Hello 2023

 It has been a cold and snowy winter, and that pleases me greatly. There is no better knitting weather than cold and snow. I have been able to wear nearly all of my handknits!

That is, of course, except for the ones that need mending. Or buttons. Or to have their ends woven in. And somehow I have something like six projects on the needles and I want to cast on one (or ten) more. 

I am working on grad school applications, hoping that one of them will accept me and I can get out of Utah. 

I have just started a self-paced for-credit Norwegian 101 class through the University of North Dakota. I have been studying Norwegian with DuoLingo for almost a year now and I'm hoping that an actual academic class will help me gauge where I'm at an what I need to do next. 

I turn 50 in just over a year and I have stopped coloring my hair. I have this swathe of white/silver at the front and I'm curious to see what that looks like. 

Not sure if I'll keep going with the blog, it's been a while since I have done this regularly, but we'll see. 

We become homeowners!

As of yesterday, I am happily in possession of a mortgage in my name. We don't have the keys yet (Monday, they say, if not sooner) but we have certainly started preparing to move.

Dan and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary yesterday, and it has been our dream from day 1 to have our own home, to no longer be at the mercy of landlords and dumpy rentals. Where we are now has unsafe electrical, crappy plumbing (not even a euphemism - the sewage from the toilet backed up into the bathtub on Christmas Day, while my mum was visiting), floors that aren't level, and a number of other issues we are happy to leave behind. Our new house has space for us and all our things.

It will be nice to not have to get Noodle every night. Since we moved into our current rental, two blocks from where we had lived for about five years, Noodle goes back to the old neighborhood every night after we go to sleep. Every. Night. The next day, we go pick him up around dusk, as one would do if they were picking up a child from school. We come around the corner and call "Noodle!" and sometimes he comes running, sometimes he is already waiting, sometimes he is sleeping under a deck and doesn't want to come out. A couple of times he has been stuck on a roof, so I had to climb the nearby trees to retrieve him. He goes back because he is popular in the old neighborhood, you see, and Nancy The Cat Lady feeds all the neighborhood kitties. Everyone who lives on that block knows that Dan and/or I will go retrieve him every night. For a while there, people sat out to watch. It's cute and charming, but it will be nice to not have that extra thing to do in the evening.

Our new neighborhood has more kitties than our current one, so Noodle will have friends. Since Djarfur went missing in March 2018 (I remain hopeful he will come back to us one day), Noodle has been without his best friend. He only sort of gets along with Feiminn, though that has improved over time.

Today we went and cleaned out the workshop of our new house. It's 100 years old, and it has not been lived in for a while. The woman who was there before had been there alone for about 30 years after her husband died, so there were lots of treasures left in the house. A yogurt maker! A waffle iron! Some very old wooden chairs that I will lovingly restore and paint. A mature cherry and an apple tree, and more grapes than we know what to do with. There is a lot of overgrowth in the yard, and let me tell you my pruning shears are raring to go. I love pruning. I'm excited there is so much biomass for my new compost pile. Once we move in, a lot of those grapes, which are ripe now, will become raisins (seedless!).

So this is a big step in our life and we will finally make some headway.

status of our kitties

Four months ago, one of our family went missing. At the time, we were looking at other places to move, but when our kitty went missing, we put our search for a new home on hold. 

After Djarfur had been missing a couple of months, we realized we couldn't wait forever, so we started looking again. We found two solid possibilities near where were already living, applied for them both, and got the one we wanted. 

Moving is stressful of course, especially for kitties. Our two remaining kitties, Feiminn (Djarfur's litter mate) and Noodle didn't really get along before we moved. Feiminn was the tender and sensitive kitty and Noodle was the proud, outgoing, athletic kitty. Their roles completely flipped when we moved. Feiminn settled into the new house right away - especially since we have our own private back yard that is fenced in. Noodle was freaked out for days, and by the time we started letting him back outside, he kept going back to the old place. 

