, GH spotted a group of attractive, 20-something Mormon-looking girls.

GH: "Hey, that's you and your friends, isn't it?"

Me: "Yep, pretty much."

GH, still looking around: "Aaaand there's another group. And another one . . . and another one." He was starting to laugh at this point.

Me: "Yeah, it's called being cool and coming to the Shakespeare Festival with your friends. It's what cool girls do."

GH: "Wow, I should have been coming here all these years with my guy friends. Who even knew this was the place to meet all the English major girls?"

So, guys, now you know. Cedar City in the summer is the place to pick up the smart chicks. And the competition shouldn't be too fierce, since we checked out the guys who were there in groups and let's just say that not many of them seemed . . . that interested in the women around them. Just saying.

Anyway. Back to the play.

The production was great. I'd show you a picture of the stage, but apparently it's copyrighted and one of the ushers made me promise to delete the image from my camera. Don't ask me how you copyright grapevines . . . but whatever. I love this play because I love me some Beatrice/Benedick romantical sparring action. I've seen it a couple of times before onstage and I've seen the Kenneth Branagh film where they somehow thought Keanu Reeves could play a villian (bless his heart, you need facial expressions to be villianous, sweetie . . . ). GH had never seen this play before, but he really enjoyed it after the few minutes it takes to get your "translate from Shakespeare" gears moving.

I must say that David Ivers is sort of replacing Brian Vaughn as my Shakespeare Festival boyfriend. Between his role as Benedick in this production and the 100+ characters he played in The 39 Steps the next day, he was kind of a rock star. Everyone else was good too and I got a tart during intermission. 'Nuff said.

Then came the staggering back to the b&b and the passing out. Breakfast the next morning was quiche, sausage, melon, juice, and coffee/tea/hot chocolate. I enjoyed the quiche and melon but skipped the sausage because it did not appeal, as it resembled a greasy pre-packaged hockey puck. I very thoughtfully made hot chocolate for both GH and myself, but didn't realize that the hot water kettle wasn't turned on until GH took a sip of his. Woops.

There was a pregnant woman and her mother at our table for breakfast, so as soon as her mom and GH left the table (one to go put on makeup and the other to get a few more minutes of sleep) she and I immediately began talking the pregnant talk (specifically, What Is Even Going On With Our Boobs). It's amazing how the commonality of being pregnant means that you're suddenly chatting gaily away about nipples with someone whose name you don't even know.

After checking out, GH and I drove up to Cedar Breaks to see the lookout. Then after way too much ice cream at Maggie Moos it was time for The 39 Steps. It was funny, but I swear it wasn't as funny as some people thought it was. The play opens with Brian Vaughn sitting in a chair, doing a mildly amusing opening monologue about how bored he is with life. And so help me, there were people shrieking with laughter at pretty much every single line. I have no idea. Were they just so happy to be out of their homes? I felt like I was caught in one of those 1970s British sitcoms they show late at night on PBS where Judi Dench does something completely normal like blinking and they blare the laugh track up to 11 and you're just imagining all these sad supposed British people falling on the floor in the studio audience, gasping for breath. And you wonder what must be so very wrong with their lives.

That said, the play was very funny and cleverly done. There were only 4 actors. Brian Vaughn played the lead, a 1930s British man named Richard Hanney who is plunged into a world of intrigue after a mystery woman shows up, mentions important government secrets about to be stolen out of the country, and is then murdered in his apartment. Three other actors (Carol Linnea Johnson, Aaron Galligan-Stierle, and David Ivers, my boyfriend) play all the other parts. At one point David Ivers played a loud, swooping, over-the-top landlady and did his absolute best to make his costars break character. He got Johnson--she had to turn her face away from the audience to try to compose herself. But he couldn't get Brian Vaughn, even when he brushed his large false bosom across Vaughn's arm flirtatiously. Because that is called professional, madame. A lot of the laughs came from the way they handled the set, which was very sparse and deliberately low-budget-looking. Characters in wheeled chairs were pushed onstage by unseen hands, deliberate set-changing goofs were included, that sort of thing. There were also lots of Hitchcock references and in-jokes, which were fun to spot. And there was one cell phone ring. Of course.

After the play it was time to head home. Our trip was over too quickly, I think. In a perfect world we would have stayed another night and watched Pride & Prejudice, which also got a lot of good buzz. But it was still lovely, and I believe GH had a good enough time that I could probably convince him to go back with me.

