this past weekend aiden and i went to the Festival of Trees.  the Festival of Trees, for those of you not in the know, is an annual fund raiser for a local children’s hospital where people decorate a tree using a theme of their choosing and oftentimes include gifts that fit that theme and then they auction off the trees for money and then that weekend everyone gets to wander about to look at the trees before the people who bought them get to take them home.  you know that website, the people of walmart?  the festival of trees has them beat.

but the displays are always so neat that aiden and i have made it a tradition to go, me with my camera, and him with some popcorn.

this year we had the added commentary of the hilarious hannah and her husband.  and although i would love to post my favorite trees i would rather post the strangeness that was this years addition: volunteers acting like mannequins.  it was freaking weird.

I love the one above… the guy in the vest thinks that leaning his cheek against a hard edge is a natural pose.  nerrrrrrrdy.

and this last one is for Alice… I had a Halloween party and she dressed as a flapper.  This is what a flapper looks like: flapper.  one of my party guests went up to Alice and said, “Oh my GOSH, you are the LAMP?  How funny!”

it took us awhile but we figured out that this is what she meant: the lamp.  so alice, this is for you.

9 out of 10 pirates drink rum… 1 out of 10 drink Pabst blue ribbon.

This past weekend I got to hang out with Salt Lake City’s coolest one-eyed pug, Daisy.  The first night I stayed over I admit I was a little nervous about ghosts, even though Daisy’s owner had promised me there weren’t any.  I asked Daisy if she would keep me company in the bedroom and that bitch looked at me with her one eye and stalked off to the living room to sleep.  I understood though, I clearly did not have the fabulous hair that her owner does – how could Daisy be expected to trust me much less fend off ghosts for me?

By the second evening however, Daisy and I were buds.  I think sharing an episode of Grey’s Anatomy helped… but it also could have been the fact that I had fed her three meals and some chicken snacks at that point.  I went into the bedroom and didn’t even have to invite Daisy in, she was all over the bed.  She snuggled up next to me and proceeded to snore like a well oiled chainsaw for the entire night.

Fortunately, I have practice sleeping with people who snore and have even been informed, by a fiance who will remain namelesss, that I myself snore.  I can only imagine that if someone had tried to come in that evening and burglarize the house, they would have run away in fear of ghosts wielding chainsaws.

July 24th is a holiday here in utah, it is the celebration of pioneers coming into the Salt Lake Valley and Brigham Young saying, “WHAT IS THAT SMELL???”.  Fortunately for me I got the day off of work.  I spent a lot of the day trying to relax but mostly fretting over all the things I wasn’t getting done – yay for being an adult.  i did somehow manage to get showered, dressed, and in heels in time for a party at Alice’s house in Magna.

the party was a rousing time, since the most important thing to do on a mormon holiday is to get drunk, and despite the fact that the lovely Alice forgot that the liquor store would be closed on a state holiday we had plenty to get drunk off of.  and before sundown aiden had to drag me away from the bottle of baileys so that we could attend sidestreet firework home show edition with his parents.  and herein lies the problem with this state holiday: people get so damned excited about fireworks!

they have a show at the park near aiden’s parent’s home and no matter what we did we could not seem to avoid the traffic.  the baileys started to wear off and i was getting a little annoyed – i may have shouted “Come on!” at a group of teenagers who ran in front of our car while we had a green light.  lame.  at this point we started weaving through side streets, and this is where it got fun.

apparently i am not the only one who uses the holiday for extracurricular drinking.  this guy and his girlfriend(?) were having some kind of street fight in front of a line of cars trying to get away from the park traffic.  since it was so hot aiden had the windows open and we definitely caught a lot of words that i wasn’t even aware could be spoken in the state of utah without a lightning bolt coming straight out of the sky and killing the speaker dead.  the guy got really fed up and got into his truck and slammed the door – hard.

how hard?  so hard that his sideview mirror broke off and slammed against the side of truck hanging on only by a slim wire.  aiden and i had been ignoring the guy up to this point but the THWACK from his sideview mirror was a little startling and so we both looked.  we also happened to be level with this guy’s car at this point.

this asshole looked straight at aiden and i, before we even had a second to build enough shame to look away and pretend we hadn’t seen or heard, and said, “What the FUCK are you looking at?!?!?!”

