Jacquie's Journal

Coldplay

Last Saturday Coldplay came to town, and we had tickets!

They were great.  The best bit for us was that they came out into the audience and played two songs accoustically on a mini stage set up on the very next section and the same level as us in the Energy Solutions Arena (erstwhile Delta Center).  Needless to say the rule about no cameras went completely unheeded and I took pictures - with my real camera, not just my cellphone.

As you can see I wasn't the only one!

People complain about the sound quality in the ESA, but who cares - if you want to hear the songs perfectly listen to the CD - the point of a concert like that is to see the band enjoying doing what they do best (Chris Martin certainly has a lot of energy on stage) and being part of the audience.

Clocks is still my favourite Coldplay song - the intro just makes me feel happy how ever I am feeling before it begins, and hearing it live was a real treat.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
In keeping with the tradition we have followed for the last few years we went to the movies and saw Quantum of Solace.  Hmmm!  I am sorry to say I dozed off part way through and missed a bit.  I think real technology has caught up with James Bond technology, and there weren't any new gadgets that weren't available to the regular person in the street.  There was a lot of action with a lot of gratuitous smashing of windows, doors, roof tiles, furniture, and a clock tower.   Does MI6 compensate the owners of these establishments for the damage casused - or do they claim on their insurance?

I haven't done much knitting lately but I have crocheted some Amigurumi monkeys from Java monkey made from the pattern copyrighted by ChimuChimu at http://quesera.ojaru.jp

This one is my favourite.  His t-shirt features the JavaOne logo, Duke, on the front and the Java logo on the back.

Chart Maagic
I have been working on a downloadable version of my chartmaker - Chart Magic - and will be releasing it soon - just a few bits and bobs to sort out first.

There's Gold in Them There Hills!

It's that time of year again, and it never gets old - I am talking about the autumn colours in our mountains.  This will be our tenth fall in Utah - maybe our 11th, though arriving at the end of October in 1998 we probably missed the best of it that time.  Here are some pictures I took today after dropping Gary off at the top of Guardsman's Pass for his bike ride on my way back down Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Off he goes on the path in the middle part of the picture!

 

 

 

 

Ghost Town

We did our traditional thing and went to the movies yesterday lunchtime to see Ghost Town starring Ricky Gervais.  He is not the obvious leading man, but he was brilliant as his character.  You could tell that he had added a lot of extra stuff to the script that made it more 'real' rather than just acted.   I was hoping to go for a good laugh, as I have been feeling a bit fed up lately - nothing major - and I got that but he was just as good at the sad parts as the funny parts - I have to confess to it being a 3 handkerchief movie for me.

The one thing I will say is - stereotypical of the British according to Americans though it is - Ricky has terrible teeth to be playing a dentist in America!

Our 28th Anniversary!

This Saturday was our 28th Wedding Anniversary and Gary arranged a lovely night away in downtown Salt Lake City.  We stayed at the Hotel Monaco in a lovely suite much like the pictures on the website. 

We had dinner at the Bambara the restaurant connected to the hotel.  A very nice touch was the personalised menus - they had "Happy Anniversary Jacquie and Gary" printed on them.  We had cocktails and wine and wonderful food. 

After dinner we went to see "Ne le dis à personne"  a 2006 French movie based on the Harlan Coben novel "Tell No One" at the Broadway Centre Theatre.  Luckily it was with subtitles.  I was hoping I would understand some of the dialogue from my school French, but they spoke so fast - and maybe French has changed a bit in 35 years?  Anyway I love Harlan Coben's novels and although this movie was a bit different to the book - being set in France for a start, there were his signature plot twists and turns that kept you guessing all the way through. 

It was lovely to stroll to the cinema from the hotel on the last warm summer's night for a while I suspect.  We saw the beehive and bees sculpture on 3rd South, and the decorative inlays in the sidewalk near the Gallivan Center.  Of course I didn't have a camera and I can't find any reference to them on the Internet - having trouble finding the right keyword perhaps- but they were beautiful little works of art - look out for them next time you are there.  And next time I go I will remember my camera and be there in the day time so I get a good picture.

The next morning we had breakfast again in the Bambara, I had smoked salmon Benedict - very yummy indeed! And then we had to check out and head back home.