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Time for a road trip

Monday is our two-year wedding anniversary. It's also the last anniversary for a while that will not involve child-care arrangements of one kind or another. (And yes, I'm pretty sure tossing a pizza and an iPod inside a crib while we sneak out the door could constitute child-care. If GH were the toddler in question he'd be happy as a clam, I tell you.)

So we're going to have ourselves a little getaway. All summer I have been excited for this. GH got Paul McCartney, which made his year and/or possibly life, so I get . . . drumroll . . . the Utah Shakespearean Festival. (Note: this is another example of that win-win thing of which I am so fond--the kind where other people win once and I win twice.)

We're going to see two plays: Much Ado about Nothing in the Adams outdoor theatre, and The 39 Steps in the indoor one. I think I chose well, as I've been hearing great things about both productions so far. The 39 Steps sounds especially fun because it's 4 actors (half of whom are Brian Vaughn and David Ivers, aw yeah) playing the entire cast. I love me some of that stuff. It makes me remember all over again how awesome Stones in His Pockets was that one time.

I've booked us a room at a bed & breakfast in Cedar City and am already fantasizing about the "full gourmet breakfast" we'll get in the morning.

(Note again: lately my interest in food has become even more pronounced, kind of like my belly. I dream of baked goods every night and report on it to GH: "Last night it was muffins. And then there was a dessert buffet. It was incredible." And the other night in my dream my sister Jenny was in the middle of making me bruschetta with grilled bread and garden-ripe tomatoes and slivers of fresh parmesan, like the stuff Amy Adams makes at the beginning of Julie & Julia, that one food porn movie. I remembered the dream suddenly around lunchtime the next day and was so devastated that there was, in fact, no bruschetta that I almost started crying.)

Anyway, Cedar City. It's going to be great. I've had so much fun going to this festival in past years that I'm really excited to introduce GH to it. Possibly I will pick up some tights for him while we're there. We'll see.

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Now that I can talk about Hawaii

Let's hope this doesn't send me into a decline, but here are some of the pictures I promised. They're all taken from my Dad's iPhone, since I haven't uploaded my camera photos. Oh, and also since my camera completely crapped out on the second day and refused to work because it is possessed by Satan and then as soon as I got home was all, "What? No, I totally work, see? This is me working."

Not seething.

Anyway, my trip was amazing. I knitted and listened to the Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society audiobook on my iPod the whole way there. Except I had to take the earbuds out near the end because I worried they might be changing the shape of my ear holes permanently.

After the long flight, I arrived on Kauai and made it outside the airport to see my sweet mom and dad waiting for me. The sun was out, the air was soft and fragrant, flowers were in bloom everywhere, and my dad was holding half a tray of shrimp cocktail from Kauai's Costco. I was home.


We drove straight to the condo in Poipu, changed into our swimming suits, and went down to the beach to watch the sunset. My dad bought me a beach mat and a coconut shave ice with macadamia-nut ice cream. It was heaven. I'm serious. Actual Heaven had better be like this. (And yes, "My dad bought me . . . " and "My mom bought me . . . " do feature heavily in this trip's narrative, so be forwarned.)

I took this pic and sent it to GH (since my parents have morphed into Millennials and both have iPhones now) so that he'd know I'd made it safely and oh so happily. He, laid up at home with sciatica even though he is not even a pregnant woman yet, appreciated it.


And yes, I did abandon a pain-riddled man to go cavort on a tropical island while being spoiled by my parents. I bought and set up a big-screen television to keep him company (two, actually, except do not even make me get into that here but it will suffice to say that I am DONE with the single-handed buying and returning and wedging into cars and packing and unpacking and carrying up and down stairs of big-screen televisions). I stocked the freezer with chemical-, sodium-, and fat-laden convenience foods like french fries and chicken nuggets and frozen lasagna. I alerted the complex staff in case someone should report a certain smell coming from my apartment, and I lit out of there like a bat out of you-know-where.

After the sun was down, we went back to the condo and ate dinner on the back patio--grilled steaks, grilled pineapple, salad, and more shrimp. For dessert we drove out to Lappert's. I had a double-scoop cone with coconut and chocolate-macademia-nut ice cream.

Blissful sighs on Day One: 37

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Girl's Relaxation Day, Part Deux

Much, much too long ago (nearly two years) my sisters and I had a Girl's Relaxation Day in Park City, where we retreated from our lives and painted our toenails and stuffed ourselves with brie, which we could technically have done in our own places of residence but felt (rightly) that it would be better to do it somewhere else.

