Reunited!

For the last month or so (since my brother stole my dads car) my dad has been borrowing my scooter and riding it to the TRAX station. I didn't mind that he needed to use it (after all...they did basically buy me a car when I was 16, so who am I not to help them out?) but I'm so excited to have it back! Not only do I get cat calls all the time and get to park almost wherever I want, it's nice to be able to fill it up with $5 of gas and go all week without filling it up again! (For those of you doing the math at home, it's approx 100 mpg!)

Here's me and Boo (yes, I named my scooter) on the night I got her!

Bicycle! Bicycle! I want to ride my Bicycle!

I got pretty bored when I was all alone on my vacation last weekend in St. George that I did something that I don't really like, and don't do very often. I rode a bike! Matt and I are contemplating getting mountain bikes and picking that up as a habit, so I figured I'd better take the opportunity while I had a free bike to see if I liked it. Turns out it was quite fun!!
There is a nice bike trail that starts in Santa Clara by the house and leads to Snow Canyon National Park. Since I am out of practice for riding a bike I took a few breaks.

One of my water breaks at a park along the way...

At the park I ran into some St. George wildlife..And saw some cool cacti along the path too...I was relieved when I saw this sign...

But it turned out to be the longest mile of my life!! I'm not sure how long of a ride it actually was to Snow Canyon, but I'm pretty impressed that I made it.

Here's the proof. Thats me in front of the sign.

And in case that's not enough proof, you think I could have taken that photo anywhere, here's my bike at the enterance.

I was so proud of myself that I made it. It was a beautiful ride, but I was happy for it to be over. Hooray!

Really?!?!?

I think I'm offended. On my sisters blog she had a picture of me and Alanis Morrisette and had asked "Seperated at Birth?". Yea, I think not, but you decide.

Road Trip--Salt Lake to St George

***This will be entry #1 in a series of blogs describing my road trip over Memorial Day weekend****

Since it was a holiday weekend I decided to take an extra day off of work and head down to St. George. Matt wasn't feeling up to spending so much time in the car so I decided to head down solo. My parents (and aunt and uncle) have a really nice place down there, and since no one else was using it, I decided to take advantage of it.

Here's me and the house on a previous trip

Before I left Matt and I checked out the belts and hoses, and also all of my tires on the "high rolla Corolla" . All four tires were a little low, so before jumping jumping on the interstate I filled all of them up (including the spare). After finally getting out of horrendous traffic through Utah County I finally started jamming out to some music and started enjoying the trip. That is until about 8:40 p.m. I was about 10 miles outside of Beaver and one of my tires blew out! Bummer! I pulled over immediately and not even a minute later another car pulled over and a nice older man helped me change the tire. Although I wonder, is it helping if I just watched and provided the jack? Oh well! So being over 100 miles away from my destination I realized my donut tire wouldn't get me there and I'd need to replace it in Beaver. But seeing how it was almost 9 pm I was starting to worry that nowhere would be open and I'd be stuck in Beaver overnight. As I exited the interstate and headed to my usual gas station I realized there was a garage in the back of the property...and the doors were still open! I drove my car up to the doors like a bat out of hell and jumped out of the car ready to beg for a new tire! The nice man informed me that they were about to close....but that they'd quickly help me! Hallelujah!! That is the good news. The bad news is that I'm pretty sure I got robbed on the price. Turns out I had to replace the other back tire too, otherwise I would've had another blow out soon. So at $139.95 per tire plus other fees it ended up costing $330!! This trip was already turning out to be expensive!!

Showing off one of the new tires

All in all, between traffic, potty breaks, and of course the whole tire fiasco the trip ended up taking about 7 1/2 hours! (About 2 1/2 + more hours than usual!) I was just so happy to finally be there and hoped the next few days would be less eventful!

My Celebrity Look-alikes

I saw that Jenn and John did this on their blog, and so I just had to try it as well. I actually did two because I have two different looks: straight hair and curly hair. I got very different results, and even got a few men that matched too! I don't know if I should be insulted, or if they should be flattered!

Here are the results with curly hair.

Here are the results with straight hair.

I think I prefer the people that came up as my look-alikes with curly hair rather than the straight. In the past people have told me that I looked like Chelsea Clinton and Alanis Morrisette. Not to be rude, but I'm glad that they didn't show up on the list!

On This Day in History

My sister keeps encouraging me to blog more often. I guess for some crazy reason she actually likes to read my blog- go figure! I haven't blogged for a while because, lets face it, my life is pretty boring. Plus, I really don't want to be one of those people who blogs even when they have nothing to really blog about.
So I pulled out the old journal to see if something exciting happened on this day in the past. It turns out two years ago I was having quite the adventure in Italy. I was a loyal journal-writer on the trip, and looking back I found it all very amusing. Hopefully you will too! If nothing else, I know at least 2 people will find this entry interesting.

May 18, 2006
6:50 pm
I'm a hungry girl, good thing that I am on my way to a Tuscan dinner. This will be the end activity to a fun day spent if Florence, or Firenza as they say in Italia. So this morning started early as we headed into the city. We parked the coach on the river and then had a 10 minute walk into Santa Croce Square. This is hard to write on the coach. The Aussies behind me just commented on how I write every time we stop. I hope they don't have super good vision and realize I'm writing about them. If you can read this, stop it! Mind your own bloody business!

10:45 pm
Those crazy Aussies, I had to teach them a lesson! The crazy lady just yelled that Annemarie has herpes. Besides being crazy, I think she's a lesbian. She is one drunk, crazy lesbian! We are once again on the bus heading from dinner to the hotel. There was a lovely song about a mattress and making love on it-gotta love it! Where can I get that cd?

