Night-time Reading

I'm a creep.  This is kind of well known so I won't bother to elaborate.  I was recently linked to a friend's blog.  I have this thing about reading a blog I haven't before.  I can't just start from where I jump in and continue.  There's some compulsion inside of me to start at the beginning and at least browse the whole life of the blog.  So, if a blog has been around for a long time I probably won't start reading it.

Tonight I was sitting around with some time on my hands and decided to start reading this friend's blog so that I could stay current with it.  I often get impatient with this process of mine.  I get bored and hope for the end to come and to run out of posts (but I still have to do it - I hate myself sometimes).  That wasn't the case with this post.  This guy is a writer.  Big deal, I have other friends who are writers and their blogs are just as average as any other (or maybe slightly above, but I try to stick to reading pretty good blogs).  But man, this was good stuff.  The posts weren't even topics that particularly enthralled me, but I read every single word - no browsing for me tonight.

Many of the blogs I read are funny.  I have hilarious friends that write hysterical blogs and I love to read them, but they're not the same as this blog.  The writer comes through.  I especially love when he calls attention to himself and the fact that he's writing.  Mostly the point of this post is to praise that blog, though I won't link him to this post because that's kind of weird, yeah?  Would you find it strange if all of a sudden one of your friends started reading your blog then posted a whole post about how interesting/good it is?

P.S. I feel the way about poetry and art.  Just let me enjoy without too much analyzing and be free to feel without knowing exactly why or what.

My life isn't exciting enough for a single topic post.

I'm just creepy enough to love the new "coment view" of albums on facebook.

Good friends might bring you a gift when they go out of town.  Great friends bring you rocks.

Playing mom is hard and exhausting.  No matter how smart the seven year old is, there's no way to seamlessly insert one into a singles life.

I'm addicted to the Provo Farmer's market even though they have almost exactly the same thing every week.

Pottermore was announced and I'm stoked and confused and excited, but we have one problem.  When you sign up you have to register a magical username and I only have a few months to come up with one that is adequately awesome without being too cheesy.  

Seven Peaks = yes.  Destiny and I have been there three times in the past week.  The new slide is epic.  the funky feces smell by the slide tower is not.  

I'm ready for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 and to take another trip to Orlando.  For someone that hates Florida as much as I do I sure loved Orlando and felt at home there. 

I love summertime.  Humidity can stay away from me forever and that's fine.  It's also ok with me if the 92 degree day we had this week is the only one of the summer.  I love mild summer.

June 23rd

Three reasons June 23rd will be the best day in a long time:

• I'm going to the Kid History episode five premiere with some awesome people.
• Jimmer and the NBA draft.
• POTTERMORE announcement (I love the way the horned owls twitch).

The end. Sorry for the boringness of my blog lately. 

Butter

That's right.  You read the title of this post correctly.  I said butter.  Here's the thing.  What do you call the amount of butter pictured here?

Me? I would call it 8 tablespoons of butter, half a cup of butter, or a stick of butter.  Never in my whole life did I think anything of this until a little over a year ago when someone referred to it as a cube of butter.  Um, what?  Since the I've heard it all over the place.  Is this regional?  How does that butter look even remotely like a cube?  Let's get really specific and just call it a rectangular prism of butter.  I really don't have a problem with this, it just makes me curious.  So, what say you?  Cube of butter?  Stick of butter?  Four ounces of butter?

Dying and Crying

This is making me die and cry and be sad and get goosebumps.  Enjoy.

Punctuation-o

Normally I like the English language.  I'm no fanatic or anything, but I don't care that much that it's supposedly one of the hardest to learn because I learned it ok.  By now you probably know that if I start off by telling you how I like something I'm going to move on to complain about it in some way or another.

Really it's question marks that bother me.  In Spanish (disclaimer: my knowledge of Spanish grammar comes from EXTREMELY limited experience) you can put your question marks just around your question within a larger sentence.  In English YOU CANNOT DO THIS and it makes me frustrated and confused when I try to compose a sentence that isn't a question but contains a question.  And because this is how my life works I cannot currently think of a sentence like this.

Unrelated: Do you ever run into the problem of typing question marks instead of exclamation points and vice versa while texting?  I don't have this problem in any other medium.  Biggest offending statement? "Guess what?" Let's be real, guess what is not a question.

That is all.

MTV Movie Awards

I was going to write a long ranty post about the MTV Movie Awards, but the whole idea was exhausting. I'll just say three things.

