The Birds and the Bees

One of the weirder things in my life is that I have a profile on freebie on-line dating site. It doesn't say much and is more a joke than a real attempt at dating, but sometimes it's amusing. Last week, out of the blue, I had nine different guys contact me. Not that they say much, usually just something like "Hey, whatcha doing?", which I tend to ignore, although occasionally someone will try to start a real conversation and I will chat back. Nine contacts may be more contacts than I've had in the entire time I've had a profile there. I also got a bunch of those weird scam myspace messages from guys across the country who are sure I am their soulmate (yeah, right, ha ha, no, I'm not a sucker for a scammer!!!!)

I was talking to my daughter about this, pondering what was in the air that suddenly caused all these guys to contact me. She gave me that "aren't you dumb?" look and said "Duhhhh... it's mating season, birds do it, bees do it, guys want to do it."

Ahhhh life lessons from a 17 year old... perhaps she's right?

Watch Me Create!

And today you'll find me dishin' out my dirty secrets over on Watch Me Create!

The end of winter...

The Wasatch Mountains, downtown and the Salt Lake Valley

Winter is officially over I think. Brighton closed on Sunday, but I skipped the last day of skiing to spend over 8 hours digging the grass out of my flower beds, a job that's still not finished. I love to garden, but the spring time "dig all the grass out of flowerbeds" chore is a little overwhelming. Monday night I attended the start of the hiking season "social" hike with the local Meet Up hiking group. We took the short, steep trail up to the monument on Ensign Peak and viewed the city. Wednesday, in celebration of Earth Day I went to the free Michael Franti concert at the Gallivan center. It was a lovely warm night and his music was rockin'. I've never seen so many people dancing. That man knows how to work the crowd.

These things all sound like the end of winter don't they? Of course the biggest, best sign of the start of spring is the fact that I've polished my toenails and worn sandals to work for the last four days. Nothing says spring like the freeing of the feet!!!

I probably shouldn't get too excited though... I think they're calling for snow this weekend... down to 4500 feet... that would be my neighborhood! Guess we'll wait and see!
The Oquirrh Mountains and Great Salt Lake... and a sun doggie!

An interesting Saturday...

Picture mooched from the Jellyfish 12000 website - thanks!

So do you know about Burning Man? The big festival where 1000's of people head to the Nevada desert to set up a temporary city full of art, entertainment and parties that culminates in the burning of huge effigy man?, Ever since a friend went to it years ago, and I saw a story about it on Nova, and becoming acquainted with several "burners" I have been kind of fascinated with the idea of Burning Man. Kind of a big artistic summer camp for grownups... I loved summer camp as kid, I bet grownup summer camp would be great too.

One of my coffee shop friends is a "burner" and she is really active in the local burner community Element 11, which hosts a summer burn, and various parties and events throughout the year. Last weekend she invited me to come out to a street fair sort or fundraiser they were having, so I stopped by for a few minutes.

The street fair wasn't on a street, but actually on some property, "The City of the Seven Gates" on the other side of town. I don't have a clear picture of how many local burner groups there are, or how they all connect, or how they pay for this, but somehow "they" have rented or own this big industrial type space on the other side of town where "they" practice performances and have art studios and parties and big warehouse space to work on huge projects. I put "they" in quotes as I still haven't figured out exactly who "they" is!

As someone interested by art and creativity I thought it was quite interesting. They yard was full of welded/sculpted art projects, in one of the buildings ropes and fabric hung from the ceiling where people people practiced aerial dancing. There was a huge warehouse full of stuff were people worked on projects like art cars.

For their street fair they had music, activity booths, food and artists selling crafts. Of interest to me of course, was the one guy that was selling torchworked pieces. It was another one of my "weird cosmic coincidences" as the night before I had stopped by Trolly Square and saw some really cool borosilicate glass work in a shop. I asked the shop owner who the artist was and she said he was a local guy, Kristian, one of Burning Man guys. Being pretty impressed by his work I was glad to get to talk for a few minutes, and he gave me a tour. They are in the process of setting a really nice studio with 6 torch stations for big boro torches. I was pretty impressed, and jazzed because they may have classes someday, so perhaps if I ever get the bug, I'll have a place to go for boro lessons. I wish I had some pictures or a link to share, as his pieces were very nice, but unfortunately I don't.

