Montana!

Here are just a few highlights from our trip to Glacier National Park.  I'm not even going to try to get the pictures in the same order as the commentary.  Most of the commentary doesn't have corresponding pictures, and vice versa anyway, so just use your imagination.
- I've been told that there are roads in Montana that don't have speed limits, kind of like the autobahn.  You're in the middle of nowhere anyway, so you can drive whatever speed feels comfortable.  I tested this theory, and did not find agreeable results.  I won't go into details, because I don't want to.  Let's just say that, while I still have never had a speeding ticket, I'm certain that traffic cops are hiding out there on long empty stretches of Montana highway, waiting for unsuspecting out-of-staters with normal driving habits to come by.  And for the record, Dad made friends with an Idaho state trooper earlier that same day.
- We stayed in a tiny town in Montana called Seeley Lake, population 2,600.  I thought the neighborhood we were in was mostly vacation cabins, but after a day or two, I realized that about half the 'cabins' were year-round residences.  We were in a forest, with deer and fawns wandering through the yards, but that's where people live full time with their families.  I can't imagine.  It was great being out in the woods and smelling the pine and seeing the animals and being surrounded by nature, but I'm not sure I'd like living that far from a real city.
- Our first night there, we were driving down the main road in town, and suddenly there was a little pig running for all it was worth down the street.  It ran right out in front of traffic (all two cars on the road), making them slam on their brakes, and made a beeline for the forest and the lake on the other side.  It had made a get-away and wasn't looking back.  At church a couple days later, a few other people were talking about having seen the pig that morning.  So somewhere out there in the forests of Montana there's a liberated pig running free and living the good life.
- On the way to Glacier National Park on Saturday, we passed several fields that were covered with a super bright yellow plant.  We guessed that it might be mustard.  I just looked it up online, and sure enough, that area of Montana grows mustard.  Who would have thought?
- Glacier is really cool.  In just a few hours of driving through the park we saw tons of huge mountain peaks (they look really tall, but are actually a little lower than Utah's mountains), rounded out valleys carved by the glaciers, fields of wild flowers, two huge lakes, lots of waterfalls, and several rivers.  On the drive up to the main mountain pass, the whole mountain was basically pouring with spring runoff.  They call it the weeping wall because of all the water that drains off it.  At the top of the mountain, we climbed around a little bit on one of the glaciers.
-  During the day we saw squirrels, eagles, mountain goats, a black bear, and one lone buffalo rolling in a dust pile.
- The last day before we came home we found a hike just a few miles down the road from the cabin. We thought it'd be just a nice little hike to round out the vacation. It took us through lodgepole pines, then cedars and fir trees, then past a pond, then a big lake, and ended at a huge waterfall. This would be a major hike destination in Utah, but in Seeley Lake it's barely mentioned in a tourist book because this sort of waterfall is so common. It was amazing. The waterfall was 90 feet tall and put out mist about 50 feet in front of it. After 15 minutes or so of looking at it, I was so cold I couldn't feel my fingers til we were well on our way back down the trail. Pretty cool. (This is not the waterfall in the picture below- I didn't have my camera on this hike.  The waterfall below is in Glacier)

Secret Garden

A few weeks ago, I was out mowing my lawn on a Saturday morning, and my next door neighbor came over to talk to me.  Since I bought my house, there's been a strip of no man's land between our houses.  When I first moved in, I assumed it was his property.  It had landscaping to match his yard, such as river rocks, and some of the same plants as he has planted in his flower beds.  But last summer, he clearly was not taking ownership of this strip.  I thought that might be a hint that it was my property, but on the other hand, some of his flower beds were a little out of control, so I couldn't be sure.  Any way, on this particular Saturday morning, he pointed at this no man's land, and said he'd been hoping to catch me out in my yard so he could let me know that was my property.  I guess he had kind of taken care of it when nobody lived in my house, so that's why it had his style of landscaping when I first moved in.  By this year, it was just overgrown grass with signs of former gardening showing through.