Here we are more than a month later, and Noodle still keeps going back to the old place. We have a routine now. If we can go get him before 9am, we do. After 9am he is on his rounds (?) and is not available. If we don't get him in the morning, we get him between 8 and 9pm. 

At first Noodle *hated* being in the car, so we switched to walking the two blocks with our cat carrier and each taking a handle on the way home (Noodle is not a light kitty). Every time we passed Cafe Niche, he meowed in complaint. 

We did that for a few weeks and then it was clear that this wasn't going to keep him at home either, we went back to driving over and bringing him in the car. Weirdly, it has had the effect of habituating him to the car and he no longer complains in the car. That will be useful the next time he goes in for vaccinations. 

Meanwhile, Feiminn is super chill. He has lots of places in the house where he likes to hang out, but he spends a lot of his day underneath the back deck, rolling in the dirt. He has never been happier. It's been wonderful to see, because he was nearly despondent in the months after his brother disappeared. 

Noodle is very lovey and attentive when we are home. He even goes to bed with us sometimes. But then, sometime between 12pm and 1am, he decides to meow loud enough to shake the house and starts bouncing on me and Dan. Between my earplugs and Dan's CPAP machine, it's hard to get us out of bed but that about does it. So we shut Noodle out of our bedroom. By the time we wake up, he is gone. 

I don't know what it will take for Noodle to stay home and get used to his new neighborhood. My animal communicator friend noted that Noodle has a high status in the old neighborhood (he is very popular there among kitties and humans) and no status in the new one. Also, it seems we only have one other kitty on this street, and I believe I saw that kitty leaving out of our pet door last week. 

Dan figures that 'when it gets cold', Noodle will stay home. I want to believe that, but still, that seems like several months away (we have averaged 97 degrees for the last six weeks. Averaged.) 

I welcome your advice. Also with finding Djarfur. We miss him still, and every day I grieve his loss, wishing I knew how to get him home. 

and now I write

People have been telling me my whole life 'you should be a writer'.

Now I know, I am a writer.

Yesterday I completed the second of two sessions in a Creative Writing Bootcamp put on by Lifelong Learning at the University of Utah and it blew my mind.

I learned, aside from everything else, that I'm pretty good at this. In fact, after reading one of my pieces out loud, the instructor said "fuck that was really good".

I know I began this year, 2018, as my 'year of art exploration', and then it morphed into many things. I started out with drawing with the intention of painting, but the class I signed up for was terrible (I never did get my money back, yet they kept sending me bills for subsequent months). Then I joined a choir, rehearsed with them for 9 weeks, performed, and dropped that choir. Two days later, I was in another choir, one that fits me much better. We performed two Easter services (Holy Thursday and Good Friday), and then we prepared for our big concert in May where we performed Mozart and PDQ Bach. That was a lot of fun, they are nice people.

At that concert, my friend Jenn told me that my favorite author, Michael Ondaatje, was coming to Salt Lake City the following week. A dream come true!

I pre-ordered his newest book, Warlight. I lined up outside the venue 45 minutes before the doors opened (I was the first in line). I got a seat front row, center. I was eight feet away from my literary hero. He read from his book, took some questions from the moderator, then the audience. Several people asked him about his writing process.

One of the things he said that stayed with me - which was a light bulb moment for me - was when he said he didn't know at the beginning of a book where it will end, he just starts writing.

I thought, I could do that!

So I cast around looking for writing events in Utah. I came across the League of Utah Writers Summer Symposium in Logan, and I went.

Already at the first session, I felt like I got my money's worth, it was so useful. I got some validation there about my writing ability. I met some people, but mostly it turned the gas up on the fire that had been lit within me.

After that I looked around for what was next.

Having spent so much of my life in academia, naturally I looked at what continuing ed at my institution had to offer (as an employee, I get a 50% discount). I found this Creative Writing Bootcamp, that was two Saturdays, four hours each.

