New Insights and New Projects

This post may be a little too introspective for most people, and that's OK. Skip it!

I had a talk with my ex recently. It was dumb to respond to him, but sometimes I'm dumb, so I did. It's great. After our "discussions" I'm usually pretty grumpy and ready to stew. He was really bad at a lot of things, but reminding me exactly why I am happy he is my ex has never been one of those things.

I made the mistake of telling him that we weren't ever going to be friends, but we shouldn't be enemies, which was clearly wrong. Here is a summary of his response: I have not been thinking about what you think/feel about me in the slightest. You got what you wanted and I have been trying to avoid any trigger that would bring you into thought. I have come to terms with my actions, my past inability to see truth in others*, and knowing that I have no control over others' actions toward me**.

So, just as I was starting to bristle at his self-righteous response I realized something... he's right, "You got what you wanted".

I got what I wanted out of this, and more. Yes, it sucks having someone you were married to hate you, but that's small change in comparison to the trade off. The trade off for me being, I don't have to spend the next 60 years in a miserable marriage, so why would I feel bad or guilty now that I got out of it?

I got out of a dangerous situation before permanent damage was done for either of us (i.e. kids!), I got to move back home, be close to my family. I got to find a great job with amazing people and eventually find a great Boyfriend who accepts me just as I am. So, yeah, despite everything else, even the really shitty times, and anything else that might be said, I got what I wanted and I'm really happy with where my life is.

One hundred percent moved on isn't going to be an overnight thing and maybe sometimes I'll still be a little bit bummed, but I'm moving forward from 1) Yes, having gotten exactly what I wanted and 2) being happy with those choices and where they have placed me.

And, that brings me to my next point!

New Project

For awhile, since I stopped cooking a lot, I have been struggling to find purpose for my blog. As much as I love complaining about ... well, everything ... no one is getting anything out of it, not even me.

The book! The book! 

I'm going to be redoing this blog soon, as part of a personal branding project for school. I'm going to be adding a personal portfolio and professional profile as the main website and this blog will be sectioned off as a smaller part of that. I will also do a better job of breaking it off into different subjects and highlighting areas of interest.

Anyways ... As part of this refocus, I decided to sign-up for an online non-fiction writing course and to buy a step-by-step writing guide to keep me on track and give me some purpose. I'll try to keep a regimen and work at a regular pace with a set schedule as I develop some personal essays.

I was inspired by my former professor and friend Becky Jo, who went to writing workshops and created some really wonderful blog pieces, and later published essays, based on her personal experiences. As I said, mine will be clearly marked! You can skip the sappy stuff.

As I go through this process, maybe people will continue to not get something out of these posts. But, for now, I will and that is really all I care about with this project.

*he means me
**he means me

Food & Wine Extravaganza!

This might be my longest post ever. We went to the Park City Food & Wine Festival this weekend and it was a ton of fun, not the event itself ... but being with Boyfriend.
First, I want to write a short review of the event itself and why we felt it was lackluster. Then, I will catalog everything that happened when we there.

Park City Food and Wine Festival 2015

Last year the event was hosted at the Canyons. The setting was wide open, there were vendors spread out across the field and an assortment of food options. This year it was at Deer Valley.

Despite how much I love to complain,
I will not complain about the view up there.

To start, this instantly put us at a disadvantage. The rooms at the Canyons seemed pricey last year at ~$200, this year it wasn't even an option to stay on location since the rooms started at $300 (THESE ARE THEIR SUMMER PRICES). So, instead of staying on location, which was extremely convenient last year, we had to find a hotel downtown and ride the bus up to the Montage.

The event itself was cramped and poorly organized. The staff was not very helpful and the organizers had split up the vendors, so that half of them were up on the veranda and the other half were down on the grand lawn. The vendors themselves we nice, but the food was much more limited. Instead of having additional food from Park City, the hosts brought in more of their own. There was the Deer Valley Montage kitchen and the Montage kitchens from their locations in South Carolina and California. It is the Park City Food and Wine festival ... not the Montage food festival.

