Blasphemy And Other Avocations

Living in an area with a high concentration of Christians whose religion is only slightly less restrictive than the Amish faith, it was refreshing to be surrounded by people celebrating the Hindu holiday of, well, Holi Day.

Lathmar Holi, also known as the "Festival of Color," has been going on in other parts of the world for around 5000 years. But according to the coverage presented by our local Fox affiliate, the Lotus Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah is the only place where the Festival of Colors is celebrated in the United States.

Too bad for the rest of you non-Utah people because it was awesome.

This was our first excursion, the Kid and I. I'd passed the Hari Krishna Temple last fall on our way to Moab, and it's a beautiful building.

Situated on a hill surrounded by farmland, cars were parked on the side of the main road for miles. With my penchant for being early, we got a great spot across the street and only paid $5 to park. Being from Chicago, I can tell you that $5 to park in the middle of some dude's cow pasture is a hella deal.

So that was a win, and we didn't have to wait in line very long to buy the colored chalk-like powder you throw in the air, and at people, and on stuff… And sometimes you just rub it in someone's hair. And the powder is also scented, which is good, because if most of the other people were like us, they also eschewed their daily shower until they got home, knowing they'd be covered. What we didn't know was how hard it would be to breathe while the throwing is going on and next year we will make sure we do the following:

Wear a bandanna and sunglasses.

White and black clothes bring out the brightness of the colors.

Cover your camera in plastic wrap.

Bring someone you love.

In other news, Zita, the most recent foster cat, found her forever home this weekend with a friend of mine. We met while volunteering for Sundance, share the same initials, and worked on a movie together a few years back. She saw the kitty on Facebook, decided to visit her at an adoption event, and fell in love. She is both pleased and astonished at Zita's tenacious personality and is happy to be able to give her a forever home. However, our big fluffy white dog Luna, who thought the cat was her pet, has been searching for Zita for two days now.

But she'll get over it.

My short, Splitting The Difference is available from Amazon.com and everyone who purchases a copy between now and December 2012 gets a free Mayan Calendar!*

*Not really. Have you any idea how much shipping would be? Those puppies are made of stone. Plus if you liked it you wouldn't be able to get another one for 2013 because the World's supposed to end.

The Year Of Intermittent Sorrow

The Rollercoaster of Stress has been ricocheting around the twisted track at full speed this year.

It started with a fire at Ro's house in the early hours of New Year's Day, and continued when back problems, and car problems threw a big ol' wrench into the mix. Losing two dogs of our own, plus Harley the barn dog, a dear friend's medical issues, her dear friends freak accidental death, and this morning the passing of Mr. Slave Driver's father have labeled 2010 as "The Year That Couldn't End Fast E-Freakin' Nough."

I like it when the pendulum of my life swings in a low, slow, methodical arc. We don't win the Lottery, but nobody falls off a donkey on the way down the Grand Canyon. Literary Agents don't knock each other over to sign me for representation, but nobody's says, "Quit now. Take up golf. Or croquet."

At least not yet. There's still three months to go…

So today, in honor of The Year That Sucks Ass, I'm showing you my happy place. I love it there. It's a beautiful, spiritual place, ethereal with quiet grace and stunning vistas.

Moab.



The original Moab, according to Wikipedia, is "the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in modern-day Jordan, running along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea."

Our Moab is in Utah, south of I-70, close to the confluence of the Colorado and Green rivers.

So if your year has been anything like mine, take a deep breath, have a relaxing beverage, and enjoy.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Sunset in Southern Utah



First, I'd like to congratulate Doree, the winner of the Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner! Contest. Doree received a copy of Ignite Your Passion eBook. Thank you to all the folks who entered and I hope you keep entering contests and win big. Maybe next time you'll win a car or a luxury vacation. Not here, mind you, but somewhere…

We traveled to Buckeye, Arizona last weekend for my cousin's wedding. My cousin is considerably younger than me by about 25 years, so he's always been more like a nephew then a cousin. His family used to live in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania but they moved to Arizona a few years back so, along with my Mom in Tucson, they live closer to us than anyone else in our combined families.





