This is Martine (left) and Marianne walking in downtown Provo this afternoon. I think the composition is suitable for a magazine layout. Please note: Martine’s t-shirt says “I apple VAMPIRES” (a Twilight reference). These girls are goofy and gorgeous and awesome.
Also, Marianne has demonstrated an increased aptitude in sarcasm and deadpanning… I’m so proud of my little Norwegian sister!
Marianne and I picked up her three Norwegian friends yesterday and had a fun afternoon in Salt Lake. Anette is an exchange student here in Utah this year, and Martine and Berit flew out with Marianne for the week during their school break. It was nice of them to include me occasionally in their excited, giggle-filled Norwegian chatter as we flitted about the city.
The original plan was for me to drop them off at Temple Square and pick them up later, but Anette forgot her phone so I stayed with them for the most part. We took a driving tour of downtown (THAT was a big building!) and went up to Capitol Hill, which was a first for me as well. The girls (or should I say fine young ladies) were giddy and it was neat to have the near-deserted grounds to ourselves.
Aren’t they cute? There was a guy playing fetch with his little Yorkshire terrier who offered to take a photo of all of us together, but my camera was already tucked away. But about a million photos were snapped among all of our cameras, so I’ll get a copy at some point.
We enjoyed some beverages at Starbucks (though we had to go to two since the first one had closed shortly before we arrived) where I shared some Marianne-and-me tales from my year in Norway (Marianne was only 4 but she remembers a few things). I also introduced the fine young ladies to the largest JoAnn Fabric and Craft Store in Utah (to my knowledge). They all liked it, but Martine L-O-V-E-D it. And Marianne seriously considered how she could take a heavy welcome mat home with her. It had ladybugs. And was 30% off. We managed to escape the store without spending too much money—always an accomplishment.
We rounded out the evening with dinner at Buca di Beppo… where Marianne enjoyed the apple/cranberry/gorgonzola/walnut salad despite earlier protests and we all sang 2 birthday songs (one in Norwegian, the other in English) to Anette when they brought out a giant cupcake in celebration of her recent birthday.
This morning I saw Marianne onto a bus to meet up with her friends before I headed to class. I experienced a strange moment of reflection as she boarded the bus… related perhaps to waxing nostalgic yesterday at Starbucks about the first time I walked Marianne home from preschool—when I spoke very little Norwegian and she was shy and silently captivated by her new big sister from a distant land—and perhaps because I was her current age when I lived in Norway and starting navigating foreign public transportation systems on my own. Either way, we all grow up so fast.
How’s the weather where you live? The past week or so here in Utah has looked like this.
Nice inversion that’s trapping all the pollution inside the valley, huh? It’s pollution that makes me long for the fresh mountain air of summer, when the lake and mountains on the west side of the valley are visible.
Complain though I might, it’s nice to live a very short distance from views like these.
Hey there! So, um. This is my twelfth straight day of blogging. It’s like reverse quitting smoking. (In a way, if you look at it with your eyes crossed.)
Except for this little detail: I am straining right now when it comes to a topic that will be A) interesting to you and B) something I feel like writing about today. I started a different blog post earlier, but I don’t feel like finishing it right now, and I’ve been tired all day and my eyes are dry again, blah blah blah.
Oh! Speaking of dry eyes. And breathing, but sort of not really. When I went out to my car this morning, that’s how I felt. I briefly wondered if maybe I was starting to get sick? There wasn’t any pain in my lungs. It’s just that the air was sort of… chunky? Heavy? A big lightbulb went off in my head when I turned the car on and the local NPR radio personality’s first word to me was “Provo, Utah, blah blah, worst air quality in the nation at a level of 140 followed by Salt Lake City at 122, with L.A. being at 51.”
I don’t know if those numbers are exactly right, but that was not surprising. I’m guessing that those numbers are just for a certain time period, like a day or week or something, because I can’t imagine Provo being more polluted than L.A. all the time. We have this thing the locals call an inversion, which means that because our valley is completely surrounded by mountains, when we have overcast skies and low-hanging clouds it’s basically like a domed arena and all the pollution is trapped inside. And there is a finite amount of beer.
