In which we drove a long way and got a bad case of roadbutt.

Someone reminded me today that I haven't written anything here in a while, and said that she still checks every day to see if I've updated, so I'm going to write something just for Sue's Birthday! Happy Birthday, Sue!

Where I've been:

Rich and I took a driving trip to Salt Lake City to visit Scott and Carolyn and to spend time with Soren and Carl. It was a good trip - we had some good audiobooks to listen to, including Bulletproof Mascara, which we both enjoyed, and if Scott had time to read I would suggest it to him because the main character is a linguist who couldn't get a job in her field, but she falls into another job by accident and her skills as a linguist are unexpectedly helpful!

We visited two museums in SLC, one was the Museum of Natural History at the U of U, and the other was a children's hands-on museum. I am the worst sight-seer in the world, and also I pretty much hate nature, so once I have glanced at the exhibits I am done, so the natural history museum was not so great. It's very small, too, and on the day we went it was full of fifth-graders. Ugh.

The hands-on museum was slightly better, not because I am interested in child-oriented science or shopping in a grocery store full of plastic pork chops, but because there were a lot of cute kids and their parents, and I like to watch people and how they interact. I spent some time sitting on a bench with my knitting, talking to Scott, while Rich played in a very cool playhouse with Soren.

One night Scott had to go out to a meeting, and Carolyn dressed the kids in their Halloween costumes so we could walk over to visit a deaf friend of theirs who lives a couple of blocks away. (Side note: It's embarrassing to see how much my signing skills have declined.) Soren was the Cat in the Hat, and Carl was Yertle the Turtle. They were great costumes! Carolyn made them!

What I knitted in Utah:

I promised Carolyn's friend Monique a sweater for her baby when she first got pregnant, and I finally made one while we were visiting. On Tuesday morning we went to a lovely yarn shop called Black Sheep Wool near Temple Square, and I bought yarn for a Wallaby for Ethan. I spent the next three or four days knitting on that sweater, and finished it Friday night!

Scott took a couple of days off while we were there, and one afternoon he and I walked for blocks to visit another yarn shop called Blazing Needles! It was about a mile and a half away! That's right, I walked three miles round trip to go to a yarn shop!

It was a very nice shop with a lot of beautiful samples hanging up, but the most amazing thing was the Bison yarn! There were small skeins of it, probably an ounce or a little more, that were selling for 60-80 dollars! I felt a little shy about fondling it because it was so expensive! I didn't want to get it all rubbed up!

Carolyn wasn't with us at the hands-on museum because she was sick with a cold that spread through their family the whole week we were there. By the end of the week, Carolyn was almost completely well, Soren and Carl were still sick but Carl was on his way to wellness, and Scott was starting to come down with it. I'm sure you can guess who's got a cold now!

While I was gone I missed two sessions of my chemistry class, in which we started a new unit on moles and stoichiometry. I didn't take my book with me, and because there is limited access to the internet at Scott's house, I didn't see any of the notes or practice pages on the website, so when I got back to class on Monday, they were ready to take a quiz on things I was clueless about.

I looked blankly at my quiz paper, and then I scribbled a mole joke on the bottom of the page, hoping to get points for being funny. I stood up to turn in my paper and leave, and suddenly our teacher announced that everyone who showed up for the practice quiz would get full points and then she did some more review problems! Yay!

That afternoon Rachel tutored Diane and I for a couple of hours, so we were able to do the mole-converting, and I went back to practice more on Tuesday, too. We took the real test on Wednesday, and I am hoping to get very lucky and maybe get a C! If not, well, I will have to do better on the next unit to make up for this one. I never did get through the stoichiometry chapter.

While we were in SLC, we had a chance to meet up with some friends who moved to California last year, and see their new baby! So that was fun and unexpected. I did some cooking while Carolyn was sick, making chicken soup and chocolate chip cookies, which were so good I amazed myself!

I made some bacon quiche the last night we were there, and Carolyn had shopped for the groceries for it, but since she is not me, she had shopped for the kind of groceries that she buys - cheese in a block and bacon that has to be cooked in a pan, instead of a bag of shredded cheese and that instant bacon that you make in the microwave! I felt like a pioneer! I was just grateful that we didn't have to milk a cow, too!

We had a good drive home, including a stop at a place in Iowa where I like to get hamburgers, but I found it depressing this time, and I don't think I want to stop there again. The burgers are good, but the ambiance not so much. We listened to the second half of Bulletproof Mascara and started another book that was also good, but we only got through about half of it before we got home.

Rachel and Ash brought Maddy over to see us when we got home Sunday afternoon, and as they brought her up the steps, I opened the door and she started yelling in a happy way and kicking her feet and waving her arms with a big smile, and I said, "I know! I know!" because I was happy to see her, too.