Kanab, Utah

We drove. Driving 1200 miles over the course of 6 days sucks, especially when 1) you go through long stretches of landscape that is blah, 2) there is a bored teenager in the car who is missing Prom because of the trip and 3) your back hurts from sitting in the car for hours at a time. But I don't like to fly and we brought our travel trailer to stay in while in Buckeye so there you go.




The Palm golf course in Goodyear, AZ.

The wedding venue was a golf course, and it was beautiful. And it was great to see everyone. Now I have to catch up on all the things that fell to the wayside while I was gone. But here are a few pictures to amuse you until I write again.



My brother has taken dance lessons, so he decided to teach The Kid how to dance. The problem with the women in our family is we always try to lead.

The Kid and her dad during the Daddy/Daughter dance. Yes, that is blue in her hair. She has a fabulous GPA, doesn't drink or do drugs, is employed and generally is a good kid. One learns to pick one's battles... Plus, ironically, it matched the wedding colors.


My uncle and his daughter during the Daddy/Daughter dance.




We brought Sammie Two Chews along because she travels well. She sits on the arms rest between the front seats in her bed. The thing she found most annoying was there were all these great new people she wanted to say "Hi" to at the RV parks we stayed at, but they all had dogs with them. Sammie loves people, she hates dogs. So she was very frustrated. And by the time we arrived home, She.Was.Done.

*Ski O'Clock

We went to Alta yesterday. For those of you who are flatlanders or not from here, or maybe you have no notion about the world of skiing, Alta is a ski area ( I hesitate to call it a "resort", and this post explains why) located at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, up the road from Snowbird, and is home to some of the finest skiing (and snow) in the United States. Luckily for us it's about 35 minutes from our driveway to their parking lot.



For the local, Alta is where you go and blend in, without worrying about looking poor, or uncouth. For example, my tribe brings our own food. At a place like Solitude (located in Big Cottonwood Canyon, down the road from Brighton) they have a "special" lunchroom, named "The Brown Bag", where you are invited to bring your culinary sundries and nosh in an informal area that has amenities such as a television and one microwave oven you share with 164 other people. It's reminiscent of the "Steerage" area on a luxury liner, and is permeated with the smell of Fruit Loops, dirty diapers, and Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches. In other words, it's gross.

Alta, on the other hand, has no such delineation. Buy food, bring your own, they don't care. Now, you might wonder why I prefer to dine in an area designed for food purchased from said ski business as opposed to dining in an area reserved for those who have chosen, for whatever reason, to bring their own meals.

Well, for one, because it's a "restaurant", people don't feel free to change their child's diapers right there on the table next to you. Not only is it frowned upon, and ruins the ambiance, but it is in violation of health code. I'm able to dine with confidence, knowing that not only was my table bussed and wiped with sanitizer, it has also been kept, due to county health regulations, virtually ass free. I appreciate the little things like that.

For another thing, they do not make you feel disenfranchised because you, as a local, have chosen not to purchase a $9.00 bowl of bad chili. Because while you can pile as much shredded cheese, diced onions and sour cream on top as you want, you'll never make that .75¢ bowl of chili worth $9.00, no matter how much of your condiments overflow across your tray.

Also, you can camp. "Camping" for those of you unfamiliar with the restaurant trade, is a term used by wait staff when a table has been occupied by the same group for hours on end. This means that management has been unable to re-seat that particular piece of real estate and the server will only be getting a single tip for hours upon hours of occupation. And from experience I can tell you it's not going to be a big one. So, because the Alta Lodge is designed to be a cafeteria style eatery, one can hang out for eons and not feel the need to move on after 45 minutes or so by a hostess circling your table like a turkey vulture wanting you to move on.