1) Apparently children are the only ones that know how to give appropriate acceptance speeches.

2) Don't be high at awards shows because it seems to scream "I'm a deplorable human being!"

3) Potty and sex humor for cheap laughs get on my nerves.

Man, even that was tiring.

Desserts

I got asked to make dessert for break the fast as well as host mix and mingle this week.  You know what that means: making about a thousand jillion desserts.  For mix and mingle I picked an ice cream dessert since it's supposed to be pretty hot today.

Firstly, I made a graham cracker crust (I doubled this recipe which was plenty for two 9x13 pans).  Let me tell you, this is DELICIOUS crust.  I just want to eat it with nothing on top.  

While you're making the crust, set out some ice cream and frozen juice.  I was making two pans.  One raspberry lemonade flavor (with vanilla ice cream, obviously), and one good chocolate based one (no juice in that one).  You really can use whatever combinations you want, but even though I love chocolate, I like the flavor and texture the juice ones have.

Nextly, once your ice cream and juice are pretty thawed, dump them in a big bowl and mix thoroughly.  I'm not patient enough to let them melt thoroughly or I don't have the appropriate tools or something so I used occasional microwaving to help the process.

Since it's spring I added a little food coloring to make the pink brighter because the color is extremely faint.  Full disclosure: I also added a little squirt of lemon juice to up the acidity.  Really you can do what you like.  

Spread the ice cream mixture over the graham cracker crust nice and smooth.  Realize you forgot to take a picture of stirring the chocolate ice cream so that it's soft and spreadable AND a picture of it in the pan.  

After the dessert is frozen solidly again spread some thawed Cool Whip on top (or in my case, be impatient again, thus ensuring the ugliness of your dessert).  If you want to you can drizzle some caramel and chocolate syrup over the chocolate one and some raspberry sauce on the lemonade one.  Store in the freezer.  Dip the bottom of the pan in warm water for 30 seconds before serving to make it easier.

I'm not into food photography at all.   That being said, I wish the light in my kitchen actually showed color....

It occurred to me yesterday that despite my love of cooking and watching Food Network, Top Chef, and the like, I'll never make beautiful food.  I don't know if it's because I'm impatient or because I lack an artists eye, but I am unable to create something gorgeous.

Other things I made yesterday:

Homemade oreos (which are often pretty disgusting, but not these) in case there's not enough snacks for mix and mingle.

Rice krispy treats for break the fast (yes, that's chocolate on the bottom and yes, I'm five and covered the top with rainbow sprinkles).  

This is weird and uncomfortable...

I don't know how I feel about these two guys looking so much alike...
(do I get bonus points for using an ellipsis in the title and in the only text of the post?)

Religious Question

I was reading The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale (review) and came to a quote that sums up well something I've thought in the past.

"Why would calling on the Lord's name ever be in vain if he were really there to listen?"

Don't get me wrong, I do not and will not take the Lord's name in vain, but I have questioned this before.  Occasionally in the past I've said "Oh praise the Lord Jesus," but really am extremely grateful (for some reason that word is hard for me to spell) for the situation.  This is a real question.  Please let me know your thoughts. 

P.S. Cooking blog coming soon.  

Restaurant Review: Roll Up Crepes

Today I hit up Roll Up Crepes on State Street in Orem.  I'd passed by a few times and been intrigued, so I figured I'd give it a try.  I ordered the ham and cheese crepe (full disclosure: I secretly like bizarre and crappy ham and cheese things like Hot Pockets).  It cost about six bucks and came with a side of tomato basil soup.

First, the soup.  It was good, but it wasn't soup.  It was thicker than marinara sauce, more along the lines of a tomato-y dip.  The crepe was ok, but I would have rather had a Hot Pocket and that would have been a lot cheaper.  Perhaps I should have tried the special of the day (pulled pork crepe), but I already admitted my strange taste preferences.  The portion size was large (think of a big burrito).  The staff was friendly and I found the strange fake tree in the middle of the restaurant bizarrely appealing, but the place was DEAD empty.  I predict that it really won't last long (the location is a little weird and inconvenient and I've seen at least three restaurants through there already).  That being said, I'll probably go back and try a dessert crepe and perhaps even give one more try to a savory crepe before I make my final judgement.

Rumination

I just want to warn you that this blog post is not as lighthearted as most of the others I've written lately.  I also want to warn you that the chances of me looking like garbage in pictures included in this post are high.