Yeah, icky.
Well, I better publish this before my time is up. Hopefully there will be more quality in tomorrow’s post.
The fledgling barn swallows have learned to fly. Only two were in the nest this morning after my class, and one more came fluttering in while I was standing there.
They are still smaller than their mother and their feathers are muted suggestions of more brilliant colors to come. Their beaks were tiny little pinpoints; so different than the baby bills they had just last week. Well, that was my impression until mama bird swooped in with some extra nutrition—they can still open their mouths to a proportionally frightening size. If they’re still that flexible in the chompers next week, I’m guessing they’ll just eat the mama bird to satisfy their hunger… for… BRAINZ!
Hrm. Sorry about that. I just read the first issue of North 40 (comic book published by Wildstorm) so there are some zombie and Cthulhu-like ideas floating around in my head right now. I can be very impressionable when I’m paying attention.
***
The weather was perfect this evening. After a short date at the crowded library (not quite the geek-romantic scene you might be picturing), Ben and I drove into the foothills near our house and discovered a little lookout at the end of a road. I’d cleverly placed that camera in my purse for moments like these, so you can share our view:
Not too shabby for a Tuesday night. The sunset, the twinking lights, the lake, the mountains… the opportunity to procrastinate instead of doing homework.
It must be love if a wife is delighted by her husband working the phrase “wretched hive of [scum and] villainy” into an anniversary card.
Ben and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary today with dinner at the Chef’s Table in Orem, Utah. It’s a pretty fancy place, though weirdly located on dreary, high-traffic State Street and nestled on a hill between a car dealership and some not-fancy housing. Still, the service was great and the food was amazing. We’d never been there before… but we’d like to go there again.
Ben called ahead for a reservation yesterday and had apparently mentioned that it was our anniversary… so when we arrived we were greeted with “Happy Anniversary” and some pleasant small talk by a chipper, dark-haired woman wearing a bright pink shirt. We were taken to the “reservation room” where we had a nice view of the mountains despite the cloudy, rain-threatening weather. The trees were not yet full enough to block our view of telephone poles and houses below, but it was fun to watch a pair of starlings flitting about the springtime trees all evening.
Ben and I don’t eat out a ton, but when we do it’s usually nothing fancy. You know, the type of place where menus are either already at the table, slapped in a pile in the middle of the table, or handed to you but with sticky stuff all over them. So the Chef’s Table was a lovely change of pace. The menus were opened and handed to us one at a time, and the pink-shirted hostess somehow also managed to lay my napkin over my lap simultaneously.
As soon as she walked away, a waiter’s assistant walked over and placed a stemmed glass dish with a dollop of something in front of each of us. “Lemon sorbet,” he said, and walked away.
“GOURMET!” I believe I whispered to Ben. And then, because I was feeling like I knew what it was for, I said, “To cleanse the palate.” I still think that’s a pretty good guess, and didn’t have a reason to think otherwise.
After some major deliberation, I ordered the “sautéed duck in port reduction sauce” with roasted red pepper potato soup. Ben ordered the “bacon wrapped beef tenderloin with sauce madeira” with French onion soup.
Normally when we try new places or new foods we’ll reach across each other’s plates for samples or trade partial portions. We didn’t feel comfortable doing that there, so I can’t vouch for the taste of Ben’s food, but he reported that is was very, very delicious.
Regarding my soup, I said to “imagine the most amazing potato soup you’ve ever had, then add freshly roasted red pepper to it.” It wasn’t too creamy and the spice levels were perfect. The texture was not entirely smooth, but that didn’t prevent me from finishing the whole mini-tureen that was placed before me. In response to my soup review, Ben said this regarding his: “Imagine the most amazing French onion soup you’ve ever had. (…) Yep.”