(The best thing about skiing Alta on a Sunday is... no crowds. YAY!)
Alta also is a skier's mountain, so no snowboarders are allowed (sorry Stacey…) which I really like because I'm not that great of a skier so after about three hours I.Am.Done. and need to park my sore ass at a table and chill. Note that I said at, not on. Thus the table is still ass free. And I can ski with confidence, for me at least, secure in the knowledge that a teenager will not be hucking a big one over the top of my head, forcing me to duck at the incoming missile they become, laughing at me when I sprawl on the snow in an act of self preservation. This I like. No diving for cover.

Now, at some of the resorts in Park City, you are treated like royalty. At the Canyons, for example, a guest rides a gondola from the parking area to the ski village. Young, good looking Aussies and New Zealander's, working here during their summer, take your equipment out of your hands, place it into the ski/board slots on the exterior of the gondola, and you ride in relative comfort up the hill until you arrive at the village where yet more ruggedly handsome model-wanna-be's remove your gear and offer to get you a "Ski Valet" who will slog your shit expensive equipment to the lifts. They expect a tip, by the way. And I don't blame them because after a while your stuff gets heavy and one prefers to be fresh when one hits the slopes. At Alta, unless you've taken the ski bus or a shuttle from one of the rental lodges to the door, everyone parks and drags their own equipment to the facilities. They do not have a group of Sherpas to tote your crap from point A to point B. Being a pack mule is a great equalizer.


(Being a pack mule is one thing but packing small humans is another. Three words: Get.A.Sitter.)

So Alta, while being one of the best ski destinations around, is not a "resort", it's a mountain. And one we enjoy sojourning to regularly in the winter (and occasionally in the summer, where you can hike the same hill's you ski) because nobody knows if you're one of the unfortunate visitors, or a lucky, lucky local. And lucky we are; I see the envy in the eyes of tourists whenever they find out that we live here. We can drive up in less than an hour. And bring our own lunch.



*Ski O'Clock is what the locals of Park City call the time, in winter, between 4-6 pm when the resorts without night skiing start closing down and tourists clog the arterial roads clamoring to get back to their hotels. I won’t tell you what they call the ten days of the Sundance Film Festival. Trust me, it's not pleasant.

*It Must Be Something In The Dairy Air

My tribe took a ride north this weekend to visit Wease. Because her house is small we brought my travel trailer along to stay in. So, essentially we camped in her front yard.

All six of us were there Friday night; ~A~, Oli, Bill, The Fabulous Todd, Wease and yours truly. We went to a restaurant down the street from Weases for dinner because when we get together we tend to drink a lot, and after the first round of drinks we don't drive anywhere. The restaurant is within walking distance, so they get a lot of our business. A lot.

We checked on Kid, retired carriage horse, and fussed over Wease's new baby.



"Slave Driver fussing over a new baby?" You wonder."Is she sick or something?"



Well, it's a horse baby, so yes. If it had been the human kind we would have avoided Wease's place like it was infested with plague carrying rats and perfume snipers from Dillards.



Wease took The Fabulous Todd and I on what she calls "The Cemetery Tour", which is a ride through her neighborhood to, you guessed it, the local cemetery. It was quite beautiful, and Kid did excellent, only acting up a bit when a curious cow stood at the fence and mooed at us. Kid, you see, is a city boy, and it confirmed my suspicions that our horses are desensitized to the noise and pace of the mechanized city but if confronted by a bovine they would have reservations. Kid's reaction was to pick up the pace and jog a bit, which was a little uncomfortable for me since the gig is a two person vehicle and we had stuffed in three, The Fabulous Todd essentially sitting in my lap.



Wease wanted to show us a secluded house she likes, so under cover of darkness we rolled up their private semi-circular drive, Wease admonishing us to "Shhh," since we were giggling the whole time. Of course the clomping of Kid and crunching grind of the buggy wheels was totally not noisy… We called it an Amish Drive-by Shunning, and I have to wonder what the owners thought the next morning when they found wheel tracks and hoof prints in their driveway…

I imagine it was a "WTF" moment.

Upon our return we drank a lot more and played Rummikub, during which our conversation turned to a well worn topic—Zombies.

(I bet you thought I was gonna say Radical Animal Rights Activists, huh? They do have certain similarities.)