Dinner was fantastic! It was so much fun and a great meal. We ate dinner with the 4 girls from minnesota: Annemarie, Melissa, Courtney and Lindsey. The crazy lady is a writer apparently and is currently yelling at the nice Aussie mand and telling him he is selfish. Now she just told him to yell with you! Wow! C-R-A-Z-Y! Okay, so back to dinner...So can I just say that I can't remember the last time I did the macarena, before tonight that is! So back to the minnesota girls, not quite the hoochies that I thought they were. They were all very nice and had a lot of questions about the Mormons and of Utah. Well, mostly they just associated Utah with Elizabeth Smart and Lori Hacking..fantastic!

Dinner was huge, it was great! Dinner started with bread, then pasta and bean soup. Wait, I lied! In between those was some melon with prosciutto. I ate the melon, no prosciutto. After the soup came a plate with two kinds of pasta. I ordered the Florentine steak, which did not disappoint. Well, it could have been better if it wasn't on the bone. The steak came with fries (random), spinach (kinda yucky, it was cooked, not raw), and salad (the first one here, I was starting to think they didn't have them). And of course there was all the wine you could drink, and all the Coke for me and Melissa. After dinner began the dancing!

All night long there was a lady singing to us and at some points in the night she'd try to get us to sing along to songs we didn't know. Anyway, at first they switched to some nice old people dancing music (Italian style) and all the old people from the groups got up and danced, it was cute. Then the D.J. started playing more up tempo Italian music and Mauro came over to perk our table up, and grabbed Melissa to dance. So we all got up and were dancing, half-heartedly. But the party really began when the YMCA cam on and Mauro and Giuseppe were dancing in front of everyone! Between seeing them (Mauro and Giuseppe) and seeing the old people boogying down, it was quite a night. We also did the macarena, the electric slide, the chicken dance and some other disco and latin dancing.

I danced to a slow song with Mauro- it was fun, but I felt like a giant. He's not that short, just shorter than me. He put his head on my shoulder and kissed my hand at the end- how charming! I think our waiter loved me too! Every time I got up to use the bathroom (which we all know is very often) I had to walk by him and he always smiled and often said things like "ciao bella", etc. I'm not even lying! It too was very charming. He kind of looked like Orlando Bloom, but I'm not gonna lie, he was nowhere near as attractive as Orlando.

And on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from attractive was Salvatore! Mauro had explained him as a cross between Dracula and Mr. Bean. I didn't really know what that meant, but when I met him I realized it was the perfect way to describe him. He was a wierdo, and gave us all scary looks- kind of looks like "I'm a scary old dirty Italian man having nasty thoughts about cute American girls" mixed with "I'm a cool Italian and these Americans are ridiculous and stupid". It was frightening, to say the least!

Happy Anniversay!

Yesterday was a very special day for the two of us. It was our one year anniversary! I still remember the day we met, it was love at first sight! You looked up at me with those great big eyes of yours and I knew I just had to have you. We've shared some good times and some bad, shared hugs and tears, but for rich or for poor, through sickness and health, we've stuck together! It's been a great year, and I hope we have many more to come! I love you stormykins!

Memories of a Better Time

Chances are that each of you has something, that when the world seems to be crashing in around you, you can turn to and feel comfort. For me, that used to be ice cream. Those of you who know me well, know that it wasn't uncommon for me to eat a gallon of ice cream in a day, or even eat ice cream for breakfast. It used to be my solution to everything. Had a bad day at work...eat some ice cream! Just got a raise...go to Coldstone! The cat meowed at me...eat that pint of Ben and Jerry's! But the truth is, it just doesn't seem to work anymore. I just don't crave it and it is no longer my "magic bullet" to a better day. Surprising, I know! What can I say? Sometimes in life you just have to move on and stop living in the past. Well, maybe just one more trip down memory lane. I'd like to indulge in a picture tribute of a time when two of my favorite things came together: ice cream and Italy. I like to call it...

"Gelato Around Italy"

Burano, Italy

Venice, Italy

Genova, Italy

Florence, Italy

Pisa, Italy

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

So whats a girl to do now that ice cream just doesn't do the trick anymore? I guess the healthy thing would be to talk out any problems with friends, family, and Matt. Or go to the gym and work off any frustration on the treadmill.

OR....

I'll just pig out on candy bars until I get sick of those too!

Only 4%...I'd better work on that!

Spring fever has struck! Usually around this time of year I get really restless which makes me want to travel. So I've been thinking about my trips to Europe recently and have been longing to be able to travel there again. My sister apparently gets the same kind of spring fever I do and found a fun website that will mark the countries that you've been to and tell you what percentage of the world you've visited. According to the website I have only visited 9 countries which equates out to be 4%. Here's my map:
The only problem with the website is the blatant disrespect for the countries of the United Kingdom. By counting the countries of the U.K (Scotland, England, and Wales) as only one it takes away each countries identity. Not only that, but it lowers my country count to 9, when it should be counted as 11. And as a descendant of the Scottish people I won't stand for it. I know that changing my country count to 11 probably won't change my percentage, but I want to show respect for each country I've been to and count every single one. After all, that is the proper thing to do. Plus, in the name of sibling rivalry, it will put me 1 country ahead of my sister. Finally, after 25 years in her shadow I've emerged!!
My sister has been a great travel partner over the last couple of years. We spent 11 days in Italy and Greece in May 2006. It was a great trip! Now that her liver is doing better hopefully we'll be able to travel more. This is us at the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. I didn't exactly love Athens because of the intense heat and the crowds, but I still would recommend visiting!