One thing I didn’t know about Utah until I had lived here during the summer was that nearly every city seems to have a week-long celebration where there are things like rodeos, parades, face painting, food vendors, fireworks and races. The celebrations are staggered throughout the summer, and each city has a different name for them. Pleasant Grove, where we live, has Strawberry Days this week. Spanish Fork, where Ryan and Aubrey live, has Fiesta days at the end of July. Provo has the Freedom Festival over the 4th of July and the list goes on. I wouldn’t say it’s the celebrations themselves that make Utah a great place to live, although they have some fun things for families, but it’s really the sense of community that I enjoy. Utahns on a whole are actively involved in their neighborhoods and communities. They tend to be a civic-minded people that don’t concentrate all their attention on themselves and their own homes. In fact, Utah is the top in the nation for volunteer rates, number of hours per volunteer and volunteer retention – and has been for the past three years. It leads the nation in volunteering for every single age group. It’s definitely an impressive thing to live in a community where you actively have to search for volunteer opportunities. I think a strong sense of community makes Utah a great place to live.

Devon and I spent Memorial Day weekend in Las Vegas, which was a lot of fun. We’ll post pictures when we get them all together. The reason I mention it, though, is that being there reminded me of another reason that Utah is great, and that is that it’s family friendly.

I’ve never lived in a place with so much geared toward families. Restaurants have “family night” deals where kids eat cheap, grocery stores have fleets of children sized carts, there are dinosaur museums, zoos and tumbling gyms all over the place, and there are even dentist offices with video games and movies that specialize in treating children. It would only make sense that the state with the highest birth rate would have businesses that cater to children, but it doesn’t make it any less great for the families who live here.

We were over at my brother Ryan’s house Sunday and I mentioned something about Utah that was nice and he said, “Sure! You’ll say that here, but do you post that kind of stuff on your blog???” It made me realize that most of the posts about Utah are pointing out some weird quirks or things that we aren’t fans of. This really isn’t fair to Utah because it’s actually been very good to us. Therefore, I would like to apologize for presenting a lopsided picture of Utah, and for the next few posts I’m going to try to post of the things that make Utah great. Some of the things are pretty obvious to us, which is probably why I never thought to post on them before. Lest you think that Utah is just a desert with lots of marshmallows, large trucks and people who can’t park, though, here goes with reason number one:

The Mountains

Utah mountains are beautiful, and huge. They provide a beautiful backdrop to nearly everything outdoors, and they provide recreation as well. Skiiers from all over rave about the deep powder that the ski resorts get. Hikers enjoy the many trails, tall peaks and commanding views. There are trails of varying difficulties for just about every type of hiker. The mountains even help with navigation when you are driving – as long as you can remember what direction they are. Throughout the year, the mountain scenery changes, too. In the winter they are covered with snow, and in the fall they are the familiar brown color, but I never knew until we lived here in a spring that they can be very green in the spring rainy season. Spring is also when there are wildflowers in bloom, adding further to the scenery. In all, whether you are a skiier, a hiker, or just want to drive up some moutain roads, the mountains are part of what makes Utah a great place to live.

Dear Spring,

You came to visit a few weeks ago, and we enjoyed having you here. The sunny days of 70 degree weather punctuated with a few misty showers were really nice. The plants loved it, and we started to remember life without socks or coats. Now I’m wondering, did we do something to offend you? Why did you leave so ubruptly? Why did I look out my window the past couple days and see your old friend winter back to visit? 

Don’t get me wrong. I like Winter well enough. Snow is pretty and I love sledding and skating. But I think he’s been here long enough. We’re ready for you again, Spring. Please come back and bring the sun with you.

Sincerely,

Nicole

One thing I miss about not having a Trader Joe’s out here is that I can’t buy their magic little cubes of frozen fresh basil. It really was my favorite thing about that store (though their bagged popcorn and chocolate covered peanut butter filled pretzels come in a close second and third) and I haven’t found any grocery stores out here that sell it. This week I got sick of buying those little packs of fresh basil only to use a few leaves and throw the rest away, so I decided to make my own little frozen basil cubes. Take that, Trader Joe’s!

First I plucked off all the leaves, and washed and dried them. Next I shoved them into my mini food processor with a little olive oil and pulsed until it was nice and chopped.

Then I divided the chopped basil in 1 tablespoon portions in a mini muffin pan (Believe it or not, I don’t think we own an ice cube tray. Sad, huh?) and covered with saran wrap.

I popped it in the freezer and after it froze, I scooped each portion of basil out, wrapped each in a little saran wrap and put them in a freezer bag. Fresh basil anytime! I love it.

