Sausage comes from...

I was listening to Radio Disney, as I tend to do, as the DJ interviewed the Cheetah Girls, who just completed a movie India. Kids were calling in to ask questions. One question posed was, "What did you miss most when you were in India?" One of the Cheetahs said that she had really missed beef. She had eaten lots of chicken and pork, but no beef. She missed beef so much that as soon as she got of the plane in America she "headed right of McDonald's and ordered a sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddle."

I wish her all the best in her studies with meat.

John Mayer

Last night I attended an event that I wanted to attend. Because you should do things you want to do now -- you might not have a lot of time left.

I saw John Mayer at the Usana Amphitheater. John Mayer is a fantastic guitarist, which thing I should not have known from his albums. It was relaxed yet fun. We danced, we laid down, we judged the people around us. 

My favorite song of the evening was actually not one that John Mayer wrote. He did a cover of Tom Petty's Free Fallin'. Click here to see a music video of it. The one that made me smile most was Good Love is on the Way -- and it has a wicked guitar solo. As for the songs that are John's, he did a sweet version of Daughters. I also liked No Such Thing, Waiting on the World to Change, Belief, Gravity -- basically everything he played from the new album. Some songs had sweet guitar solos making the song, like, ten minutes long. He messed up the lyrics on Say (not in this link), which was an interesting thing to do on that particular song. 

I would recommend this concerts to friends and family.

Sting Rays and Monet

To celebrate our birthdays in July, Kathy and I took a Saturday in SLC. 

First we went to The Living Planet, our local aquarium, made from what seems to be an ex-grocery store. It costs $8 and provides about an hour's worth of entertainment. Mostly it was coral reefs, which were pretty cool, and the jelly fish were sweet, but the highlight was the sting rays. You can pet them!

It took me a little while to not trip out. (Their stingers are cut off and if you are nice, they'll be nice back.) Once I got the hang of it I couldn't get enough of it. 

Then we headed to Gourmandise, a delectable European cafe.  I had the julienne salad and the best mousse cake this side of the Great Salt Lake. 

With a change of shoes (high heels on hard wood -- awesome!) we attended UMFAs exhibition Monet to Picasso. The exhibit is on tour from the Cleveland Museum of Art. It costs $15 and you get a little cell phone looking thing explaining the artwork. The exhibit features not only impressionists, but post-impressionists, symbolists, Rodin's scarily real sculptures (including the Thinker), and cubists like Picasso, and then there were a couple by Matisse and lastly that trippy stuff from Dali. 

I adore the impressionists, especially Degas. I was disappointed that the exhibit only had a sculpture from him -- not a ballerina or bassoonist or women at her toilette in sight. However I really enjoyed two specific pieces -- one from Monet and one from Van Gogh. 

This painting, The Red Kerchief, is modeled by Monet's wife, Camille. Camille died at age 32 from complications of child birth. This piece was never for sale -- Monet kept it in his private collection. I love the color scheme, with the bright red as a focal point. (I originally thought it was from Manet, who usually does dark colors with one striking color.) I also love the subtly -- it's not a portrait, set up and perfectly staged. This is like something I've seen before. The old masters are harder to relate to. I aint never seen nothin' close to the holy family in Renaissance clothing.

This is The Poplars at Saint Remy. A Van Gogh up close is indescribable. The paint was so thick. I'm mean centimeters! You look at the piece from the front, then the side, then the front again. His style is uniquely his. The painting leapt off the page. I felt like I was right there, watching him paint. 

The exhibit is well worth the trip. It was a great day.

Anecdotes

One of my boys told me that he had "literally manipulated" his probation officer. Gee, what must that have looked like? Pretzel-y, I'd guess.

I haven't been to Walmart in over a year. I don't like the store on principle and looks. But I had to go because it's the only place I knew of that made keys. Maybe Lowes would have had it too. The first disappointment was the I couldn't get a cool specialty key for a car. The second was that the didn't have the right type of key for my car. They recommended I go to Lowes.

I decided to make my "cardboard pizza" in the oven, the long way. I don't use my oven often so I had to get to know the buttons. I was most inspired by the button labeled, "Stop time." 

Swedish Meatballs

Enrichment's promise of "summer salads" ended up being more of a "taste experience" than dinner, which I expected. So I scrambled at home to keep myself from making tapioca pudding into dinner and ended up preparing my Lean Cuisine Swedish Meatball dish. This dish kept me alive last summer. But there was an accident. In moving the plastic container closer to my body, I lost about a fourth of the small meal... into my lap. it brings "On top of old Smokey" (the meatball version) a little closer to home. 

Suomi & Sverige (Finland and Sweden)

Here are my photos from my recent trip to Finland for my dear Anni's wedding and also our time in Sweden. I have tons of photos so the slide show goes quickly. Even still, to see them all you might want to pull up a chair 'cause it's gonna be a while. Or see them all quickly by clicking the thingy on the bottom of the screen. Enjoy!