Because it was so out of the way and so spread out during the event, this year palls in comparison to last year's event. I wish I could say better things about it, since we HAVE been looking forward to it all year but, sadly, we were both incredibly underwhelmed.

Now, I want to move on to telling you about the good things that actually happened to us while we were there, or maybe not even good things. Just ... things.

Getting There

Like I said, getting to the festival this year already presented us with a challenge. This becomes even more difficult if you do not prepare in advance.

Transit Center!

We thought it would be fairly simple to ride the bus from our hotel to the main transit center and hook up with the Deer Valley connection, which we did. Unfortunately, the Deer Valley connection was the wrong bus for Montage Deer Valley. So, we rode all the way up and then back to the main transit center so that we could hop on the Empire line to Montage Deer Valley. I don't know if that is a check against them ... or us.

The Main Event: The Toast of Park City

After we checked in to the event and got our wristbands, we headed out to the veranda and were a little surprised to see only about five wine vendors and Whole Foods as the food vendor (even though the hummus they were serving was delicious). We were frustrated and grumpy when we saw the event was split and we had to wait in another huge line to get to the bigger part of the event.

We look so nice! I spilled coffee on
Boyfriend's other shirt ... so
we bought this really nice one! Win-win!

Here is the part I don't understand-- they had everything blocked off. We weren't allowed to use the stairs and we were all being herded into one elevator, even though there were another five available. Event staff was everywhere and we had to dump our wine out before heading into one of the hallways, and we still couldn't get on our own elevator or head down the stairs. Is it snotty to say that if I'm paying $175+ per ticket, I expect a little bit more? Better organization! Better service! Let me hold my wine while I wait in line!

Lastly, I would like to complain that the event, which went from 2:30 to 6, had last call at 5:50 and I'm certain they stopped pouring before then thus not grasping the concept of last call ...

Getting Fed

Delicious! 

The majority of the vendors were fairly accommodating. More than that actually, they were great and friendly, even if for them that meant when they took the bison out of the bison taco they were really just handing me an itty-bitty two-inch tortilla,  with a smile!

Except ... for this one guy and his crew. They were making barbecued pork sandwiches with pickled onions on chibatta buns. When I inched up and requested a vegetarian one, he looked at me dismayed, exasperated and just flat-out confused before yelling, "It's PORK?!?! You just want some onions???" I nodded and said, "Yeah! Just onions." He rolled his eyes and about 15 seconds later a girl brought me a pickled onion sandwich.

Honestly, the most annoying part of this whole exchange was how funny Boyfriend thought it was. For the next hour he would randomly reenact the scene and yell out, "It's PORK!" then start laughing.

Wrapping Up

Laying in the shade. That lady in the picture
yelled at me for wearing white to a
wine tasting.

After an hour or so, we were ... um ... tired. We needed a rest. So, I found us some shade, which happened to be directly behind the High West Distillery tent, to take a nap in. I didn't notice that every single person ordering a drink from High West had to look at me sprawled out behind the tent...until some very friendly gentleman started laughing, took a picture, gave us a thumbs up and left. 

By the time last call came around, I think we were ready. I felt good. Not too full and not really that drunk. I think the "not too drunk" is the one good thing about there being less vendors. I was able to pace myself, take that small napping break and feel OK. 

Getting Home ... 

Getting home was the best and worst part of the evening. We took the bus up to Deer Valley, as their website advised. Somehow there was a disconnect ... the buses stopped running at 4 p.m., meaning no bus would be coming to take us back down the mountain. Additionally, we lacked cell phone service so we couldn't call anybody.

Driver John! So nice! Such a great
driver too!

Our friends! Whose names I do not know. They
were also very nice. I would hitchhike with them
10 times out of 10!

So, what did we do? We started walking and stuck our thumbs out along the way. Actually, Boyfriend did since I'm not a huge fan of interacting with strangers. We'd been walking about ten minutes and our group had grown by two, we started talking to two girls who faced our same dilemma, when finally I stuck out my thumb. I was sick of every single car (with only one person in it!!!) passing us by. 

