Road Tripping

The Red Rocks of St George

I love taking road trips. I love to travel, so any chance I get to get into a car and just drive I'm all for it. This past weekend I got to take a trip up to Utah with my dad, brother and mom. It was just what I needed. I even took a day off work. My co-workers did miss me. Which is always nice.

The road from Vegas to Provo, UT isn't that scenic but it was fun to see the brown desert change into the green high mountain plateau of Utah County. Here are some pictures of the road:

The Virgin River Gorge

The halfway point to Provo is Beaver, UT. A small little town that is near and dear to my heart because of the four months I spent there as a missionary for the church.

There was snow on the mountains as we past and we knew we were in for a cold weekend. Coming from 80* weather in Vegas. It was a good thing we packed some winter coats and scarves.







I always love catching sight of the many temples found along the road. Here are a couple we saw:

St George Temple...the small white thing in the middle

The new Payson temple still under construction, its going to be huge

New Provo Tabernacle Temple, still undergoing reconstruction work

There are many ways to keep ourselves occupied on long trips, my brother's idea is listening to music on his phone:

Mine was making a cool chain out of candy wrappers:

Fun times. Can't wait for my next trip.

Good Books - An Acceptable Time

So it has been a really busy weekend for me and I will have fun blogging about it for the rest of the week but first I wanted to be sure to post this weeks Good Books pick. I was looking through my books this past week trying to decide which one to choose and I came across this one. A flood of memories come back whenever I look at this book cover. This week's book is "An Acceptable Time" by Madeleine L'Engle:

This author is most famous for her works: "A Wrinkle in Time", "A Wind in the Door", "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", and "Many Waters".

But out of all of these "An Acceptable Time" is the one I've picked up to read over and over again. It is kind of a fifth book to the "Wrinkle in Time" (adventures with the Murry Family) series but instead of this being about the Murry children it is about Mr and Mrs Murry's granddaughter Polly, who comes to live with them. She is the oldest daughter of Meg and Calvin O'Keefe, and she comes to stay with her grandparents in the New England area to study with them. Both of them are renowned scientists. Polly herself is very smart and has been mostly home taught by her parents on an island off the coast of the Carolinas.
She thinks her time with her grandparents will be filled with study and mundane life but all that changes with the appearance of a stray dog and some strange encounters with a traditionally dressed Native American girl that visits Polly at her grandparents new indoor lap pool. They had had the pool installed for her grandfather's health. But when they were dinging the hole for the pool they discovered an underground river.

Some of the Murry's friends tell Polly about the Ogham stones they have found around the neighborhood. Ogham stones are stones that the ancient Celts of northern Europe wrote on. They used an alphabet consisting of lines.

Which leads everyone to ponder the idea that some of the Celts had migrated to the Americas thousands of years ago and had lived with the natives, leaving behind their stones.
Then things get strange when Polly and a couple of her friends are transported 3,000 years into the past, where they meet Druids and natives living together. And where they find Standing Stones on the same spot that the Murry home will be built.

Polly has to find out why they were taken into the past, and has to figure out how to get them home again.

I think it was because of this book that I decided to studied History in college and where I fell in love with the Celtic lore. This is a fun easy read that just adds enough sciency stuff to make it interesting but not too boring. If you have read "A Wrinkle in Time" and the books that follow, you will love this one as well.

His big day

This past Sunday was my dad's birthday. So of course we had to have a little celebration. My family isn't really a big cake eating family, so I knew if I had made him a big cake it would end up sitting on the counter eventually going either hard or bad.

My solution was this adorable little cake and some bite size friends:

A while back we had bought a tiny cake tin, I think it was for my Grandma's birthday cake. But it is the prefect size for a personal cake. No need to share. Dad got a kick out of it, here he is doing the honor of blowing out the candles:

The candles were pretty crazy, and they melted fast so the cake ended up having as much wax on it as sprinkles. Fun times!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Good Books - Thousand Words for Stranger

This week I've decided to share my favorite science fiction novel. I've always been a huge fan of the Star Wars universe so when I read this book I loved it. It isn't set in that universe but it has the same feel and genre to that of Star Wars. Gritty dirty space travel. The book is "A Thousand Words for Stranger" by Julie E. Czerneda:

As you can tell from my picture, this book is almost as well loved as my copy of "Watership Down". I honestly can't remember where I first acquired this book, but I have read it several times now.
The story is told through the eyes of one girl. The book starts with her waking up in an ally of a ship port on a strange planet. She doesn't know who she is, she doesn't even know what species she is, or how she got to where she is. All she can remember is that she needs to find "his" ship. And she doesn't even know who "he" is. After a bit of searching she finds a ship captain named Jason Morgan. She asks to join his crew but he travels alone so he directs her to another ship. But before she gets there she finds herself getting captured by space slavers when they discover what she is. Jason finds out what has happened and rescues her and allows her to stay on his ship until they reach the next space port.

Their adventure starts there. They are chased by many different creatures all trying to capture her. In the mean time she is trying to remember who she is and why she is wanted by so many. Jason calls her "Sira" and he thinks she might be one of The Clan, a race of extremely strong telepathic humanoids. The question of why she ended up at his ship, which he doesn't think is coincidence, he continues to try to figure out throughout the book. His big secret is that he is one of the rare human telepathes that The Clan have been hunting down and killing. He has survived by living alone. His new goal is to protect both himself and Sira from whatever The Clan wants them for.
There is a great clean love story that develops between Jason and Sira. Neither one knows how things are going to end when she eventually gets her memories back. But they learn to trust one another completely.
I can't say enough good things about this book. For a science fiction romance it is very clean and very well written.