Made famous by the TV show “Lie to Me”, microexpressions are split second facial expressions that we make without even knowing it. In the TV show they use them to solve crimes (of course) by using them to tell how a suspect truly feels about the story he is telling. Of course the expert on the show can recognize all kinds of microexpressions immediately, and I’ve always wondered how easy it would be to do in real life. If you’ve ever wondered that too, there is an online test you can take here to see just how good you are. I was pretty good at some and not at others, but I think it does show that you can learn to recognize the different expressions if you know what you are looking for.

For those who are not familiar with baseball, Joe Mauer is a catcher for the Minnesota Twins. He was born and raised in Saint Paul, MN, and has played for the Twins his entire career. He is a two time gold glove winner, three time batting champion and last year’s MVP. And he’s a catcher. Needless to say, he’s a fan favorite. Oh, and did I mention he looks like this:

He’s pretty popular with the lady fans as well. He will be a free agent at the end of the 2010 season and the Twins are definitely trying to get a new deal worked out with him, or face angry mobs of Minnesotans throwing beer bottles and lutefisk at the new stadium. Word is that Mauer wants to stay with the home team, but in case he is undecided I thought I’d write him a little letter.

Dear Joe,

I know you’re busy right now with Spring Training about to start, but I just wanted to drop a line and highlight a couple reasons why you should re-sign with the Twins.

1) The new stadium. You survived the Dome, and now you get to play here:

It would be a shame to leave after one year.

2) I hear they don’t give away free fishing lures at other ballparks.

3) You can search around, but you won’t find another manager that looks more like Santa Claus than Gardy. I promise.

4) Don’t make the Twins get rid of Joe Mauer sideburn night

As a side note, I’ve been to one of these promotions and it really is the most hilarious thing to see bald men and older women alike sporting fake side burns. My favorite, however, was the kid who put them on as giant eyebrows.

5) If you stay long enough, Prince will probably write a song for you.

6) I hear Minnesotans melt in warmer climates.

7) Sure, the top dogs can win, but when the underdogs win it’s even more exciting.

8 ) Tens of thousands of female fans wearing pink #7 shirts

9) I hear all the food at the new stadium will be on sticks.

10) If you stay, we’ll see what we can do to get Bert to circle you.

Please consider these reasons among the many others I’m sure you’re considering. My husband and I hope to see you at a game at the new ballpark sometime this summer.

Sincerely,

Nicole

Common Name: Marty

Latin Name: Monasteriense pax ‘equus’

Approximate Age: 17 years

Top MPH: 80

Average MPG: Unlimited. Marty runs on grasses and occasionally shrubs.

Natural Habitat: It’s unknown if there is a habitat that Marty would be natural in. One would have to imagine it would be a zoo-like area with a giraffe-truck Melman, a lion-truck Alex and a hippo truck named Gloria.

Unique Features: I’d have to go with the stripes on this one. They make the truck instantly recognizable, and the driver of such a truck will always be known as, “The guy/gal who drives that zebra truck.”

I know I make grammatical errors myself and I try to be forgiving of other people’s mistakes, but sometimes I see examples of bad grammar that are so extreme or numerous that I am almost in awe of the author. One such example came on the packing slip for a garage door opener remote that Devon and I ordered this week. This is what it said, minus the return address and phone number:

Please make sure the remote is the correct one before opening and if the item is sealed and you open it we can’t take it back since we can no longer sell If you did to make a return mail it back to . . . fowlerville Mi. 48836 you must include your order number you have 30 days to return it to us. If you have any question you can call us at . . . thanks for your order Nancy

I’m not sure, but I don’t think Nancy’s English teacher would have given her an “A” for that paragraph.

This is a website that I made with a group for one of my classes. We are happy about how it turned out and fortunately for our grade, our Instructor is a fan of it too. It was a collaborative group project so we were all responsible for individual pages. The site is about the New 7 Wonders of the World. We each made a couple of pages on our own but the site concept and design were a group decision. I made one page for Christ the Redeemer and another for Petra (that’s where Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail). It feels so good to be done. We only had about a week to do it, and if you take into account the 3 Java labs and 1 Java project that was due during that week, and then throw in Computational Theory (not the greatest class in the world… but maybe the hardest), there really wasn’t very much time to make the site. If you want to check out the finished project you can see it here.

School is going well and this past week wasn’t out of the ordinary for this quarter. It is a lot of work but most of the people that started when I did are also in most of my classes so there is lot’s of help. The class the site is for a class called Topics in Computer Science. No one would disagree if it was renamed to: Linux, xhtml, networking, virtual machines, css, javascript, and more, now go figure it out on your own.  Sometimes it is frustrating but we are all learning to teach ourselves things, and that is pretty much the story behind every programming job.

I made tic tac toe in the same class as we made the website. If you want to play, check it out. The computer AI is really, really smart. Consider yourself warned