This fall we decided that it was time for another much-needed Girl's Relaxation Day, and since Park City had treated us so well last time we made that our destination. The nice thing about Park City, I think, is that even though it's not that far away it still feels like a different sort of place. This is probably because they have coffee there.

Spitfire booked an amazing spot for us to stay and treated me and Jen to an evening of luxury. For, lo, she is awesome. We were at the Westgate Resort, which was just beautiful and perfect and wonderful.

Resort highlights included:

A full kitchen and living room.

A hot tub in the bedroom. (Aw, yeah. Except, you know, not so much, since I was there with my sisters. No Victoria Secret bubble bath parties here, sorry.)

A huge stone shower with both a regular shower head and a waterfall shower head (the kind that comes down from the ceiling.) The shower also has a bench built in and functions as a sauna. (So, um, all other showers can kind of eat it now.)

An outdoor heated pool (lovely) and two outdoor hot tubs. We chose the one that came with the Speedo-wearing European man. As you do.

In true Girl's Relaxation Night style, there was toenail painting and brie-eating and pumpkin-pie-eating and TV-watching. No no-bake cookies this time, probably because my sisters remember almost being gassed to death last year. There was also much sighing at the catalog of spa services offered downstairs, which sighs then turned to chokes and seizures upon the reading of the prices. We watched the TV channel advertising the spa for a little bit but then had to turn it off because it was just too tantalizing (ahhh, spa porn). Our new plan is that one day when we're all quite rich we are going to book ourselves into a spa for a weekend. It's gonna be great. We then piled into the king-sized bed, which fit all three of us easily, and slept soundly. That is until my cell phone alarm went off at 7:00am, please do not ask me why. It seems that I am alarm-challenged.

For breakfast Jen made crepes. I would have helped, but I was Experiencing the Shower. She did Julia Child's crepe recipe with a savory chicken-bacon-mushroom-leek-pure-crystallized-crack-cocaine filling. And for calcium we added slabs of warm brie. Women need calcium, you know. My bones start to deteriorate this year--gotta stave that off. There were also nutella crepes with fresh raspberries, real whipped cream, and sauteed apples. Because we know how to party.

Once we got cleaned up and I'd done everyone's eyebrows and eye makeup (remember, girlie weekend) we hit the outlet stores. And yes, I'm sure there are some friends out there right now thinking, "Wait. YOU were the one doing people's eye makeup? Uh . . . " But what they do not know is that I've totally figured out how to do one really nice-looking smoky grey-blue eyeshadow thing. So that's what we all got. And we looked hot, I tell you.

Jenny took in the biggest shopping haul as she was on a mission to buy new church-going clothes. I got two nice tops and mentally purchased an entirely new wardrobe for GH at Banana Republic. As a heterosexual male, he would probably object to most of my choices. One day, though. One day.

So yeah. We've decided this needs to be an annual thing. And maybe we should spend two nights instead of one. And we need to check the closets more carefully when we leave because if we don't then the housekeeping staff will steal the black J.Crew shirt Jenny accidentally left hanging in the closet and then the hotel will just pretend like we maybe imagined the black shirt and that possibly Jenny did not actually wear it to the hotel but just turned up to check in wearing nothing but a bra. (I'm kind of glad now that I forgot to leave a tip for those stealers. Except . . . maybe that's why we're in this situation now. Huh.)

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No tights, just leather pants. Which, hey, I'll take it.

Cedar City was marvelous. I did not go with GH, I actually went with a lovely L**** friend whom I will refer to as JJ. She's the one I went to Hawaii with last year and the Shakespearean Festival (again, some more) the year before that, and a better traveling companion you will not find, I tell you. She actually likes driving, so I didn't even have to do any of it.

One thing I've noticed is that whenever JJ and I get together, even though we are generally upbeat people, the conversation always tends to turn to dark topics. And since we had quite a long drive there and back, I joked with her beforehand that I was going to time us to see how long it took before we were earnestly discussing self-mutilation. We never got there, but instead covered health care; racism; spinsterhood; bipartisanship; family issues; gender politics within the Church; education; food production; and our country's high C-section rate. We are pretty much a laugh riot. But hanging out with JJ was the biggest highlight of the trip.

The second biggest highlight was the part where I only heard ONE cell phone go off during a play. (Which is one more than last time, but whatever, I'll take it as long as it's not the complete cell-phone-insanity-fest that was 2005. It seems that maybe the old people got their grandkids to teach them how to turn their phones off in the last 4 years). The phone that did ring had the same ringtone, however, as mine. Which made me crap an absolute brick until I reminded myself, "You turned off your phone outside and then you double-checked just before the play began. You know that's not your phone. Please resume breathing."