(I’m writing this review of food without being a practiced food critic. Suffice it to say that while our meal was more expensive than the norm for us, it was delicious enough to warrant an attempt at food critique.)
I ordered a glass of 2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon to go with dinner (for my Utah friends: that’s a type of wine). It was advertised as having, among other flavors, overtones of caramel, vanilla, and coffee. I tasted the caramel and vanilla but couldn’t detect the coffee. Guess I still have some work to do before I can become a sommelier! Whether or not it was supposed to go with duck, I can tell you that it was really good wine.
It was also nice to see that I was not the only one enjoying a glass of wine with dinner—a table behind us ordered a couple bottles. It’s still funny to see a table full of grown-ups at a fancy restaurant drinking only water, coke, and lemonade.
Our main courses were beautifully presented on large white plates with sprigs of fresh rosemary and the sauces artfully poured over the meat. My duck was cooked medium rare, as suggested by the waiter, and it was tender, juicy, and not like chicken. I’ve only had duck once before, but this one was better. The large slices of zucchini (which I normally don’t like) and carrots were made gourmet by dipping them lightly in the port reduction sauce. The “crispy house potato gratin” that also came with the duck was one of the best potato dishes I’ve ever tasted, and I’m not a big fan of potatoes so don’t take that statement lightly. The melted cheese on top is what made them “crispy.” I am considering calling the restaurant tomorrow to ask if I can just get a tray of that crispy cheese to go. It was really good cheese.
The dessert menu looked fantastic, but we’d cleared our plates and absolutely could not eat more. I vow to go back for just dessert one day soon.
We took our time eating dinner and really enjoyed ourselves this evening. Perhaps my review would be different had it not been our anniversary—I guess I’ll just have to go again soon to test out that theory.
Lastly, I leave you with a personal accomplishment. At the start of the meal, Ben looked at the wine, then my shirt, and said, “This is going to end badly.” But I wore a new white shirt and didn’t dribble ANY food or wine onto it! New world record!
I honestly love snow, and I never want to live anywhere without a “real” winter. However, this winter of 2008/2009 is officially on my shit list.
It started early and has been a very wet winter for Utah—which is GREAT for the mountain snow pack, should it ever actually start to melt and fill the rivers and reservoirs with water. But there has been a little Springtime torture mixed in lately that is driving me NUTS.
***
Exhibit A: Sunday, April 12, 2009
I took this photo on Easter and thought, “Oh wow! Spring has finally sprung!”
It had been chilly and rainy in the afternoon but warmed up enough to be simply cool and delightful. Ben and I sat outside and enjoyed the early evening sun until it got too cold.
The past couple weeks have had spotty sun and more day-to-day clouds than I think I’ve ever seen since moving to Utah. I’m just being whiny*, of course. This is still no comparison to Cincinnati’s total of 4 nice days a year.
***
Exhibit B: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
It got colder again and rained for a good portion of the day. As I was walking on the university campus with my bold purple umbrella protecting me, I had to try very hard not to smile and laugh and all of the people who weren’t even wearing jackets, let alone carrying umbrellas.
It made me think of a recent episode of Heroes when Angela Petrelli chides Noah for being out in the rain without an umbrella. And then that irritated me because hello, Heroes? Needs to just quit being a telenovela and kill everyone off except Hiro. And then Hiro needs to be badass like Future Hiro in Season 1. Read more…
I went to RC WIlley yesterday evening, which is a furniture store chain (with appliances, electronics, etc.) here in Utah and other nearby states. The sales people swarm like mosquitoes to get their blood commissions. But I had an expiring gift card, so I had to go in.
After long discussions over time with Ben about which TV stand to buy for our rear-projection big screen that we purchased several months ago (and love watching, sometimes to the point of tears it’s so wonderful… I’m talking about you, NBC’s Heroes), we finally agreed to purchase the stand that was made for our TV. It’s the end of the TV stand season, apparently, because I read somewhere online that many stores have them on clearance.