I don't want to sound vain, which is hard because I am, but the first time I stuck my thumb out a guy stopped. It was great. Like magic. Probably coincidence ... but I'm going to take the credit anyway. 

The guy who picked us up was really nice. He had just finished trail running and was actually just in town for work. I've never hitchhiked before, but ... since it was a great experience I'll probably look into this as a more regular form of transportation.

As soon as we got back to the hotel, we went to bed. It was only 6:30, so we woke up at 12:30 and now our sleeping schedules are incredibly off-kilter.

I'm not sure if we will go to the festival again if it is at Deer Valley next year. Though they have other events that I would like to check out instead of the Toast of Park City. Maybe we will do a stroll or something. 

I ran into a door during our
"be wide awake at midnight" adventure
because I refused to turn on the lights.

Hiking, Fireworks and Freedom!

Happy 4th of July everyone!

This morning Boyfriend and I did something pretty much unheard of. We woke up and left the house before 7 a.m., on a weekend!

For like ... a year, I have been promising Boyfriend I would take him to the Uinta Mountains -- an area in the northeastern part of the state with hundreds of miles of hiking trails and high mountain lakes. Since it is only a ninety minute drive, I was really slacking for not having taken him there yet.

I'm so glad we finally went! As soon as we entered the forest area Boyfriend declared that it, "looks like Yellowstone!" his favorite place in the world and that, "it's super close to us!" So, I think we'll be spending a few more days up there this summer.

We hiked to Island Lake, starting at the Crystal Lake trail head, we were looking at about a seven-mile round trip trek. For the most part the trail was pretty clearly marked, at one point we came to some low cliffs that we could see the lake from. We decided to scramble down to the lake from there and save ourselves some time.

After some intrepid adventuring through the woods, we came to the lake. Except, it was the wrong lake. We left the trail and completely bypassed our turn to Island Lake, ending up at Lake Weir. So, efficient as we are, we added about another mile to mile and a half to our overall trip.

When we finally made it to Island Lake, we stopped for maybe thirty seconds and then in an anti-climatic turn of events just headed back down the trail. My family was spending the day at Mirror Lake and we wanted at least an hour or two to hang out with them.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way we entered a time warp:
time warp (noun)
1. any distortion of space-time
2. (General Physics) a hypothetical distortion of time in which people and events from one age can be imagined to exist in another age
3. an illusion in which time appears to stand still

For us, it is that first definition. We had been going at a fairly quick pace and made almost no stops, we both thought we were on the trails two and half to three hours. We were shocked when we got back to the car and saw we had been out for almost five hours! If you are thinking it was our ill-conceived detour that led to this massive amount of time lost, then you're wrong. The best fitting explanation is a supernatural, wibbly-wobbly time warp. We are looking into contacting the History channel to discuss our experience.

Aside from the space-time inconsistencies, it was a wonderful day in the mountains. I love that Boyfriend, who is getting his master's in environmental law, loves the outdoors as much as I do and that we can spend so much of our time enjoying it together. He's pretty great. If he could keep up with my fast pace for the duration our hikes he'd be pretty much perfect.

Tonight, we are going to hit the trails again, though a much less intense version, and go to the foot trails to watch the fireworks shows.

La-la-laaaaaaaagoon

Have I told you about Date Night yet? Yes? Maybe? Oh, look! I did here: March Maddness. Good, that saves me a lot of explaining.

This was my month to plan and I chose ... Lagoon! It is where fun is!! I haven't been there since I was about 19 and Boyfriend, not from Utah, has never ever been.

I found a promotion for it on KSL, Date Night. Two for one; a Wicked awesome deal. I actually had a different date night planned before I found this, but I can push it back to August until it is my turn again. When I found this coupon, I was beyond excited. Just thinking about going took me back to being 12, when going to Lagoon was cool. I imagined things going so well, Boyfriend and I were going to have so much fun riding rides and walking around eating junk food! We were going to relive the funnest parts of being a teenager (because there weren't that many).