But still. It was pretty terrifying. Because if that had been my phone ringing during the first act of The Secret Garden when poor Archie and Lily are singing about their doomed love I would have had to throw myself off the balcony. Which would have likely injured the people below me.

Anyway, for those who asked, we saw The Secret Garden, Henry V (wherein Brian Vaughn did indeed spit him up a storm), and Foxfire. All were wonderful, more on that to come!

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Why hello, pretty Alaska

Sigh. Vacations are so wonderful. Especially when you get to spend them at my parents' house. Have gained 8 pounds from things like chocolate chip cheesecake, brownies, movie popcorn, seafoods dipped in butter, seafoods fried in batter, Costco's chocolate-covered raisins, biscuits & gravy, movie theatre popcorn, ice cream cones, blueberry-macadamia-nut pancakes and I don't even know what else.

A real post is coming but I still have a day of vacation left. Tomorrow is Girls Day, wherein my mom and I will do fabulous things like visit yarn stores and eat sushi and drink estrogen shakes. We had to take GH to the airport this morning so he will miss out on Girls Day (sad).

Here are a few pics to tide you over--more to come!

(And yes, it's just windy in that last picture. I do not wear my hair that big usually.)

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Flying to Alaska tonight!

Can. Not. Wait.

The only stinky thing is that we don't fly out of SLC until 9pm, arriving in Anchorage at 2:30am. (So, you know, 4:30am UT time. Which will be a normal Friday night for GH but not so much for me.) Also? If the TSA people try to take my knitting needles, you watch this space, because there will surely be a blog post on the way entitled "That one time I froke completely out at the airport and got arrested and would totally do it again because there was a principle involved."

My poor parents have to drive out to the airport to pick us up. But it's always such a great moment, though, coming down the escalator to see them standing at the bottom next to the huge stuffed polar bear that greets visitors. (Welcome to Alaska. Try not to get eaten.)

Our itinerary includes the following delights:

Much sleeping in

Much knitting

No working

Steak Night

Seafood Feast Night, wherein there will be lobster and king crab legs, courtesy of my awesome dad and the good people at Costco

Seward Day, including an afternoon wildlife & glacier cruise in Resurrection Bay and dinner at Ray's

Temple night at the Anchorage Temple

Walks along the bike path with Gabby the Sheltie, whom my mother is able to manage NOT to bring into the library with her.

In case I'm too busy sleeping and stuffing myself with shellfish to blog right away, I've included some previous Alaskan adventures of mine here:

Why I'm not a true Alaskan

Only in Alaska

July 2005 visit

That time when I lived there in September 2006

And still in October 2006

And then in November 2006 it started looking like this and I decided I was done.

July 2008 visit


(cruise image found here)

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Vacation recap

Since I know everyone is just so, SO interested in hearing about my vacation that you've probably stopped eating, I will go ahead and oblige. (But seriously, it does feel a bit like holding people hostage and making them watch your vacation slides. Will try to make mine more interesting.)

Highlights

In-N-Out Burger twice. And yes, I am the typical Utah Mormon Who Loves In-N-Out. Deal with it. GH does not believe that their burgers are any better than any other freshly made burgers out there. I have to remind myself that this comes from the person who has spent years and years killing his taste buds with things like Frosted Flakes, so like he even knows.

Cirque de Soleil's LOVE show. This was so, so cool. I'm not one who usually notices things about sound quality unless it's wretchedly bad, but when the first song started I seriously looked around to see where the Beatles were, it sounded JUST THAT REAL. And then there was the general jaw-dropping spectacle that was the show itself. Good, good times.

All these people were walking around with their video cameras on. Does anyone ever WATCH those videos later?

Jean-Philippe pastries at the Bellagio. Mmmmmmm.

Cravings buffet at the Mirage, with crab legs and shrimp cocktail and shrimp dumplings and prime rib and a gelato bar, oh my.

Found a sacrament meeting to attend Sunday morning (+3 points, attends church on vacation, -2 points for only attending sacrament meeting). Heard a story about a man who was doing yard work and was about to start his truck and haul a heavy trailer away when he was prompted to find his son, whom they called Bubba. He got out of the truck and found him asleep in the shade under the trailer. I leaned over to GH and whispered, "He oughta spank that kid for going to sleep under trailers. And then he ought to smack himself for calling a child Bubba."