Wease noted that since my trailer has sleeping areas that flop down and are soft sided, similar to a pop-up camper (referred to in the Western RV camping world as a "Grizzly Bear Boxed Lunch") that Zombies would have easy access to the area where certain members of our tribe would be sleeping. Wease, you see, keeps a sword hanging on the wall in her living room, a la "Sean of the Dead", in case of an attack, stating that, "One can never be too careful when it comes to Zombies."

I had always thought the quote was "One can never be to rich or too thin", but that obviously does not apply to us.

We mapped out our plan, just in case, and it was decided by a majority that since Bill was inebriated, he would sleep on one end and be used as bait, so the rest of us could escape into the house to barricade and arm ourselves in case of an attack.

Bill, however, foiled our plan by sleeping in his car. Luckily the night was Zombie-free.

Saturday morning brought the end of the visit of both The Fabulous Todd and Bill, both of whom had other, seemingly better, things to do, so they left and we decided to go into Idaho for breakfast, a bit of shopping, and lottery tickets (no gambling of any kind is tolerated legal in Utah).

We were also running a little low on booze. Go figure.

After shopping we spent the rest of the day drinking, eating, and playing Rummikub, with the exception of taking a break to watch an old movie called "The Dancing Pirate" which we picked up at a five and dime in Preston, Idaho, mocking it Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.

Ah, good times.

We even manages to have a campfire and roast marshmallows.



And, of course, we got tattoos, which is traditional when we go visit Wease. They're the stick on kind, but it still counts. Because, as everyone knows, Like garlic for vampires, tattoos ward off Zombies. Which is another reason we used Bill for bait. He does'nt have any.




We never did fall victim to a Zombie attack. We did, however, learn that Oli not only considers "7" to be a number, but it's also a color.



*Cache County, Utah, is famous for its dairy products. The overall odor surrounding Wease's home can only be described as "cow".

Capitol Reef Gets No Love—

I know it's been a few days, but we returned home and had to unpack and remember, I've been "gone" for close to a month now. So needless to say there was a lot of stuff to catch up on.

We packed up Saturday morning and headed to Torrey, Utah, which is 1) just outside Capitol Reef National Park and 2) is in the area I'm setting the next story I've got in mind. I am a little bit familiar with the area because of a Carriage Drivers Campout I went on with my buddies a few years ago but my family did not accompany me on that excursion so they were newbies.

Unlike the other parks which mostly go down in elevation because you are on the top, Capitol Reef rises up out of the ground to breathtaking heights as you drive along the highway. We stayed at an RV park in Torrey that is adjacent to the plateau rising at the base of Thousand Lakes Mountain. It's very impressive. No little foothills, no pre-curser to what you are about to hit, just wham! Wall. You can see where the mesa sides have crumbled and formed little "ramps" of rock leading up to the face.

Now, let me tell you the weaksauce part; we've been to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Zion, and even the north rim of the Grand Canyon, but this? This is fabulous and it was virtually empty! And even worse this was one of three "Freebie Weekends" the government had to promote the national parks system. Most years there is only one free weekend. So even on a free weekend, Capitol Reef can't get no love.

Sad.









Anyway, I have to go and run errands now. I need to get some "real" writing done, not just my blog stuff (no offense but nobody's ever gonna want to publish this blog… few people are reading it these days anyway, so— ) and I have to come up with a costume for Saturday since I'm helping Ro do a gig at a senior's center and the theme is pirates.

Argh! PIRATES!!!

Take A Hike!

At Kodachrome Basin State Park we drove around for a while and then took a hike.

At one point we let The Kid drive (she has a permit, God help us…)
because the park was fairly empty and we were on a deserted dirt road. It surprised us that this park was so empty but the ranger at the gate said because it's so hot here in August the park gets little traffic but it picks up again in September.

Named for the Kodak product, because of its photographability (I know it's not a word, but you get the point!) I found it ironic because they just recently quit manufacturing that particular line of film.

So, once again, beautiful. Empty. Colorful. And then of course, because despite our ages we're really immature, we giggled all the way out of the park because of one particular stone…structure.