Well... I was wrong. Because when you grow up, Lagoon makes you sick. Boyfriend got queasy after one ride, started sweating after the second and was completely hopeless after the third. Some of the lines were so short that I went on the Colossus a few times without him to see if he would start to feel better, but it was a fruitless endeavor. I was pretty bummed when we went home early and were in bed at a disgustingly respectable 10:45. Though to be fair about the overall trip, we did have a couple of good hours at Lagoon a Beach doing the slides and lazy river before starting on the roller coasters.

Colossus: The Fire Dragon,
Boyfriend could not handle the heat 

I want to go again this summer and ride all of the rides we didn't get a chance to go on, though I figure this time around I'll be riding solo*.

*Literally. I will be riding the rides alone.

Virginia Beach

Boyfriend and I are back from Virginia Beach! I'm happy to report that after one month of dedicated dieting, I blew all of my progress in four gluttonous days. I'm going to restart my diet in a few days. I was going to start right away, but Boyfriend reminded me that I promised to eat a whole pizza at the Pie with him when we were done with our diet in May. 

 

We had a really nice trip overall and it is definitely a place I would go again. The weather was hit and miss, but the water was warm enough that even on the chilly days that we got to head out on the nature trails or boogie board for a little bit.

I'm glad to be back home, though I wish I had a little more time off fro work to settle back in. I have a lot to think about. I've officially met all of Boyfriend's immediate family and, spent 4 days at a beach house with them.

Our trip started off fairly uneventful. We found a lovely person in our apartment complex to take care of Kitty and made it to the airport without issue. Unfortunately, our luck ended there. We had an awful layover in Philly, a city I have decided I hate, and our flight ended up being rerouted. Originally we were going to land in Norfolk, but instead had to land in Newport News, a tiny airport, because the fog limited visibility in Norfolk so badly. We then had to take a taxi back up to Norfolk, adding about 1 1/2 hours total to our travel time.

After a night of not sleeping on the plane and being run for loops at the airport Boyfriend, surprisingly, was in a very bad mood (usually I am the one in the bad mood). Boyfriend's bad mood made me even more nervous to go spend a week-ish with his family.

White leg ...  

Luckily, his brother was late to pick us up. So, in the additional 20 – 30 minutes we spent waiting, I was able to karate chop Boyfriend into behaving a little bit better.

The week overall went pretty well. Boyfriend's siblings are really nice and his niece (1) and nephew (2 1/2) are great. I got along the best with them – even though I don't have a special affinity for children, I feel better with them than adults that I don't know.

The best part about the trip, were the days we got to boogie board. We couldn't one of the days because the undertow was apparently so bad the lifeguards were not letting anyone out past their knees. The next day we were allowed to go in up to our thighs, but weren't supposed to boogie board. without flippers

... brown leg

In a rouge move, (that I DO NOT recommend or endorse for safety reasons) Boyfriend and I took our boogie boards and ran out to the water when the lifeguard wasn't looking. We got in a good 30 – 45 minutes before the supervisor came out and made the lifeguards kick everyone on boogie boards out again. It was totally worth it.

I want a house by an ocean, next to the mountains. If I could magically make Yellowstone ocean front property I would be happy. And, rich. Because I think a lot of other people would want to live there too and I would sell the land for a lot of money.

Forced Announcement

I can't believe it is already June. I say that every time I write a post at the beginning of the month. I'm going to try to stop, but from now on it is implied. Cool?

Boyfriend and I are getting ready to go to Virginia Beach. We are going to be spending massive amounts of time in a beach house with his whole family. Nervous. Anxious! Wine? Wine will help.

So, lately I haven't been the greatest vegan. My "friend" Kent is annoyed that everyone doesn't know this. Apparently, the choices I make and what I choose to consume/put in my body is not a personal choice -- it is his business and everyone's business.