The return of my wickedawesome quads from all the walking.


Lowlights:

Treasure Island's rebranding scheme (new name: TI, new motto: "We can be trashy too!") led to the replacement of their old Pirates show with a new outdoor spectacular called The Sirens of TI. In this version, a ship of strippers called Sirens sing a bunch of R&B while luring a shipful of pirates onto their boat. Aaaaaand that's about all there is to it. Plus grinding. There were all these families with little kids watching and getting an eyeful of boobs and heinies. I was sad that I'd wasted 20 minutes of my life watching something so completely stupid and slutty and lame, and GH was mad because the new show wasn't piratey enough. Apparently if the women had been wearing pirate wench costumes and if more piratey things had happened then he would have been on board. (You do really need to click on the link though and watch the trailer. It may even make the show look better than it actually is. Which is saying something.)

The roller-coaster at New York, New York rattled a few of my back teeth loose.

Signed up at MGM to be a in a focus group for a tv show screening in the hopes of getting nice swag in exchange for the priceless jewel that is my opinion. Spent the next 45 minutes watching an episode of Adrenaline Rush Hour (which now makes me think worse of the Discovery Channel, thank you very much). It's one of those shows featuring Idiots Who Get Hurt that usually plays on some station like Fox at 11pm, where you might watch for a couple of minutes because there's absolutely nothing else on, and then you'd flip the channel. Or go surf Internet porn. Or do pretty much anything else. I got to see a guy get mauled by 4 tigers at once though, so that was something!

Went to church Sunday morning looking like a complete scrub with snarly hair and a toothpaste stain down the front of my black shirt. Sigh. Let's hope I never see any of those people ever again, or that if I do I will have better hair. Because that's what's important.

I do believe that this trip has managed to stave off some of the homocidal winter tendencies for a little while, which makes it an unqualified success in my book.

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Nothing but the best for us

For our accommodations during the Vegas trip, I picked a little motel within walking distance of the Strip. It had really good traveler reviews on TripAdvisor so I figured we wouldn't get killed too badly there. I would have liked a more extensive breakfast. GH would have preferred not to have heard these things in the night:

a baby being smothered
a hooker with her client
a man screaming loudly
cars being stolen (he fully expected us to no longer have a car in the morning, but yay, we still did!)

I slept soundly during all of this. After our second night, I asked him what I missed.

"Oh, nothing much, just a casino burning down." Apparently there were a lot of sirens in the night. He expected to look out the window that morning and see a scene out of Terminator where the whole city has been razed by Skynet with the dark red sky and the smoke and the big sniper machines picking off the scrambling survivors. Also there was a guy yelling crazily around 5am, probably about to shoot someone. And I appeared to be having a nightmare and yelled in my sleep.

(Note: I think that maybe when GH wakes up in the night he assumes the worst. Maybe.)

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He didn't kill me for my life insurance . . . whew!

Just writing a quick post to let you know we made it back from San Diego safe and sound.

Daltongirl and Cicada did such an amazing job of posting for me that I considered just letting them keep at it. But that probably wouldn't have worked. Spitfire made it abundantly clear that people are done doing favors for me when I swung by her new apartment (my old one) over the weekend and innocently suggested that she take a bag of stuff I left in the closet to DI.

Her response: "I'll throw it in the dumpster for you, but I'm not driving it anywhere."

So. Princess Day is over, folks!

The wedding was great, the honeymoon was lovely, and I am completely staggered by how amazing and generous and kind people can be. Will give lots of thanks in detail soon, but seriously.

Here are a few pics to hold you until I can start telling the stories that go with them.

The Balboa Park Inn. Highly recommend it. Also recommend arranging for hotel construction to necessitate a free upgrade to a nicer room. Because that's awesome too.


Yeah, someone worked the Bambi Eyes when they mentioned upgrading . . .

Not a bad idea, though

At the pier in Oceanside

Where the convertible came in handy

Little Italy

Baby panda at San Diego Zoo. Could you die?

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If they take it back, I'm going to light the building on fire

Gentleman Friend just got the okay from his higher-ups work--we maybe can go on a honeymoon.


Anybody have any recommendations or un-commendations in San Diego? Other than to stay classy?

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One step closer to being too pretentious to live

I'm in Salt Lake City today and tomorrow at a library conference. It's called "Turning the Page" and is about library advocacy. Which I'm all for. I'm also all for my sweet hotel bed. And the hydrotherapy pool. And the triangle-shaped powdered-sugar dusted nut brownies in all the hallways. Let us have more of them.