The Monaco is a great place with some interesting quirks - like you can ask to adopt a goldfish and have it in your room for the duration of your stay.  We didn't as we were only staying the one night.  They serve pre-dinner wine every evening and have a massage therapist on hand to give seated massages.

Thank you, Gary for organising everything and making it such a special time for us both!

Oh My! Summer is Nearly Over!

Edward starts high school on Monday - this summer has whizzed by and this blog will whizz through what we have been up to!

It was Lucy's birthday  on July 14th of course - she got an Amazon Kindle so we all gave her Amazon Gift certificates to get books for it.  We went to Epic Casual Dining to celebrate -their flat bread appetisers are really good and tasty.

Lucy joined us on a hike up to Dog Lake and Charlie remembered how to swim.

At the end of July Gary's brother and family came to stay for a few days and we had a fun if hectic time with them giving them the whirlwind version of the must see/do Salt Lake valley tour.

An exciting weekend for just me was a visit to Watkins Glen, NY to see what goes on at a NASCAR race.  We have been developing a Lap Counter for them, I have done the web site for it, so I went with one of our team to help out with the installation and working of the Lap Counters for the Nationwide race.  We had full access to all areas and I was shown everything that goes on in the garage, pit road, the track, and in the scoring and timing box.  I am not a huge NASCAR fan - not really a fan at all, and I was thinking this isn't really fair - some people would kill to get this opportunity and here I am having to go for work.  Here are some pictures of racing cars and related stuff.

Cars being fixed after a practice for the Nationwide Series.

"The Claw"e template that they measure the Sprint Cup cars against at inspection.

Jeff Gordon's Sprint Cup car being worked on.

Dale Earnhardt Jr's Sprint Cup car - not being worked on!

A crew member working literally under the hood/bonnet.

Jimmie Johnson getting into his car for practice.

Lining up for inspection.

See the green thingy on the windshield - that's our tiwi lap counter!  If you look carefully during races on TV you should be able to spot them in all the cars and trucks.

Dale Earnhardt jr's Nationwide car being inspected for correct shape and size.

Tires at the ready, labelled for each car.

Things got busy after that so I didn't have much chance to take photos, but I had a great time and learned a lot about the cars and the processes that go on getting ready for and during a race.

Hope you have had a great summer!

AWOL Again!

But here I am - hope there are still some of you out there still interested in what I have to say!

Quite a bit of news since I last posted - Sam graduated from the U (University of Utah) at the beginning of the month. 









































Then it was his birthday and we went out to dinner with him at Tsunami followed by take out cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  It has just opened here and take out is the only viable option unless you are prepared to wait up to four hours for a table!  The next day we went to his and Sunnie's house for dinner with Sunnie's family including it's newest member, baby Anya, Sunnie's first niece!
This is the lovely house they are renting!















At work we moved to brand new offices.  This is the view from my cubicle:
It wasn't the nicest weather that day, but as you can see I have a fantastic view of the mountains.  In the middle ground is the golf course and some water with geese and goslings on it.  We are not far from the airport so we see planes coming and going all the time.  I love watching planes and wondering about the passengers and dreaming of where I would like to travel to.

The only problem with my view is when the sun reflects off the windshields of those cars parked just outside, right into my face.  I am trying to train the guy who sits by the window to position himself so he blocks it, but he is not always very cooperative.  We have been promised blinds soon, but I am afraid they will will always be down so I won't see much of my view any more.  Lucky I have this picture to remind me.

It is Edward's birthday on May 27th but so as to avoid Memorial Weekend he had his celebration with his friends last week.  They all went to LaserQuest and had a great time.  Here he is being toilet papered by the staff there - it seems it is their duty to do this to everyone who admits to it being their birthday.
After their games they all came back for a barbecue in our garden and then some stayed all night for a LAN party.













Other major news is that we finally got our Green Cards - well all except Edward - for some reason his is being processed in a different place to ours so we are still waiting for his.  We are so relieved and pleased after years of waiting and wondering!