And I couldn’t help it, I started laughing like a crazy person.  Fortunately the traffic started moving because I am pretty sure that this guy would have gotten out of his car and killed me.  there is nothing like a utah holiday to remind you that street fireworks are so much safer than white trash ones.

I have a new co-worker, Talia, and she has moved here from Seattle… yeah i don’t know why either.  we were discussing a person that she had been trying to set up Primary Care for that was from Wyoming.  she kept telling me they were from (long pause) Wyoming.  i finally asked her what the deal with the big pause was.

Talia: Well the town is like a kuh.

Me: Cheyenne?

Talia: No.  Like kamar?

Me: Kamas?  No that’s in Utah.

Talia: See?  It is spelled K E M M E R E R.

Me: Oh, what?  Kehmmmmmmerererer

Talia: Yeah.

Me: If that were a town in Utah it would be pronounced Tooele (Two-well-uh).

Talia: What?

Me: Welcome to Utah.

it has been snowing like crazy this past week and i hate it.  a white christmas sounds so nostalgic but what is so wrong with a green christmas?  it also makes it hard to do that last minute shopping i need to get done.  i usually get the initial part of my shopping done the weekend after thanksgiving, you know, the big items.  but then i get happy about being almost done and i don’t get any further until the weekend before christmas.

and it is really hard to last minute shop when there is snow, ice, slush, and salt everywhere.  and the mall that is close to my house is an outdoor mall.  why do we have an outdoor mall here?  tooooooooooo hot in the summer and way too cold and miserable in the winter.  who thought that up?  probably the same person who was being carried in his cot into the valley and spoke with delirious fever when he said to his group, “THIS is the place.”

bah humbug.

i don’t know why i read the KSL comments anymore.  everything gravitates to gay marriage.  and you get all of these comments about how “they” are tired of being told that “they” are being bigoted and wrong.  and i just want to roll my eyes.  yes, it is YOU being attacked, YOUR livelihood.  not the other way around.

i love how bigoted “christians” always turn it around about how “they” are being attacked.  because the problem is, they don’t have a leg to stand on and they must cling to their smoke and mirrors.  the sanctity of marriage?  by whose standards… God supposedly?  Ever heard of separation of church and state?  mommy, they’ve heard of the constitution and they’re picking on me!

two consenting adults in love.  not one person and an animal.  not an adult and a child.  why can’t you pull your head out of your ass long enough to realize that EVERY ADULT HUMAN BEING should be given the same rights.  and those rights include being able to marry WHOMever they wish be it male or female. 

what keeps me sleeping at night is the knowledge that soon comes the day that the supreme court rules this denial of rights unconstitutional.

on saturday aiden took me on the salt lake city ghost tours.  yes, it IS as lame as it sounds.  but what was neat was that i caught some orbs with my camera.  i’m one of those “it’s dust you idiot” when people use this as evidence of ghosts but then i’ve never caught orbs in pictures i’ve taken before.  i’m not using this as proof of ghosts, i’m just saying that it is weird.  Out of 86 pictures I took on the tour only 7 had orbs.

These were from Fort Douglas:

So, slightly spooky, at least I got these pictures.  The ladies doing the tours were incredibly boring and horrible at story telling.  I could just, I don’t know, not wear a shirt and show the 7 pictures I got and I’d be more entertaining… ooh, I think I just found myself a new job.

i’m obsessed with knowing the weather in Seattle and San Francisco.  this is partially to get me excited about the fact that in two years i will most likely be moving to one of those places.  i can’t help but get excited about places that have clouds and rain generally on their forecast.  i love clouds and rain.  i hate extreme heat and extreme snow.  why am i living here again?  oh yeah, i kind of like some people here.

this coming week it is raining in seattle.  so jealous.  because although they have promised clouds in salt lake i know they are lying.  they also promise highs maxing out at 92, this would also be a lie.  92 in the shade?  maybe if your thermometer doesn’t count higher than 92.  ugh.

and in san francisco?  what else?  mid sixties, partly cloudy, and fog in the early morning.  it is only possible for me to imagine heaven in a place like san francisco.  and the fact that they allow gays to marry?  icing on the freaking cake.

this just in: i’m moving to san francisco… right now.