I finished mowing my lawn and immediately set to work to find out what I was dealing with.  I started by digging up the lawn, and found a buried drip irrigation line!  It had been an actual flower bed at one time.  Not long after, I found another drip irrigation line. By this time, I was a couple hours into the project, and exhaustion was setting in, so I called it quits for the day and spent the next week imagining all the things I could do with that space.  The next Saturday, I started early, and ended up spending most of the day tearing up sod, shaking the soil back in (not as easy as it sounds with all the river rock that was in there), and thinking of all the colors I could add to my yard.  Sometime during the week, I had come to the realization that I would need to put in one of those plastic barriers to keep the garden from spreading to the lawn, and vice versa.  But about halfway through the day, I found a barrier already buried.  Totally made my work easier.  Anyway, all in all, I have about 2 1/2 feet of extra garden space running the length of my yard now.  For this year, I've planted bright annuals.  For next year I'm thinking flowering shrubs- maybe columbine, dwarf lilacs, etc.  The finished picture doesn't do it justice.  It really looks better than that (I think so, anyway).  I still need to dig up the parking strip area, but for now, I'm resting.

Victory!

It seems after years of 14 years of brutal competition, the results are finally in, and the victory is mine.  And let me tell you, it's a sweet victory.  Made all the sweeter by the fact that the judges don't know they're officiating in this particular tournament. The yellow post it note is to protect the identity of the specific judge who awarded this trophy, but I think it's safe to assume that any of my neices or nephews would be honored to have their signatures under that post-it.  And I'm proud to admit that this is the only piece of non-work-related decoration ever to have made it onto my cubicle wall.

Do we really need to go over this?

Dear Coworkers:
To make our office environment more pleasant, please respect the following:
1. If you're involved in a conference call and you have a door, make use of it. If I'm not on your conference call, I don't want to spend that hour listening anyway.
2. If it's not a conference call and you're just chatting the afternoon away, still make use of your door. I don't need to hear about your friend's kids' spring break.
3. If you don't have a door to make use of, don't spend hours each day reading Yahoo news articles to your boyfriend over the phone and providing personal commentary.
4. And don't spend the rest of the day doing your siblings' taxes over the phone.
5. Shouting at spreadsheets on your computer isn't going to make them work any better.
6. Yelling expletives at spreadsheets on your computer isn't going to make them work any better. No matter how often you try it.
7. Yawning is not a spectator sport. It's not being judged for volume, length, frequency, etc. If your yawns (every 30 seconds, every afternoon) are loud enough to disturb your coworkers 3 cubicles away, they're too loud.
8. Same goes for sighing- especially the frequency bit.
9. If there's a particular food that makes you burpy the rest of the day, don't eat it. And certainly don't eat it every single day.
10. Since none of my coworkers will read this, sorry for being snarky here. I just needed to get it out.

First Impressions

Last week most of the ward boundaries in my stake got realligned. Apparently, as Daybreak has grown, wards have divided every few years, and everybody in my ward is used to being shifted around. But this was the first time it's happened since I've been here. My ward was shifted into three already-existing wards. My little block was transferred into a different ward. I was kind of excited, because I already knew the single guy situation in my old ward (non-existent), so this would give me a chance to explore the single guy situation in a new ward*. Plus, the new ward has town homes, which increases the likelihood of single people. Also, I know some of the people in this ward from seeing them at the gym every morning, and they're pretty cool, so I was excited to get to know them better. I figure I have friends in my old ward, and now I can make more friends in my new ward. All in all, a good situation. So I really wanted to make a good impression.
I made a point of picking out a cute outfit that I haven't worn in a while- a skirt, tank top, and cardigan; I curled my hair, I did my makeup, and I felt pretty good about my appearance. And then I went to church and sat in the very middle of the chapel, trying to mingle with the ward.
Now, as some of you know, over the last several months, I've lost some weight and my clothes are fitting a little more loosely than they ever have before. And the skirt I chose has an elastic waist band. Keep these things in mind.
As we got into sacrament meeting, the counsellor in the bishopric said he was going to read in all the new members of the ward. I didn't realize they would do that, since we hadn't really moved in, but I was glad I had taken the time to look presentable. When he called my name, I stood up, looked around and smiled, then sat down. After he got through reading everybody's names, he asked us all to stand up one more time as a group. So I did. Then I sat down again. That's when I realized just how loose my skirt really had become on me. It had fallen to my mid-thighs. I guess it had kind of stuck to the padding on the bench when I stood up, and with the elastic waistband, it just didn't stand up with me. I had just flashed everybody sitting behind me. Twice. And I was in the middle of the chapel. In a ward that filled the chapel and went into the gym. I can handle embarassment, but that was a little too much. I just wanted to shrivel up and disappear.
Luckily, I only took a few minutes to recover before I could laugh at myself, and by the time I got to gospel doctrine and the teacher asked all the newbies to stand and introduce themselves, I had regained enough to composure to apologize to the half of the ward who I had flashed. Everybody had a good laugh, and now I've made my first impression. It wasn't the good impression I was going for, but it was certainly an impression.
*Sidenote- one of the first people I met in Sunday School is also a single lady and she informed me we have no single guys in the ward. Sigh....