In all the sessions they have trays by the doors stocked with pitchers of ice water and those lovely stemmed water glasses. I've snagged one at every session which means that I have now drunk more water today than in possibly the entire previous week.

Turns out I sip lots more water when it's in a schmancy water glass. Somehow it feels more likely that a tuxedo-wearing Daniel Craig will saunter over to my table and say something cryptic. To which I will raise my eyebrow suggestively and take another sip. And also we would be in France.

(I told my sister Jenny about this fantasy on the phone and she blurted out "And then he could change into a blue Speedo, right????" Because she's dirty like that when it comes to Daniel Craig.)

I really don't think a styrofoam cup would have the power to produce such results. Plus I'd be distracted by the crying baby trees in my head. Nor, I feel, would the drink of my table companion--a hot-pink aluminum can containing Sobe Adrenaline Rush High Performance Energy Drink ("New Face . . . Same Taste"). I honestly think that, given the choice between this and fresh urine, I would have a hard time deciding.

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More Hawaii pics

Just in case some of you didn't feel like hitting me in the head with a brick yet.

(My mom says I shouldn't say that because it isn't ladylike. But I think it's okay. I mean, there aren't even any swear words in it, gosh. Also it's a literary reference to Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, which is one of the funnier books ever written.)

For Lippy, here is another pic of the Kalalau Trail. It was absolutely gorgeous. You start at Kee Beach and hike 2 miles to another beach. If you're insane, you keep going another 9 miles. But we felt good with what we'd accomplished. I got into a race with this nutso hiker with the two metal walking sticks who just did not like the fact that a non-walking stick girl was going faster. He ate my dust in the end, though.



I also learned that people comment when they see a librarian shirt. I need to get some sexier librarian shirts in that case. The tie-dyed do-rag is in honor of AmyJane, who made it for me. She was my Kauai companion about 4 years ago but couldn't make it this time, not sure why . . .

After the hike we went to Hanalei and ate at the restaurant formerly known as Zelo's Beach Shack, now called Kalypso. I had fish tacos. They were beautiful. I was disappointed though, that they no longer had the seafood burrito the size of a baby. That's the only reason we went to Kauai, dangit. The best think about Zelo's is that you sit on this lovely lanai and look around and think about how lucky you are to be there.


The only real cloudiness happened in Hanalei Bay, where I got this cool shot of the pier.


And lo, it is my chicken friends!


Here's the Special at Hamura's Saimin. It was not my dad's favorite meal, I know, but I just love this kind of stuff.

We kayaked up the Wailua river and then hiked up to the falls. We passed this cool mini falls on the way. Hello, The Color Green. I have missed you.

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Thanks are in order

First off, I must thank my parents, who made this trip possible. Especially my dad who dragged himself off the beach every day to go do the things I wanted to do, even when those things consisted of eating hot noodle soup in a tiny dive in Lihue. And my mom who kept buying me little presents. They are the coolest.

Thanks also to my aunt and uncle for bailing out and leaving an empty room at the Hale Koa. When I woke up the first morning this was my view. So yeah. Sorry y'all were busy . . .

Thanks to my sister Jenny, who is such a noble person that even though she couldn't come along she mailed me her darling swim skirt in the hopes that I would look more attractive in pictures.

Thanks to Kee beach, for giving my father a place to bask while the rest of us participated in exertion-type activities along the Kalalau trail.


Many, many thanks to the good people of Portugal for inventing malasadas and bringing them to Hawaii. And also to the lovely women of Kauai Bakery for selling them to me two days in a row and not laughing when I tasted my first chocolate-filled one, moaned obscenely, and then marched back up to the counter (possibly knocking over a large man) to order three more.


Stay tuned for next installment!

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I'm back, sigh . . .

So I'm back in L**** now, freezing and trying to keep the dry cold from cracking my flesh open. My efforts are only marginally successful.

Anyway, yay for the Hawaii numbers game!

6: Days without eye twitches

1: Impulse to blog. That was on the first day. Quelled it successfully. Plus there aren't a lot of Internet cafes on Kauai. Which is one more reason to love the place.

3: Minutes spent thinking about work, and those were by accident in response to direct questioning

36: Chocolate-covered macadamia nuts eaten

0: Local youths seduced (tragic)

78: Sighs of contentment and/or bliss

1: Sunburned nose (on the last day, of course)

4: Pounds of fresh pineapple eaten

2: Books read--The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson, which had me giggling on the plane there, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which made me sob on the plane home.