Monday is Memorial Day - a holiday from work - and as the weather has been horrible instead of our usual outdoor MD activities of planting up the window boxes and hanging baskets we have turned our attention to some of our plans for indoors.  In the kitchen we had this hideous arrangement of plastic panels resting on an alumin(i)um framework covering a bank of fluorescent lights.  The whole thing - apart from looking hideous (did I mention that?) was very fragile and the panels would fall out and shatter at the slightest provocation.  So far we have replaced them as necessary.  But this week one of the fluorescent light fittings finally broke and at last we can have something different.  We have so far taken down the whole thing and made three trips to Home Depot for supplies for the new plan.  We are going to board up the area and insert recessed lights around the edge and pendant lights over the island.  I will post pictures when we are done.  I forgot to take the before picture!

Goblins

Sorry I have been away from my blog for so long - but lots to catch up on!

Last weekend we went down south mainly to visit Goblin Valley.  We rented an SUV (it had heated seats - lovely!) on the Friday and left work early so we could get on the road and not arrive to late.  We stopped in Price for dinner and ate at the Silver Steakhouse.  It  looked like it was quite a new place and that the building used to be a bank - the safe was still in the middle.  The food was very good and we arrived at our hotel in Green River ready for an early night so we would be refreshed and ready to explore Goblin Valley and Little Wild Horse Canyon.

We woke up to sunshine and set off after a nice breakfast for Little Wild Horse Canyon.  The slot canyons are amazing but not for the claustrophobic.  There was some climbing involved as well and I discovered a muscle on the side of my leg just above the knee that must only be used for  and obviously never gets any other exercise.
Here are some pictures:

We took Gary's new GPSr and tracked down a geocache on the way.  They are fun to find and leave a message for others when they find it and also to take something and leave something in the box.

After a bit of a picnic we decided to turn round and hike back to the car so we could spend the afternoon in Goblin Valley itself.  While we were doing that the sky turned from this:

to this:

It was then we thought about the full potential of flash floods and the power the water exerts on the landscape - luckily it didn't rain and we didn't experience it first hand!

It was quite windy when we got to Goblin Valley, but we hiked round the Carmel Canyon trail and then took pictures of the goblins from the shelter of the picnic area:

In the evening we ate at Ray's Tavern where I had an excellent halibut steak and some homemade apple pie.

The next day we started on our journey home via Nine Mile Canyon where, with the help of the GPSr and a guide we found loads of great petroglyphs made by the Fremont tribe.  This was the best one:

We also saw lots of oil wells in the area.  We spent most of the day exploring those canyons and discovered that despite its name it was actually 47 miles long and all unmade road - lucky we had the SUV!  We eventually got back on to real road and got home in time for dinner

At work lots of us have joined in a Wellness Program offered by the company and we had our initial assessments on Thursday.  My cholesterol, blood glucose, blood pressure etc are all great but I am a teensy bit over the healthy limit for body fat percentage.  I felt like one of those packs of ground beef that are labelled 85/15% fat - except no one would buy ground beef made from me because  they wouldn't want to eat as much fat as I would provide.  After the assessment we were allocated a coach to plan goals with.  Mine are to drink more water, an extra 16 oz a day to start with, and get more exercise by taking Charlie for two 20 minute walks each weekday.  I also plan to eat more fruit and veg.   We have to track our progress on line and talk to our coach at least once a month.  It will be really good to have someone to help me this way and to have to keep track.  They are all about positive goals towards a healthier life rather than talking about losing wieght etc.

Talking about goals - I haven't personally bought any chocolate - but I can't control what others do when they visit the supermarket and I am afraid a small amount of chocolate has found its in to the fridge - not nearly as much as before though.  I will still be sending the full amount to a charity anyway as it wasn't actually me that bought it.  I haven't got a new For Dummies or Idiot's Guide to anyhing this month either and I still haven't found any time to learn to spin either

Last night we watched Pay It Forward for the first time and it was good up til the end - just goes to prove "No good turn goes unpunished!".  It also reminded me that I owe three people their Pay It Forward gifts and I promise it is  still my intention to do this so please continue to be patient with me.

Finally it was our nephew Luke's 21st Birthday during the week.  Sounds like he had a great party!

