My Ring

After a mere two years of marriage, I noticed the diamond in my wedding ring was loose. So loose, that I worried one day I'd look down and the stone would be missing entirely. Mr X would probably have been furious if that had ever happened. So I took the obvious precaution: I quit wearing the ring at all and informed Mr X that I wouldn't wear it until it the diamond was properly secured. Four years later Mr X finally got it all taken care of and I get to wear my beautiful ring again. Woo hoo! (I just have to get used to it all over again now.)

Eat your heart out!

I know that you've heard me lament over the aging process many times. I’ve detailed a bit of my daily battle against wrinkles, gray hair, cellulite and weight. It occurred to me that maybe you think I'm being harsh on myself, but allow me to clear this issue up - If you looked as good as I did here, you'd be mourning the loss of your youth and beauty too.

Two Juicy Balls

Over the weekend Mr X and Mr T got to spend some quality time together. Last Friday night we all went out to treat ourselves to some delicious Indian food, one of my favorite cuisines. Mr and Mrs T hadn't had much experience with Indian food but they seemed to enjoy it. I was impressed with their adventurous spirits.

The highlight of the meal was when our waiter came to take our dessert order. We had looked at the dessert menu at the beginning of the evening and there were 4 choices on the menu written as the following: Pistachio Ice Cream, Mango Ice Cream, Kheer - Rice Pudding and Gulab Jamun - Two Juicy Balls (great description, right?). Mrs T and I ordered the ice cream, pistachio and mango, respectively. Mr X attempted to order the Gulab Jamun, butchering the name in the process and when the waiter looked at him questioningly, Mr X blurted out, "The balls..." We all stifled smirks and chuckles like adolescents but the waiter understood, much to Mr X's relief. Then it was Mr T's turn. He had barely attempted to say "Gulab Jamun" before he gave up and rather quickly asked for "the two balls" but this time the waiter had trouble with it and asked for clarification. Mr T responded very loudly and very uncomfortably, "The two juicy balls!" More muffled laughter ensued from the rest of us. To the waiter's credit, when he returned with the Gulab Jamun he set it in front of the boys with a wry smile and said, "here are your juicy balls."

(This is what Gulab Jamun looks like, if you've never had it.)

(This is Mr T and Mr X very animatedly relaying the story later.)

Perks

There are good things (the proximity to beautiful beaches) and bad things (the state deficit/unemployment) about living in California. But one of the very good things is inexpensive and abundant fresh produce. Berries in particular. I was so excited the other day at the store when I saw strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries all on sale. This happens every spring and summer here in CA and I LOVE it. In New Mexico the berries were much more expensive and only occasionally on sale. When they were on sale, they were nowhere near as plump and juicy as CA berries.

Charlotte hears a Who

Apparently Mr X hails from Whoville. "Who" knew?

Eat with Wild Abandon

It seems that since Mr X arrived home from Japan there hasn't been a morsel of food I haven't put in my mouth. It's now becoming quite evident too - 10 pounds in 1 month. If I keep up this rate of indulgence I'll have gained nearly 100 pounds by the end of the year. There'll be a whole lot more of me for Mr X to love. This is bad. Very bad.

(I'm sporting a sweet paunch here...)

Spring

I'm so excited because the fig tree in our yard is starting to leaf all over already and much to my delight it's already burgeoning with immature little figs. I'm so excited! I've been researching fig recipes for a while and I've got some good plans for a fig salad, a fig pie and fig crepes. Mr X has his hopes pinned on me making homemade Fig Newtons.

First Picture

This is my very first picture with my new camera. I walked down to the beach and snapped this photo. What do you think? I need to stop it from putting the date on the pictures though because I don't like that.

The Canyons (Park City West)

Are you sick of snowboarding pictures yet? We're almost done....besides, our last day snowboarding we didn't really take many of each other. We went to The Canyons our last day snowboarding. Apparently it used to be called Park City West. It's a huge resort but less jagged and challenging and more just massive and rolling. The nice thing about it is that if the roads were bad it wouldn't be a problem because you park way down away from the resort and then you ride a gondola bucket thingy up to the base of the resort. I liked it. It was a little bit icy in the morning but by the afternoon it was slushing up rather nicely and so we had a good time. Some of the runs are incredibly long.

After we finished for the day (we were some of the last people off the mountain) we decided to go check out Park City. Here's the quaint and touristy Main Street.

(No that's not a bag of dog poop that I'm holding. It was a caramel and chocolate covered apple.)