So I walked in and up to a sales guy in electronics and told him what I wanted. But I had seen it online for $100 cheaper because they’re going out of style for next year’s model, so could he do anything about the price? He said he would check and walked over to his manager, presumably. Then he came back and said that they could take $50 off…. and I said I’d take it. Because with shipping, the onilne stand would have been just as much anyway.
But. And there’s always a but like this when something is going well, right? The only TV stand in that model that RC Willey has anywhere, including all of their warehouses, was the one on display. The one with a big scratch on the front. Forget it, and also, dammit. Ben and I finally agreed upon a piece of furniture (a huuuuuuge deal…. we’re also still trying to find a decent couch to replace the one that I received from my parents when I went to college… the one that’s almost as old as I am and yes, you’d think that we’d have replaced it by now). Oh well.
For now, the TV will stay on the coffee table that Ben received from his parents when he moved into his first apartment… the one that used to hold his Commodore 64. The DVD player, cable box, Wii and topless modded Xbox (Ben doesn’t want to replace the lid for some reason unbeknownst to me) will continue to sit on the carpet until we find that TV stand somewhere else or, probably, change our minds and pursue a different one.
The problem was that I still had a $30 gift card to use before it expired yesterday. That was from a billing problem we had, and the girl who issued it wrote 9-3-2006 on it by mistake, even though it was issued in March 2007. I was prepared to fight the cashier if necessary. I had another gift card for a forgotten amount, procured through some crap “cash rebate” promotion that earned us another gift card 6 months after buying the TV in the first place.
So I called Ben (who stayed home to clean the storage room because he didn’t need to go because we knew exactly what we were going to buy) and we decided to purchase a second DVD player. One that upconverts. So now we can move our old one up to the still-quite-nice-but-not-HD 27″ tube TV. That will be nice.
Ben did some quick review research of the models available and we decided on the Sony DVP-NS77H and are pleased after testing it with portions of Pixar’s Cars and Star Wars Episode 3. Though it still didn’t make the Padme/Anakin “So love has blinded you?” balcony scene tolerable.
I think this player will hold us over until the HD format war is finished and prices come down on the HD players and DVDs.
Enough about TV stuff. I need to get moving and get to work. I’m still sick… though it’s mostly in my chest now. I have a pretty bad cough. Bad enough for Ben to go out and buy me some Robitussin, which has been helping. Though I hate artificially cherry flavored anything, and that’s the only flavor Robitussin has. Well, I don’t like artificially fruit flavored anything, really, so I’d probably lose out no matter what the fruit. I don’t even like Jolly Ranchers. Anyway, Ben reported that all the cough syrup is available on the shelves, even though labels clearly state alcohol levels up to 10% on the bottle. WTF?
No wonder kids are experimenting with cough syrup these days. But they still can’t buy 0.5% alcohol O’Douls beer until they’re 21, and all Claritin-D purchases are recorded on the Big Brother file to monitor illegal drug manufacturing (which can probably look worse if you’ve also got severe allergies). Not that it’s ever affected me directly, but I’m glad there aren’t any holes in our government’s drug rules and policies.
Who am I to complain? I got my cough syrup and I’m expectorating as expected.
Yesterday it was 70 degrees and sunny here in Utah Valley. I walked barefoot on the grass in my yard, then I went for a walk on a Hobble Creek Canyon trail with my dad and his dog and it was simply gorgeous. Oh, mid-March weather, please say you’ll stay this way!
We kept the windows cracked last night to relish the fresh air… but it was definitely too-cold-to-get-up this morning. Yeah, so it dropped down to near freezing last night. This mountain-desert weather throws me sometimes, but I still prefer it to perma-cloudy Cincinnati, with its 45 degrees or 85 degrees with 95% humidity all the time. I do, however, miss the Cleveland snow belt weather, with the 1 to 2-foot dumps of lake-effect snow. Frosty!
It’s cool and sunny right now and quite humid today at 54%. Relatively speaking.