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about growing up and how my life is changing.  There are heaps of benefits to growing up.  In fact, I posted a facebook status expressing my gratitude not to be in high school anymore.  Don't get me wrong, there were some good things in high school.  I had some decent friend groups even though I often acted ridiculous in more ways than one (not all of them friendly or harmless).  There were some great teachers that influenced me, and I did some growing up.

Now I've graduated from college and I'm certified to teach children (though being able to find a teaching job is another story all together).  All of this is a little bit of me rambling to avoid the point.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to some of my previous ways of thinking.

Thinking that brought me here on my own money and choice.

(No, I don't hold any delusions that EFY works miracles or is the only productive place for youth to be in the summer.)

There was easier thinking that led to taking pictures like this for a very specific purpose (a purpose I'm not sure I fully or possibly even partially agree with anymore).

Something like this was fun, not lame and possibly mortifying.  Not to mention I had no trouble admitting it.  

I went here as often as I could manage it.  

And I sincerely loved doing the fun, serious and silly here.  It was one of the things I most looked forward to every year (despite the sweltering heat and obnoxious humidity and inevitable drama).  

All of that is a way for me to say that I lost something that I can't get back.  The person in the pictures up there cried on vacation one time because she accidentally said damn (I realize this is outrageous and isn't something I particularly want to go back to).  I wasn't perfect and neither was my life.  In a lot of ways my life was really crappy then, but something's missing now and I wish it wasn't.  Thing is, I think I've perhaps gone past a point where I can return to the one thing that seemed to be functional during that time of my life.  It's not a matter of choosing it.  That would be too easy.  I think after a certain level of exposure and thinking in a different way, there's no way back.  

I know that I'm rambling in an insane way.  Let me sum it all up: I lost something and I miss it and I wish I could have it back and in a way I think that's just the nature of childhood and parts of childhood and as much as a person can miss and even crave the comforts of that time, you can't return.  Can you?  Not to mention I've begun to resent and even hate the things that in my view ruined a degree of my innocence.  

Did any of that even make any sense at all?

Oops! All Berries

I was at Wal*Mart the other day and I saw that Quaker has brought back this childhood memory (always for a limited time, just like the McRib - except way tastier, but most likely with an equivalent amount of sugar).  I didn't buy any (mostly because I'm cheap, but partially because I have three boxes of cereal in my cupboard already).

This morning while eating my breakfast I started thinking about Oops! All Berries once again.  Suddenly, I was smacked with a stroke of genius.  What if I bought a box of Oops! All Berries and combined it with this?

What a genius and delicious cereal I could make by combining these two!

I now give you the liberty to look away from this blog as you either face palm or place something padded in front of you to minimize the danger of the slightly more dramatic head desk.  

We all have our moments, right?

Trees

It amuses me when people from the desert/western mountainous states go east or to other places with trees for the first time.  Some of them talk about how claustrophobic it makes them to be on the interstate and not be able to see what's around (picture of I-95 in Virginia).

More often mentioned is the confusion and frustration of buildings obscured partially or completely by trees.  Thing is, when it's more wet and the soil is nice and rich (meaning not the sand of the desert), the trees thrive.  

For example, here's a Google Map shot of my neighborhood at home.  Yep, those are all trees.  And even in those patches of trees the houses are about as regular as the ones you can see that are more exposed.  

(Seriously, click on it.  There're a bajillion trees.)

I definitely miss the trees when I'm out here.  Also, I want to be clear that I'm not mocking the people that are shocked by the trees and greenness the first time they encounter such a thing.  When I first came to Utah the enormous mountains shocked me and I still love to just look at them.  The sparse dessert on the way to the sand dunes on a camping trip enthralled me.  I'm just amused by the fascination with something I grew up with. 

Having the trees makes for some nice shade in the summer, though.  However, in the East where it's obnoxiously humid all the time (when I talked to my mother yesterday it was 98% humidity, it's 63% right now), the shade doesn't actually do that much.  It's still hot and outrageously sticky in the shade.  The only real benefit of the shade is to get the sun out of your face. 

Oh, and a benefit to the humidity that I love to complain about?  Big thunderstorms and heat lightning.  Come back to me beautiful summer weather. 

Also, for your viewing pleasure, a beauty shot from Skyline Drive (near my home town of Luray, part of the Shenandoah National Park).