It got me doing Morning Pages again. It got me thinking Yes I can write stories. One of the things I have been struggling with in this writing journey was wondering if I could do fiction and then how. This workshop has given me the confidence to do that. Next I wonder how to get published. I like to put the cart before the horse, you know. But I can't publish anything until I write it.

I have since joined the League of Utah Writers (LUW) but have not been to a writing group yet (we moved last month, our life is still somewhat chaotic and we haven't completely settled in).

Something Johnny Worthen said in the Bootcamp - he asked us all what our writing experience was. I had never considered that before. I wrote hundreds of teenage poetry (sadly, long since burned), I have been writing a journal for 23 years (I still have all of those), I had an English Lit degree (60 essays), blog, Morning Pages, and 9 years of Twitter.  Johnny said Twitter doesn't count but journals do. He quoted a famous author having said you aren't really a writer until you've written a million words. I'd say I have long since done that. I am a writer. And oh my goodness I have just signed up for the Quills Conference next month.

If I have any readers left, thanks for sticking around. I'll be spending more time on my laptop, possibly working out my ideas here. 

Dan teaches me drawing

I had not done a lot this past week, art-wise, since a number of things came up that prevented me to showing up at the - what - drawing board? I guess so. I made significant progress on knitting my Sunwheel mitten - which isn't technically art but it scratches a creative itch. Given that I'm working on a complex pattern, people are super impressed when they see what I'm working on.

There is a thrift store chain in Salt Lake City called Deseret Industries, or "DI" for short. I go there quite regularly, probably twice a month, and I often check out the area that has picture frames, mirrors, and paintings. So far I have come home with a few small canvases with ugly paintings on them, the DI sells them for $1. I knew I could paint over them and start from scratch, so I had a tidy collection of them that I finally got to tonight.

Dan already has a good collection of acrylic paints and brushes, but tonight what I needed was a large volume of white to make a clean slate, so to speak. Soon into this very simple act of covering up old paintings with white, I realized that I needed a painting smock. Dan leaped out of his chair, he had just the thing! And quickly fished out a lab coat he used when he worked at a distillery. It's very big on me, but perfect for my purpose.

He's been bugging me for a while about gesture drawing. He wanted to teach me gesture drawing. I did a drawing exercise with my weekly art planner that I mentioned last week, and he basically said okay when you are finished what you are doing, we'll do some gesture drawing together. As luck would have it, all three kitties were in the living room and available to be subjects for drawing. So we started there.

With manila paper and charcoal, we drew a few things. Feiminn. Djarfur. The IKEA watering can that they use to drink water out of. And the cat tree we assembled on New Year's Eve. (There were a few other things too but they are not worth sharing). Dan gave me encouragement and praise for my technique, and instructed me for what to do next time. He's been to several art schools, and has thousands of hours of drawing logged himself, and he also happens to be a great teacher.

Feiminn

Djarfur, cleaning himself

It turns out I like gesture drawing better than I like line drawing. At least for now. I think that will help me develop confidence.

I joined a choir

When it rains, it pours.

It's almost as if announcing my intention to the Universe had this cascading effect of throwing lots of things at me.

Last week I was out for a walk with my friend Emily and she told me she was thinking about joining a choir. She described a choir that was very similar to a non-auditioned choir I was a part of before I met Dan, 11-12 years ago. I went straight home after that and signed up for Utah Voices. Emily and I carpooled to Bountiful (about 12 min north of where she lives) and joined the second rehearsal of the season, our first.

Boy, am I ever rusty. I don't know any of the Broadway songs and I certainly don't know Mozart's Requiem, but I am excited to learn them and learn to read & understand sheet music in the process. There were probably about 100 people there. The director is fantastic. The accompanist is amazing. I am really going to enjoy this. We perform in March (Broadway songs), May (Mozart) and July (?).

That drawing class I mentioned last week? That turned out to be a major disappointment. I arrived at my class on Tuesday after having spent another $75 on drawing supplies. The class was supposed to start at 6:30, and by 7:00, the teacher had not shown up and no one at the school came to tell us if she was still coming. There were two other new people too - what an impression to make! I left. She arrived, apparently, just after I left. I was so pissed off at having my time wasted like that, I decided to withdraw. I mean, I live with an artist for heaven's sake, it's not like I need to pay someone for instruction. So that was a good lesson for me. 