8: Naps on the beach

80: The age of the sweet couple next to me on the plane, who kept urging me to share their food with them. "Here, have a sausage, it's really good. You'll need a cracker to put it on, here you go. I bet you'll like these trail mix bars, they come from Costco." For the last 5 years they've spent a month every spring on Oahu. I can get behind that.

1: Kayaking adventure on the Wailua River

6: Separate humpback whale sightings

3,429: Chicken sightings on Kauai. A bunch of them got loose during the last hurricane and now they're everywhere, with no real predators. The guy at the kayaking place says you can eat them but they're so lean you don't get much meat. He says they're great for stewing, though. But to be sure to get them from the mountains where you know they haven't been raised on tourist food and cigarette butts.

0: Good hair days in Hawaii. My hair does not like that place, but I don't really care what it thinks.

So yes. Blissful, heavenly vacation. And now I need to go to work. Will post pics soon.

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It's a really good thing I'm going to Hawaii in like 5 days

Otherwise I would probably be killing and eating people. Can feel myself inching toward a nuclear meltdown but am determined to stave it off. What's quite possibly even more frustrating is not being able to tell the Internet all about it because it's absolutely work-related. And I don't want to get fired. Much.

Also I'm bothered because because the valley is trying, yet again, to join the century and get a county-wide library system--which, yay! Because it would mean that any resident could get books from any of the libraries rather than having their library services limited to what their own city has decided to provide. Which, for some of these communities, consists of a Boo-Radley-style hole in a tree with a few soap children and pamphlets crammed inside.

But now all these nasties are crawling out from their ammunitions bunkers to post at the Herald Journal website about how they don't want to pay for libraries they have no intention of using. And no one needs libraries anyway. Also when we force them to pay for our freaky and unnecessary reading habits then that's Satan's plan. And people who live in rural communities apparently made the choice to live without adequate library services and so that's what they get.

Dillweeds.

Am going here in 5 days. I can make it.

image from NatureScapes.net

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My year in cities

Found this little meme online and decided to give it a go. Just to twist the knife I did 2006 as well. You list all the cities where you stayed at least one night. I'm cheating and listing towns, because sometimes I just felt like staying in a town/campsite/darling farmhouse on the moors where I can beat the windows and bellow for Cathy to come haunt me. Which is my right.

Anyway.

2006:
Provo, UT
Loughborough, UK
Leicester, UK
Newchapel, Surrey, England
Castleton, Derbyshire, UK
Keswick, Cumbria, UK
Hawnby, North Yorkshire, UK
Maspalomas, Canary Islands, Spain
Prague, Czech Republic
Preston, UK
Eagle River, AK

Aaaaand then we have this.

2007
L****, UT
Alexandria, VA
Port Orchard, WA
Cedar City, UT

Yeah.

2007? Kinda sucked. It's a really good thing that Alexandria, Port Orchard, and Cedar City are on that list, since that's probably all that kept me from just wandering out into a poop-smelling cow pasture during a snowstorm and letting the elements take me. Really, really need to make sure that 2008 is better. I've got Hawaii on the list now but not much else. I think a lineup like this would be pretty good:

2008
Honolulu, HI
Poipu, HI
Cedar City, UT
Eagle River, AK (when coolboy comes home from his mission in July)
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Santorini, Greece
London, UK
Paris, France

Really. Is that too much to ask?

If anyone wants to put their 2007 list up in the comments section please feel free! Or, if thinking about your 2007 makes you want to sob loudly at your desk, not that I know anyone like that, your desired 2008 list would be great too. I could use some more ideas.

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Weekend report

Am back from the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City. So much fun. It was just this wonderful revolving door of plays and food, food and plays. What could be more glorious?

First let's do quick mini-reviews of what we saw:

Lend Me a Tenor is a new musical based on an older play. The basic premise is that an opera company in 1930s Cleveland is putting on Othello and have paid the big bucks to get a famous Italian tenor to come sing the title role. First he's late, then he gets sick, and then he kind of seems dead in his hotel room. So the sweet geeky manager Max (played by Jered Tanner who is my new geeky boyfriend) gets roped into impersonating the tenor so they don't have to cancel the performance. Hijinks ensue.

Review: The first act was absolutely, wonderfully brilliant and hysterically funny. I didn't know how they were going to live up to that/surpass it in the second act. Turns out they kind of couldn't. And some of the songs are a bit forgettable. But it was still loads of fun and I'd definitely recommend seeing it. The hope is that this play will get picked up by Broadway. I don't know if it will or not, but best of luck to them if it does.