this friday i was invited to attend a wedding ceremony between a co-worker of mine and her girlfriend.  i thought it was pretty neat that, even though i’m a resident of utah, i was invited to a lesbian wedding.  my co-worker is a very sweet and spunky person and i was more than honored that they would want me to share in something so special to the two of them.

and somehow, i was thinking that salt lake at the very least was progressive enough that this kind of thing wouldn’t be an issue.  but today i was reading ksl (for my daily dose of stupid) when lo and behold, there they were.  apparently when they ran their wedding announcement in a logan newspaper there was some ruffling of feathers amongst the bigots-with-nothing-better-to-do.

the best part was reading the comments on ksl.  i picked out some that made me nod, rather than the ones that made my jaw drop… for the very near future at least, i’m the only one allowed to make stupid comments on my website.  i’m tired of the stupid arguments, i don’t care what you people think, the minute they legalize all consenting adult marriages i am going to make them legalize marriage to animals so that i can marry my dog.

anyway, proof that although they don’t make headlines, there are compassionate normal human beings amongst the crazy bigots in utah.

by Nemesis
And I cannot tell you how much I disagree with these comments from people saying that we are not fitting one mold or so on.  I think it’s great you all have found a doctrine to live your life by, but it shouldn’t be the government’s job to enforce religious doctrine, Nor should the newspaper. We all are entitled to our freedoms of choice. If you choose not to subscribe to that paper anymore that is your choice. But really how HATEFUL ARE WE BEING? Not only is it unconstitutional, but even if you believe in the religious doctrine being enforced it’s a can of worms you wouldn’t want to open, as it would only be a matter of time before some other religion would try to get the government to enforce their believes on you.

I have no problem with you believing I’m gonna burn because living together before marriage is an abomination, Or having a commitment ceremony between consenting adults who are in love and want to celebrate that fact. We do not Shun the couples who announce their marriages who are straight and we do not hear the GAY community standing up and saying it is not fair, they generally are happy for their straight friends who are getting married.
What’s more our abomination is in no way, shape, or form affecting you or your ability to follow your self imposed rules.

You may be willing to gleefully oppress your fellow law o biding, tax paying, neighbors, simply for not believing everything you want them to believe (not very Christian of you BTW), but I prefer keeping the government out of our personal lives as much as possible; and that means giving others the free choice to make their own decisions, even one’s you may believe to be mistakes.

If you have any reasonable legal or financial reasons not to let the most important and critical decisions of a persons life be made by the people they themselves have chosen to be the biggest part of that life, I’d love to hear them. But if your only reason for objecting is because you want the government to play religious hall monitor you might not have thought your cunning plan all the way through.

by PD
… then take the word marriage out of our legal code… it has no place there, by your definition. The founding fathers were trying to get away from religious oppression in the form of state sponsored religion. To codify marriage in a religious fashion builds religious beliefs into our legal code. Where do you draw that line… do you have the right to marry more than one woman (or child), as some fundamentalists believe? Does a “true” marriage have to be solemnized in a temple before it will be recognized by the state? Do you have to make a vow to raise your children Catholic in order to receive the legal and tax benefits of marriage?

Let’s just do away with the concept of a government sanctioned marriage altogether. We can recognize “civil unions” (or whatever name you want to give them) for the purposes of tax relief, medical and property decisions, and apparently the right to announce your intent to be with another person in the newspaper. The term marriage can be reserved for the religious community. It can be defined by each religion and apply only to those they deem suitable.

And I hate to tell you, Ryan, but your viewpoint is narrow minded. You have one view of marriage; the LDS viewpoint apparently. My Catholic upbringing doesn’t go off on some belief (yes, it is a belief, not a verifiable fact) that there is some biologically determined eternal bond that extends beyond death. Does that make a Catholic marriage less spiritual or moral than an LDS marriage? Does either make my non-denominational marriage less legitimate? Open your mind… there are other traditions, beliefs, and rituals other than the ones you prescribe to. Morality is subjective… it’s a function of your belief system and the politics surrounding that belief system.

You epitomize the problem with the “religious right” in this country.

thank you to Laytonmom and Rachel C for many, many, many laughs.  If you have nothing better to do you should check out some of the comments on the site, at the time i hit publish there were 613.