Run, Fat Boy, Run

You know how often in the movie theatre there is someone who laughs out loud, sometimes even when it's not even appropriate?  Well, today, I am afraid that was me!  We went to see Run, Fat Boy, Run directed by David Schwimmer and starring Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton.  It was just my kind of humour.  I am going to have to see it again because I am sure I missed bits because I was still giggling from the last funny bit.  Look out for cameo parts by David Walliams from Little Britain, and Stephen Merchant from Extras.

It was in complete contrast to Margot at the Wedding, that we had out on DVD starring Nicole Kidman and Jack Black, which was also supposed to be funny.  The whole thing was shot in such gloomy lighting that we totally failed to recognise anything amusing.  And it ended abruptly in the middle with absolutely nothing resolved.

My Greek Goddess of Hope in Pandora's Jar idea for March's QAL just wouldn't work out in my head, but then I had another idea that just manifested itself straightaway.  It was a much simpler idea - luckily as I was fast running out of time.  I did The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Happy Easter

Well what can I say?   I have been working and not been doing much else of interest again.  Hope you all had a great Easter.  We have had beautiful spring weather and have even had the heating turned off.  We went to Sam and Sunnie's new house for dinner last week which was lovely but I forgot to take any pictures.  It is a pretty house, and has a huge kitchen which I am quite envious of.

What is this?
Yes it is a knitted egg. 








What could be inside?

Why a chick of course!  I made it using the pattern in the Make: Craft magazine by Anna Hrachovec whose website is mochimochiland .  Actually I made him about a quarter the size he was meant to be by halving the number of stitches and rows, which is probably why he is quite difficult to turn from egg to chick.  I missed off the embroidered crack and eyes on the egg as eggs just don't have eyes in my world.

We never went to see Enchanted when it was on at the movies so we got it out of Blockbusters to watch last night when there was absolutely nothing worth watching - not even slightly.  I have to say if I am being honest that I was a little bit disappointed.  Some bits only made sense once we'd seen the deleted scenes - seems to me they weren't as unnecessary as the director seemed to think.  Also the whole magic thing.   The poor old chipmunk suddenly couldn't talk in the real world, but she could still summon all the local animals to help her clean, and produce dresses from curtains just like that.  I think it would have been better if she had to learn to cope without the magic.

I am falling a little behind with my assignments and challenges for March.  I have not yet had a goat spinning although I have purchased the book recommended by Alarming Female in my comments - Thank you it looks like exactly what I need.  I have had the idea for my March QAL block - the theme for which is 'Hope'.  I am going to do Elpis the Greek Goddess of Hope who was the only one to remain in Pandora's Box (which I gather was actually a jar!) when the silly girl opened and all the evils of the world escpaed.  I have had some chocolate, but it has been the 70% cocoa medicinal kind, and I have eaten only a small piece at a time.  We have been watching Paul McKenna's program, 'I can make you thin' with interest.  We watched the second episode while eating our dinner so I guess we haven't fully submerged ourselves in it yet!

March Already! How Did That Happen

I guess, even with the leap day, February is very short and March is here and has brought some lovely weather followed by some really horrible weather.  On Saturday it snowed a lot and Edward went to a party up in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  We went to fetch him him at 10.30 at night and I hope I never have to be more scared than I was driving up there with snow on the road and no sign of a plough!  We were slipping and a sliding sideways some of the time and were very lucky not to slide right off the edge into the creek or into oncoming traffic.  Coming down was not as bad as going up but was still not fun!

It was much nicer on Sunday and Gary got in some good skiing, while I pottered around at home. 

My resolutions are going ok.  I have not succumbed to the 10 for $10 chocolate so I have another $40 to give.  I have decided I will give Jan and Feb to Oxfam.  I have always supported them and the great work they do.

I looked for a dummies book on Analysis, after remembering that that was what I had failed - not Calculus - but it seems  that there is no way to explain it to dummies or idiots so I will give it a miss for the time being and my topic will be Spinning.  I haven't found a book on that either, but I have found some hopefully good online instructions that should at least get me started.

On the Crafty Threads 'n' yarns forum we have Hope as the theme for our March Quilt-a-long (QAL from now on).  I suggested dragons, but that wasn't chosen, so I have suggested it again for April - I like dragons!  Hope is a lovely theme but I am still hoping for some inspiration to hit.