Round and Round and Round

Carnivals are wonderful things. You have to be in the right mind set to thouroughly enjoy them. You have to think that it's novel and exciting to waste money, experience motion sickness and risk your life on rides that could easily fall apart and kill you. This last weekend there was a little carnival in a mall parking lot. I decided to go with a few friends. One of them, we'll call her Thing 1, went all out with me and wasted $17 on a wrist band that let us go on unlimited rides. We took full advantage and went on everything once and one (the Gravitron) twice. Horton and Cindy Lou Who only bought 4 tickets and only went on one ride. It was brilliant. I thought it was well worth the $17 bucks and am only disappointed that I didn't have enough cash to buy over-priced cotton candy and try to win a giant teddy bear by throwing a baseball at rigged milk bottles.

One Week

I turn 21 in exactly a week. :)

Desserted Weekend

Raise your hand if you think this sounds fun: Sling a 30 lb pack on your back and hike for a few hours, as long as it takes to go a little bit over two miles plus a half hour digression for a wrong turn. After finding a nice overhang to sleep under, walk up a canyon for a bit until it gets dark, look at stars a bit and will the clouds (blocking your view of the cosmos) to go away. Wander back to your overhang, stretch out in a sleeping-bag on the ground and sleep. Wake up a little stiff from a combo of carrying a big pack and sleeping on the hard ground. Try to make tea and realise that the camp stove you brought is totally out of gas. No hot water. Eat a bagel for breakfast and wash it down with some water. Make lunch. Hike for four hours (stopping every now and then to climb a big rock, in the process scrape up your arms and legs - it wouldn't be an adventure if you didn't get a little roughed up right?). Eat lunch. Notice that you've already drunk more than half of the water that you brought with you on your little day hike and that it's that time in the afternoon where there is virtually no shade. Head back to camp. Finish your water on the way. Get back to camp, drink a lot of water and crash. Vow never to move again. After enjoying catatonia for an hour or so, get up and wander around the canyon. Eat dinner - the exact same thing you had for lunch (cheese-in-a-can and salami on totillas, it's not gormet but it packs well and it's light). Wander around the canyon again. Watch the sun set and the stars come out. It's cloudy again. Go back to camp and sleep on the hard ground again. The clouds clear up, but the full moon rises. Full moons are nice but sort of ruin star gazing. The good news is that from where you're sleeping when you wake up in the middle of the night for no real reason, you have a perfect view of the Summer Triangle. Wake up around 6, eat breakfast (totilla with peanut butter. You have dehydrated food but can't make it without hot water. Now you're out of tortillas). Throw stuff back in your pack and hike out to the car.
So, guess how I speant my weekend. Yes, I went backpacking with my Dad. We went back to one of our favorite places for outdoor recreation- Capital Reef- and trekked up Spring Canyon. The first time I camped up in that canyon I was only 5 or 6. It was an amazing time. Yes, we ran out of food and maybe got a little dehydrated on Saturday, but that just made it more fun. There's something exciting about being able to pretend you might be testing your survival skills. Everything about it was beautiful though, it really was. The days were a little warm (in the 90s), the nights were perfect (low 70s high 60s), the canyon was green for the dessert. Bonus: we took my dad's convertable so the drive (4 hrs) down and back was very fantastic and glamorous. And windy. Wicked good time! Pictures:

Tree!

Somehow I had the brilliant idea to climb up a cliff. Ok so it really wasn't very hard but it was pretty high. Dad had the brilliant idea of taking a picture of my ass while I was climbing

This is where we camped. That's me stretched out behind the green things. After hiking 16 miles or so I crashed.

Me on top of a very big rock.

Same rock, different angle.

Canyon in which we camped

Tea Pics

Me in my retro fabulousness

My Grandma, Me, and Mom all duds up

Tea Time

Happy Weekend everyone! For once I'm not working today (being Saturday). The reason for this is that I had a fancy tea to go to with my mother and my grandmother. It was an afternoon of tea and fashion, but not today's fashions, but the styles of the 40s-60s. They had a few people modeling old clothes. They had retro hats for rent. We were all encouraged to dress to the decade. So, as I never pass up an opportunity to get dressed up, I turned myself into a total anachronism. Pictures will show up here soon.

I guess it's been a bit since I've posted. I hope you can all forgive me. Then again, perhaps you've not even noticed, I sure you all have other things to do and simply got on with your lives. If not, you really should find something else to do and do it when I am slow in updating my blog. I s'pose I should give a shout out to all the moms out there as Sunday was Mother's Day.
So, a few weeks ago, my little baby brother (ok, so he's only three years younger than me) took his girlfriend to Prom. This is not unusual, but they went dressed entirely in duct tape. Below is a pic. Aren't they cute, muggin' it up a bit, but cute. FAQ:
I thought duct tape was silver, how did they get so colorful? Ha! sucker! Duct tape actually comes in just about any color you could want these days. Including clear. Although silver is not unicorporated in the outfits.
Is Everything REALLY made of duct tape? Not quite, shhh don't tell, he's wearing a real quasi shirt. It actually has the sleeves cut off. and the hat just has a duct tape band. She's not wearing duct tape shoes, but he is. The flowers (boutoneire and bouqeuet) were duct tape also.
Is it just duct tape or is it duct tape over clothes? With the exception of his shoes and the aforementioned objects, it is all 100% duct tape.
Wow! Were can I find a person crazy enough to go to prom in all duct tape? Who knows, who cares.

Decked out in Duct Tape

Happy May Day

What is May Day supposed to be anyway? When I was younger, it meant making maybaskets with my grandmother and leaving them on the neighbor's porches. My grandmother told us that when she was little, she would do this and if a boy answered the door he was supposed to chase her and if she were caught, he would have to give her a kiss. My neighborhood has always been a little lacking in children my age, so this part of the tradition wasn't really held up.
Turns out that May Day started with something to do with labor. These days the only people who celebrate it properly in the US are commies and socialists. England, of course, does a proper job with morris dancers (http://www.rathergood.com/morris_dancers/), maypoles and madrigals (sung from rooftops). As for me, I like the Irish holiday Beltane which is almost the same thing but really very different. It's very pagan (as Irish holidays often are) and involves fire. Big fires. And the official start of summer. I like summer.