Twelfth Night came next and was really good. My new bf Jered played The Fool and had a hilarious belly-dancing scene. Other highlights: Michael Sharon, who I'd seen before as Lancelot, played Orsino and is my second new bf. I didn't fully appreciate The Hotness before. The is possibly because Lancelot never stripped off and hopped into a fabulous blue-tiled tub. And because I was too busy noticing Brian Vaughn as King Arthur. Brian Vaughn wasn't there this year, though. Not sure what's up with that.


King Lear was, of course, depressing. But the good kind. I think the other title should be "People Make Bad Choices and then Kind of Get What's Coming to Them, While Other Good People Just Get the Shaft." Dan Kremer as King Lear was great. Shelly Gaza as Cordelia kind of bugged, which is odd because I really liked her in Twelfth Night just a few hours earlier. Goneril and Regan were just nasty wicked. Also the bit where they gouged out Gloucester's eyes was really well done and awful. I had to close my own eyes for it.


Another really, really big highlight of the festival was that I did not hear one single cell phone ring during any of the performances. Some of you may remember about the last time we were there. Possibly word got out that I'd smuggled bricks in my bag and was going to launch them without remorse at the heads of anyone whose phone went off.


Getting fresh with Will. Don't worry, he liked it.


Spitfire and I goofed off in the gift shoppe until one of the ladies at the counter did the Big Sigh of "I hate my life and I hate these girls even more." But then I asked her a couple of questions and bought a poster from her, which I think strengthened our relationship considerably. The gift shop is fun because it gives you a hint of the kind of people who come to these things. The merchandise seemed geared toward three distinct audiences:

Shakespeare/Theater Lovers (books, plays, posters about Shakespeare and acting)
Rabid Anglophiles (imported English chutneys and candies)
Goth/Medieval people (fairy & dragon posters)

The first night we drove up the Canyon to Cedar Breaks, which is beautiful. Check it out:



And that was my weekend. I'm already thinking about which plays I want to see next year.

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Vacation's over

Sigh . . .

This'll have to be quick because I'm heading to work. But I got back last night and took one look at dry dusty Utah and kind of wanted to cry a little bit. And this is the greenest it gets here!

Everything was wonderful--the weather held out beautifully, Singin's baby decided to refrain from an early arrival, everyone was lovely and generous, and the food was amazing. Have posted pictures to Flickr but haven't given them titles or anything yet.

Would love to move up there. It's just too bad that it's one of the most competitive spots in the country as far as library jobs are concerned. (Can't you just see all the librarians duking it out Gladiator-style for the right to catalog in Washington? Because I totally can. It'd get nasty.)

It turns out that at 5'3 I'm shorter than all the other people at Singin's parents' house (that's where they're living for the moment). Singin' and her huge pregnant belly were cooking breakfast my last morning there and she started to ask me something. Seeing this as my chance to finally be useful, I rushed in all eager to know what I could do. She stopped and said, "Oh. Nevermind. You'd need a stool to do it."

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Highlights so far

There won't even be a lowlights list because there are no lowlights!

"Singin'" is the cutest pregnant person ever.

Confirmed the existence of her husband, whom I like very much.

So far it has been sunny and warm and gorgeous. Love Washington.

Trader Joe's with its flirty checkers, dark-chocolate covered pretzels that do not come in bags nearly large enough, dried mushrooms, and every good thing.

Introducing Singin' to the new Jane Eyre film with its smouldering hot Mr. Rochester. She gets it, even if (unlike my sister Jenny) she refrained from shouting "Oh my gosh Do it! Do it now!!" at the screen.

Homemade crepes for breakfast.

Port Townsend with its pretty Victorian buildings and houses and gorgeous stores stocked with things like fabulous stationary and mango-sugar hand cream.

The high-school sophomore who tried to pick up on me in a bookstore when he heard me saying I liked the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. He asked us if we were in college. I said no, that I'd graduated from college and was now a librarian (I skipped the part where I'm like 15 years older than him).

Rhododendrons are all in bloom. Still cannot pronounce rhododendron.

Poulsbo with its Nordic buildings and flags and shops which sell things like Kinder buenos and English lemon curd.

Central Market, which is this huge grocery store that has a soup bar, a salad bar, and an olive bar. Will be posting pictures. Also has an amazing Asian food section, where I found garam masala and a base for Tom Kah Kai soup.

Must get back to vacation now. Catch y'all later!

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