baby, you're my sunshine

Ahh, the end of a fantastic weekend.

Dusty came to visit :)  We made it a whole five weeks without seeing each other.  Unbelievable, I know ;-)

A rundown of the weekend:
Picked him up from the airport around 11:30 Thursday night.

Friday was pretty relaxed -- we got up fairly early. Dusty had to put in about six to eight hours of work and I was (somewhat) productive with homework.  After a couple hours of work, we drove up into the mountains, an area called Emigration Canyon.  There's a diner up there that I've been wanting to go to forever.  It was on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives awhile back:

It definitely lived up to the hype. I just had to try the biscuits and gravy.  Wow.  Definitely a bit different than what my mom makes.  No sausage in the gravy, but it was flavored with Italian seasoning, I believe.  It had a slight sweetness to it, too.  All over the fluffiest, tallest biscuits I've ever had.


Dust had their fresh asparagus omelet -- oh my, it may have been the best omelet I've ever had.  Asparagus and tomatoes with smoked Gouda cheese, then topped with hollandaise sauce.

Bear Lake, UT/ID

Went out to eat Friday night -- we were going to go to P.F. Chang's, but didn't exactly want to wait the 40 - 50 minutes they said it would take to get a table. And at about 7:30 at night! We ended up going to the Macaroni Grill just down the block.  Delicious, but nothing too exciting since we have those at home, ha.  After dinner, got a bottle of wine and a movie (No Strings Attached = HILARIOUS) and went to bed fairly early.

First Utah liquor store experience was a bit crazy.  First of all, contrary to popular belief, you CAN buy alcohol in Utah -- no need to smuggle it across state lines! However, alcohol laws are somewhat stricter than elsewhere, especially Minnesota.  The big differences: 1. The beer you buy at the bars is 3.2% alcohol. Some bars have full-strength beer, I believe, but you have to ask for it specifically, and it costs a bit more.  2. Grocery stores and places like Target have a fairly good selection of alcohol (as in an entire aisle or even two), but it is only 3.2 beer and similar-strength wine-coolers.  3. The only place you can buy off-sale wine and liquor is at state-run liquor stores.  You can also get full-strength beer there, I think.  There are no privately-owned liquor stores.

When we got to the liquor store, it was crazy busy.  They had three or four cashiers open and probably four or five people waiting in each line.  There were signs all over the door that warned about no minors being in the store.  However, when we got up to the counter to pay for our bottle of wine, the cashier just took a fairly quick glance at my ID and hardly looked at Dusty's.  I don't think he even would have asked for his if he hadn't had it out and handed it to him.  Weird.  At home, especially in St. Cloud, everyone in a group has to show IDs.  Chels, April, Edwina, and I had an interesting experience senior year -- one of the cashiers at a liquor store in St. Cloud wasn't going to let any of us get anything because Edwina's ID was foreign.  I guess I just expected them to be even more strict here.

Saturday...

We took a drive up a canyon in northeast Utah.  The Logan Canyon Scenic Byway.  It ended at this gorgeous lake, Bear Lake, very near the Utah/Idaho border.  The water was an incredible turquoise color and SO clear.  Had a picnic at a beach in the Bear Lake State Park, waded in the water (didn't even think to bring swimsuits), took some pictures, and then headed back to SLC.  Just spent the evening relaxing -- got dinner, ate it at a huge park about four blocks from my apartment and talked about Dusty's experiences with ducks at the golf course he used to work at, ha.

He left early this afternoon.  Definitely a weird feeling -- the weekend went by so fast. Doesn't even feel like he was here.

Now I can officially start my next countdown: 13 days 'til I'm home for fall break!

It's definitely going to be a long two weeks though. So much to do.

A couple randoms for the day:

• Incidences like these are subtle hints that I may actually be an adult now: I got really excited last Tuesday when the box that was outside my apartment door contained a water-proof mattress topper for my new bed. Thank you, Dusty.
• It drives me absolutely crazy when people write reviews for recipes they've never even tried.  Hmm, I'm going to give this stir fry sauce recipe four stars and then comment "HAVEN'T MADE IT YET, BUT IT  SOUNDS AND LOOKS DELICIOUS!" Seriously? Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
• I also don't quite understand when someone takes up two seats on a full TRAX train in the middle of a university class day.  No, I don't think your backpack needs to have its own seat. ESPECIALLY when there is an older woman standing up right next to you. GEEZ.

And, an update from the last week or so:
- School is getting much busier.  And my desk and floor under and around it is definitely an indication.  It's mostly "busy work" than anything, really -- doing modules for HIPPA and the Institutional Review Board (IRB) so we can do research, completing necessary forms for a "mock" research proposal, grading tests and assignments for the classes I TA for, etc.  I actually get somewhat frustrated at times.  After the third or fourth module on ethics in research and in health care, I definitely feel like my time could be better spent on something else.  Oh well.

- Dusty drove up to my parents' house yesterday and brought them a webcam! So, I got to talk to them on Skype yesterday for the first time since I've been out here.  It's going to make things a whole lot easier.  I know I definitely wouldn't be doing so well if I didn't get to "see" and talk to Dusty every other night. Got to "see" my "babies," too - aka, MamaCat, Arby Cat and Lucy Dog.  Lucy was so funny -- she actually recognized my voice and knew it was coming out of the speakers and then kept looking at me on the screen.  Oh, I miss her.  She was quite the handful when we first got her, but she has matured into an awesome little girl.

the best raspberries i've ever had.
they were gone within two days.

- Volunteered at the Murray Farmers Market yesterday with Utahns Against Hunger.  Great experience -- we gave out about $100 worth of tokens for clients to use at the market.  LOVE that farmers' markets are now accepting the EBT benefits. So much better than buying $100 worth of frozen pizzas, right??

It was an interesting morning for other reasons though:

cucumbers!

...There is definitely not enough parking for the number of people that come to the market.  Witnessed a couple parking disputes. I just don't understand why it is so dang important for people to get a parking spot right up front. Even better is when people see someone walking, possibly toward a car, and then wait for what seems like five minutes for them to pull out, just so they can have that parking spot. Seriously, just park a bit further away and spend an extra 30 seconds of your life walking.  Is it really that bad? I love when it all turns into a honking war.

...I witnessed an argument between an older lady and one of the farmers.  The lady asked whether or not the  20+ boxes of peaches he had at his stand were "fresh-picked."  He responds, saying that they picked them the previous evening.  She then says something about not buying them because they're not fresh-picked.  He then tells her "Well, lady, you better plant your own tree then."  And that proceeded into an argument about how he should have picked the fruit before he had to drive an hour to get there by 7:30.

edamame!

...then. The guy that was working with me left for literally three minutes to go hang a banner and about thirty seconds after he left, a couple guys came over to the booth and wanted to trade in their tokens for cash.  Well, we can't do that.  Once they buy tokens with their EBT card, they cannot get cash back -- that'd just be cheating the system.  Well, when they finally understood that they could SPEND those tokens at the market, they were okay with it.  Not happy they didn't get the cash, but they left me alone. Ha, what can you do except laugh?

tart cherry jam...SO, SO, SO GOOD!

Finally, a quote from one of the assignments I'm grading.  These students have an online "grocery store" that they need to shop at every week and meet certain nutrient goals.  At the "checkout", it gives them a breakdown of all of the nutrients from the foods in their "cart."  They are then supposed to go to the actual grocery store, buy those foods, and work them into their diet for the week.

There have been some interesting responses.  

This one definitely caught my eye though.

"I noticed that my poop was really weird, I believe it's just my body getting used to the healthy food that's coming into it, which is great!"

Really looking forward to responding to that one...