Speaking of invertebrates, as Kristian lead me back through the big warehouse to the studio, there were some people working on what I was pretty sure was a Burning Man "Art Car" - sort of like a parade float, but better. It looked really interesting to me, the kind of thing I would have fun working on. Later that evening, interest piqued by the goings on at the "City of the Seven Gates" I googled for info about the local burning groups and low and behold, found a site to the art car, Jellyfish 12000. If you like big cool art check the pictures and videos!!! The videos are really neat, the Jellyfish is quite the productions! One more thing to make want to someday try out the Burning man experience I'd love to see that in real life!

Spring again...

Yup, it's definitely spring in Utah. Did I tell you what I did on Monday? Sarah and I spent the afternoon up at the hot springs. I mostly soaked, she mostly sunbathed. Now today? Look at my poor daffofils. It snowed most of the day today, and more is expected tonight. I'm glad I like winter!

Signs of spring...

How do you like my daffodils? I know that thay are just daffodils, and everyone has daffodils, but this clump of daffodils is the best I've ever had in my garden. I've lived in my house since 1986, and have been planting flowers ever since. While I've had pretty good luck with my tulips, daffoils have not faired well in my garden. I plant some fall bulbs, get beautiful flowers in the spring, the following year there are fewer blooms, the next year even less, and they are usually single flowers. Eventually I plant some more, only to repeat the cycle of diminishing returns.

The gardens near my front door, where I've planted the most daffodil bulbs, sport two lonely blooms this year; one in my left garden, one in my right. I've guessed that daffodil bulbs must not be fond of our dry clay soil. But down towards the street, in the garden that flanks my driveway, is this beautiful cluster of daffodils.My first ever cluster! I think they are naturalizing, like daffodils are supposed to do. I have no idea what has made this one spot in my yard daffodil friendly, but I'm sure enjoying it. My best daffodils ever, and guess what... it is supposed to snow this week!

Back in Ohio where I grew up cute little bunnies hopping around the neighborhood were a pretty common site. Here in Utah, not so much. This little fellow is the only bunny I ever see. He lives under the juniper bushes outside the building next to mine. Occasionally he pops out to say hello when I'm walking into work in the morning. Like he did this morning. He's a little photo shy, but he always makes me smile.

And while we're hopping around, you might want to hop over to Watch Me Create to see what I have to say today!

Happy Saturday!

No this isn't my coffee, it's the coffee, Jean, my 86 year old coffee shop friend (and roll model for how I want to do age 86!) ordered the other morning. The cute young barista did such a pretty design I had to ask to take a picture.
I've been a blog sloth this week. I've been fighting insomnia, which has made me tired and unmotivated, thus I haven't felt much like writing. Unfortunately, rather than getting to sleep in this morning I had to get up early. Sarah had to be at the high school at 8 am to take the ACT. I felt obligated to play "good mother" and make sure she had a nutritious breakfast... egg and cheese biscuit sandwich on my homemade buttermilk biscuits. A surprise for Sarah who, out of necessity, is quite self sufficient in the morning. As anyone who knows me knows, I'm not a morning person, so she was quite surprised that I got up to make her breakfast on a Saturday.

We hung out at home watching a movie last night so she could get a good night sleep, but she still wasn't too thrilled to have to get up early on a Saturday to take a test. She was even less thrilled when she read her admission ticket and discovered that she wasn't permitted to use a mechanical pencil. She has real aversion to wooden pencil, so it will be four hours of suffering for her LOL

To change the topic, it might be April, but it's snowing once again this morning. I think this is the fourth snowy morning this week... your average Utah trick spring.