I've been eating eggs, from my friend Val's chickens and some cheese. It started as a small amount of farmers market cheese and has expanded from there. I would like to say that this slow descent was preceded by a thought process involving my values and code of ethics. Rather, it was preceded by a general apathy. I'm tired, I'm swapping my own convenience at the expense of other sentient beings. I realize that. I think there are a lot of things contributing to this lapse, but apathy is the most pertinent or maybe what the reasons all boil down to. And, I don't mind right now. I don't feel any worse for taking a step back for awhile. I don't often go easy on myself, but for once I'm not beating myself up about it.

On the positive side, it has been pretty wonderful. Boyfriend and I have a standing date every week where we go to Harmons and buy fancy cheeses on Fridays, after catching a matinee at Station Park. Small things in life. Plus, cheese goes great with wine.

Our date night spread, on a terrible Penn State plate.

I'm still vegetarian. I don't see myself changing that. But, honestly, anything could happen. Maybe I lied about not thinking about things, I'm probably just trying not to think about things right now while I get through the next few months. Or, maybe I'll push stuff off until I come to a breaking point or a realization. Or, maybe ... I'll just keep heading down this road until I decide to get back on track with veganism or vegetarianism. I'm enjoying life, trying to get through grad school and work. I have enough on my plate (HA! A pun!).

I'm thinking about redoing my blog. No matter I'm doing I don't feel like vegan is a big piece of who I am right now. It isn't a label that feels like "me" and blogging under the title just feels ... off. It isn't what I want to talk about, and I haven't been. I can't remember the last time I put up a recipe or restaurant review.

A really, really awful picture. Taken by said Kent Dunn.
Designed to show the lovely cheeseburger t-shirt that Boyfriend picked.

I'm open to suggestions for new name ideas, ideally things that involve raptors. Or, maybe I'll just continue to be lackadaisically hypocritical and blog as a non-vegan vegan.

Yellowstone 2015 and Boyfriend Turns 30

In 8th grade science we watched a documentary about Yellowstone's supervolcano. Because I am me, I spent the next few months not sleeping and fretting about the safety of my loved ones. If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted we were all going to die! We needed exit strategies, communication plans, safe-zones! Unfortunately, no one else seemed to care and it is very hard to create a Save the World manual (I will create a manual for anything) without at least a little bit of cooperation.

Luckily, I grew out of this phase. Not the worrying phase, just the worrying about supervolcanoworlddestruction phase. I still try to solve non-existent problems years in advance.

As I have stopped worrying about Yellowstone destroying me, after all there really is nothing I could do (trust me, I have run through all the scenarios) I have come to realize that it is one of the greatest places on Earth, if not the absolute greatest. It stands out for its geothermic activity, but that isn't even the best part. The wildlife experiences and the sheer beauty of the landscape make it a worthwhile venture, not to mention it is just a four hour drive from us.

Boyfriend and I did not die from the cold or extreme geothermic activity this weekend. We camped in a different location than last time and got to experience a whole new part of the park.

We got there late Friday night. The reports said to expect inclement weather (see previous whining), but we had no issues. Apparently, that wasn't the case for everyone. Boyfriend's sister was on her way over from Colorado and ended up having to camp out on the side of the road for the night so she wouldn't hydroplane and die.

By Saturday we had all arrived at Bridge Bay safely and were ready to see the park. We saw a lot of wildlife and the dark, ominous skies made for some gorgeous photos. It was so relaxing. I'm planning on relocating next summer so I can live in Yellowstone. Even if I have to hide out in the park and join a wolf pack.

It was a wonderful weekend and a great way (I'm speaking for him) to celebrate Boyfriend entering a new decade with the big 3-0.

Coyote

Bison

Orange Tent: Boyfriend's birthday present from me.
Given for selfish reasons, now we can go on LOTS OF CAMPING TRIPS!

Boyfriend making breakfast

Bison fording the river

Baby pronghorn, cutest ever

Baby bear ... cutest ever ...

Moose! One was male with tiny antlers

Bia and deer

Me!