What Would You Do?

On my drive to work this morning, I had an experience that made me think. Here's the set-up: I was coming up to a red light, going east, in a lane to go straight, with two left turn lanes next to me. There was a divider in the road separating the east-west traffic. After the light, all the cars in my lane were getting onto the freeway, so the left-turn traffic was kind of the last chance to get off the road before the freeway. On the other side of the road, but down the road a bit (where the left turn lane leads) is a Walmart. It was 8am and my car's thermometer said it was 16 degrees outside. Walking away from the Walmart parking lot was a man, probably in his late 40's, fairly well-dressed (jeans, jacket- looked like he could be anybody's next door neighbor). He was carrying several bulky grocery bags and having a hard time handling them all. As I got up to the light and first saw him, he had just dropped a few items and was trying to reposition everything in his hands. And he had no gloves. He was walking towards the freeway underpass, meaning he had at least a little ways to go to get home, since there aren't any houses or parking lots between there and the other side of the freeway. Now think about it- everybody on the road at that time of day on a weekday has someplace to be. When I saw him, I started going through the possibilities in my mind- could he get across 4 lanes of traffic to my car before the light switched? Could I switch enough lanes to get over to him in time? Would it be safe for me to pick up a complete stranger, even if he looks innocent enough? Do I have time to pick somebody up and give him a ride to wherever he's going on my way to work? In the few seconds that I had to process the situation, a man in one of the turn lanes made a u-turn and went and picked the stranger up, and helped him load everything into his car. It made my day to know that there are people out there who would take time out of a freezing and busy morning to help out a complete stranger who obviously needs it. I'd like to think I would have helped if I hadn't seen the other person help, but I also know I felt some relief when I saw somebody else doing it. What would you do?

Cars

I live in a car-centric world. I've known this since 1986. I remember we had a roll of aluminum foil that was in a cardboard box, and the box was advertising some kind of contest. The grand prize was a 1987 Ford Mustang Convertible. Back then, pictures on boxes were just drawings, but even with just a drawing, I remember thinking what a beautiful car that Mustang was, and I was so mad that as a 6-year old I couldn't enter the contest. I begged my parents to enter, but they wouldn't. That 1987 Ford Mustang Convertible was the first car I ever loved. About the same time, my dad pointed out a neighbor lady down the street who had two Mustangs from the 60s, and I remember thinking she must have been a pretty cool lady to have two such cars. The next car I fell in love with was a Jeep Cherokee (what a dream that 20 years later I got to work on its successor!). I don't remember where I first saw it. I probably just started seeing them around, but I thought they were great. After that, it was the red Miata convertible that my parents' friends bought (first model year). From there, my car-love list has grown exponentially. One day in college, my five roommates and I were squished in one of my roommates' cars going somewhere. As we stopped at a light, we were all buried in our own thoughts, and somebody asked what we were all thinking about. We each told what we had been thinking about in that moment, and got a good laugh at how perfectly each girl's thoughts fit her personality. I had been thinking that the Lexus sitting next to us looked exactly like a Camry (this was before I realized that Lexus was part of the Toyota brand), and I was wondering why somebody would pay luxury prices just to get a Lexus name plate on a Toyota.
My car thoughts haven't lessened any with time. A bad commute can be made better based on the cars I see. If I see a really great Sports car, or even just more Audi TTs than usual, I might forget that I got held up in traffic. I very often base my lane choice on the car that I'll be following or watching in my rearview mirror. And way too often, I have to remind myself to watch the road rather than the cars. So if anybody is really stuck on what to get me for Christmas...