A few years back I was happy to discover the author had gone back to this universe and wrote two more sequels to Jason and Sira's story.

Sira has her memories back at the end of the first book and these two books answer the question of how Jason and her relationship goes on from there. "A Thousand Words for Stranger", can basically stand alone but if you want to know the "what happened after" story the sequels are pretty good.

"If ye are prepared ye shall not fear..."

    This week has been pretty productive for me I think. I was able to come up with a solution to my car's gas cap dilemma. Upon search and after questioning the helpful people at the auto parts store, I discovered that the part I was missing had never gotten lost before with anyone else. Normally that latch popping mechanism never pops off.... I'm just lucky I guess. As a consequence I couldn't find the part. My solution:

A locking gas cap and duck tape....the universe is held together by duck tape you know....or so I've heard. 

The cape works great...the tape, we are still working out the kinks. Since it gets so hot here the tape doesn't like to stick as well so I keep having to replace it.

Now the left side of my car matches the right side where I'm missing a hubcap.

Ohhh the joys of car ownership.

    On Monday, I went over to visit my dad and brother. My dad is on this emergency preparedness kick, and with all the natural disasters going on lately I can't blame him.  So he and I each started to put together a 72 hours kit. Since Vegas is a desert, if anything were to happen, having water would be key. So for the last little while I've been stocking up on water. Here is my stash and my 72 hours pack:

Not bad if I do say so myself. I'm feeling a little better now. My pack has enough food to last me about four days, and a first aid kit. I just have to add a few more things to it and I think I will really feel prepared.

      Since I've moved into my apartment I've been trying to get myself organized, but sadly I am just a couple bookcases short. As a consequence, a lot of my movies have just sat on the floor of my bedroom. Not a very good system, if I happen to want to watch one of them. The other day I was standing in my walk-in closet and thought to myself, "You know, if I moved those spare blankets to a higher shelf I could use this shelf to stack my movies." Perfect solution!

Now they are at eye level and easy to access. Why it took me so long is the silly thing.

    Lately I've gotten back into the artsy mood. We are coming up on autumn so I got out my silk flowers and redecorated a little in my front entry way.

Love those fall colors. Even though it is still about 80* outside, I know the cooler weather is just around the corner.

As a last note, here is my latest oil painting, still a work in progress but I thought I would try my hand at black canvas painting. I'm trying to capture that beautiful star nebula pictured in the book on the floor.

Good Books - Watership Down

Ever since I discovered the joys of reading I have been an avid reader. A little known fact about me, I was never really taught how to sound out words so my reading skills were really underdeveloped when I started 3rd grade. I was put in the lowest reading level and my spelling was horrible. It wasn't until 5th grade that I discovered that I really liked reading. I would memorize words and go from there. I had a wonderful 5th grade teacher that finally noticed the more advanced books I was reading during reading time. She had me read out loud for her and I was put in a more advanced reading level. And ever since then I have had a book close by.

Sadly lately I haven't been able to read as much as I would like. The older I have gotten the harder strain reading it has caused to my eyes. I have always had trouble with migraine headaches and it seems the more I read in one sitting causes me to get them.

I wanted to share some of my most favorite books. I figure I could do one of these every week for the fun of it. My all time favorite book has to be, hands down:

LOVE THIS BOOK! As you can tell from this poor worn out copy I've had for years. I've read it more times than I could count and still when I'm looking to read something, it is the first one I pick up and read my favorite parts.
I've had to do some repair to it. Clear packing tape does wonders to old book covers.








 Eventually I had to break down and buy the newest print just so I could retire the poor thing.

Watership Down, England

When my mother first handed me this book to read I had no idea of what to expect. I think I was about eleven years old when I first read it. The entire story is from the point of view of a group of rabbits in England. It's about their journey, leaving their birth home to escape an unknown danger. The main character Hazel has a younger brother that is a seer of sorts who warns them they must leave. They are able to convince about half a dozen more to join them and they make their way to a new home. Along the way you learn of their religion, their beliefs and their social structure. As the story progresses, Hazel becomes their Chief Rabbit. After many trials and running into a group of odd rabbits who try to kill them, they finally make it to their new home only to discover they don't have any female bunnies. Thus starts the quest to find another "warren" of rabbits to see if they can persuade some of them to join them.
There is fighting, adventure, danger and heroism. All the things that make a great epic. And what makes it fun is it is about little bunnies!

Over the years I have discovered that I am not the only fan of this great book. There was even an animated movie made of it. Though not as good as the book they did a good job keeping to the spirit of it.

This is not a movie for small children though. It has some pretty scary violent stuff in it.
But the story that really makes you love it is the friendship these rabbits develop with one another.
The hot head in the group is called Bigwig and at times he wants to be the leader because he is the biggest and strongest. But when Hazel and the others save his life he becomes Hazel's biggest supporter. My favorite part of the entire book is when Bigwig is fighting the evil "General". The General asks why Bigwig is basically throwing away his life just to guard a tunnel, Bigwig responses by saying "His Chief Rabbit told him too." This surprises the General because the whole time he thought Bigwig was their Chief Rabbit.

I highly recommend this book to anyone. I could read it over and over again and never get tired of it.
My recent discovery was this:

A kind of sequel to "Watership Down". Its a collections of short stories on a few things that happen after the events in the original book. They are fun little collection.

When I watched the TV Show "LOST" I got a kick out of the character Sawyer reading "Watership Down" and his comment, "You'd like it. It's about Bunnies."