(Mr X made a new friend.)

Snowbird Ski Resort

Wednesday was a rough day for me. I actually had to quit a little early in order to give my legs a much needed break. Mr X kept going for an hour or two after that and apparently went on some pretty great spots. He even found "The Cave" that takes the boarder/skier through the mountain to the backside bowl via a conveyor belt. As you can see from the pictures, there was still a good amount of powder leftover from the storm but it was sunny, warm and beautiful.

Brighton Ski Resort

On Tuesday we tried out Brighton. It was great conditions because of the snowstorm the night before. We snowboarded in fresh powder all day. My legs were useless by the end of the day but I enjoyed every minute of it.

(No, I'm not flipping off the camera...it was a thumbs up. Mittens are hard to interpret sometimes.)

Solitude Ski Resort

Mr X and I pretty much did a tour of Utah ski areas during our vacation. Monday we hit Solitude. Below are the pictures from that day. I was obviously a little rusty with my mad snowboard skilz. Much to Mr X's delight, he caught it all on camera. Periodically [read: every day] he referred back to the picture of me with my head buried in the snow and laughed and laughed.

A pretty decent sized snow storm came through last Monday and by the time we finished snowboarding it was getting close to a foot of snow on our car. Solitude ultimately got 24 inches of fresh powder during that storm.

C3 Club Winnings

At work I'm a member of the Conscientious Commuter Club. That's because I work a shortened week (4x10) and I work one of those days from home. Because of that I qualified to be entered into the quarterly drawing for a prize.

This quarter it was this camera. They did the drawing last Friday and since I was gone I didn't know I'd won until today. I was pretty excited when I found out. Some coworkers congratulated me, others made it a point to express to me how disappointed they were that it wasn't so-and-so because they really deserved it.

Back from vacation

Mr X and I got home from our trip late yesterday night. We had to get up early to drop off our rental car today and then we came home and went back to sleep. We were exhausted. I'll post snowboarding pictures in my next posts but for now I'll post the pictures from the beginning of our trip in St. George.

We stayed with Mr X's uncle and aunt (A&L) in their beautiful home in St. George. It's in a retirement community and it made me wistful for my own retirement (hopefully it's as early as theirs and as nice). A&L took us out the next day to explore the nearby Zion National Park. Here are some pictures from that:

We're off!

Mr X and I are headed to the great mountains of Utah this weekend to put in some quality time snowboarding. We’re taking our time getting there and visiting friends along the way and I'm looking forward to that part as well. We’re planning 5 days of snowboarding in a row. I’m envisioning that in the middle of the night next Friday, nearly my entire body will seize up into one giant and painful charley horse and the horrific wailing that will ensue will jolt Mr X up from a dead sleep, triggering a similar charley horse reaction in him. Lights will flicker on in houses up and down the street as people are awakened by a frightful sound from which they have deduced someone is being horribly tortured in their peaceful little neighborhood. Hopefully our bodies are more resilient than I’m imagining.

Eeewwww!

I just was in the ladies room doing my thing and I paused because I heard a sound I hoped I didn’t really hear: Someone in the stall next to me was texting. Yes, texting while relieving themselves. Are you as repulsed as I am? Who does that? That also means they are going to have to juggle hands during the wiping process and inevitably they’ll grab hold of their phone with the hand they just wiped with before they’ve had a chance to wash it properly. Now am I just germophobic or is that disgusting to you too? They idea of receiving a ‘loo text’ bothers me as well…. Not only is it so gross to text while doing your business, but I think it’s disrespectful to the person to whom you are sending the text to send it via the potty.

Are you as inspired as I am?

I know I've commented on this before but I just can't help myself from mentioning it again. I have a coworker who loves to add an inspirational quote to her signatures in all of her emails. She edits her auto-signature-block at the beginning of every month with a new quote just as powerful and moving as the previous month’s selection. I’ve been collecting them with the purpose of sharing these pearls of wisdom with all of you so that you too can benefit from their profoundness.

“There is no traffic jam on the extra mile.”
“True affluence is not needing anything.”
“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
“True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.”

I plan to put each new month’s soul shaking gem up for you so stay tuned…

Tag

My SIL tagged me so here's my response:

This is the 6th picture from the 6th folder of my pictures. I was at Lake Eibsee near the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany with another SIL. I was having an absolutely incredible time.

(I'm tagging Nicole, Briana, Stephanie, Haylie and Vicky - post your 6th picture from your 6th album...if you feel like it, of course.)