I emailed my complaint to the art center the very next morning and after three business days I have yet to hear back from them. So I'll leave an honest review on Google. I returned the drawing supplies I don't plan to use and at least recovered some of my money.

Meanwhile, there is the library. I got this great book on folk art with some accessible exercises. Most of them call for painting, which I'm not quite ready for, but I do have a massive collection of colored pencils, so I'm starting there.

And, since Dan is so encouraging of me pursuing music, he felt it very important to get a piano keyboard for when I practice, for tone control. He is currently learning about/building electronic instruments and would have eventually needed one anyway. But we are well on our way to having a recording studio in our home. (How did that happen?)

Today I went to the book store for a day planner and found this gem in the art section. It has ideas for things I would not have thought of doing, so I expect to show some of the things in this blog.

I don't have any major goals for this year of Art Exploration. I will have performances, so that's nice. I can't say I plan to have a show - maybe once I have accumulated some things worth showing I'll do that, but goodness, we are only in mid-January. One thing I would like to see though is having more art in our home, art we created ourselves.

And if all this wasn't enough, I started seeing a new chiropractor yesterday (she cleared a migraine I had had for four days!) and when I mentioned to her that I had joined a choir, she invited me to her bag-piping troop. Oh I was sorely tempted. I am very interested in bellows instruments, and apparently bagpipes only have nine notes. I love bagpipes. But I think I need to focus on what I do have right now.

I started a drawing class

I am the forever student. I am always learning something and have so many interests so always want to learn much more than I realistically have time for. I have been studying Danish for almost a year now (according to Duolingo, I am 67% fluent, though I have yet to converse with a native speaker). Near the end of 2017, I decided to declare 2018 my year of Art Exploration.

My husband is an artist, part of a larger family of artists. His youngest sister is at a fancy art school in Ireland right now. His mother has been painting for 30+ years and is having a show this spring. I have no art at all in my family history, I have only dabbled here and there with things. Of course, you can count my multiple knitted sculpture as art (and I do), but those days are long behind me now as I have not had time to knit since before immigrating to the United States (almost five years ago!).

A thing I do sometimes is go to Salt Lake City's largest thrift store chain, Deseret Industries, and buy secondhand paintings on canvases. Not because I like the subjects (I really don't need a painting of a temple or of 'Marissa' (?)) but I've heard a thing that painters do sometimes is paint over an old painting. For $1 a canvas, how could I go wrong?

However, people keep telling me that you must learn to draw before you can paint.

I have drawn things in the past, mostly stick figure cartoons or goofy animals (mostly cats and sheep, duh), and one year for Christmas I drew caricatures of my husband's family as matryoshka - in lieu of gift tags. But I am only familiar with pencils and colored pencils.

Last week I started a drawing class at a local art store. The supply list was awfully long (!) and I doubt I'll ever be interested in using graphite sticks regularly, but I now have all the things I need going forward to explore different drawing techniques.

I have also started listening to some art podcasts. The first one is the Thriving Artist, and I think I've only listened to one or two of those. The topic was about the business of being an artist, that is, making a living doing it. Very interesting. I just got promoted in my research job last month and have a shiny career ahead of me, so I don't have any plans to be a career artist any time soon, but you never know where life will take you. The other podcast I found is the Savvy Painter - that one comes out every week and it's been very interesting learning how people manage their lives around their painting.

I'm not sure if I'll stick with the drawing class I'm enrolled in - I don't 100% love it, but I'll finish out the month I paid for and go from there. Dan has offered to draw with me (he's taken tons of drawing classes, has been to three art schools) so I think we may take that up. There are other things I want to explore too - such as painting, ceramics, fiber arts, and maybe some other sculpture. We have three kitties now, so whatever I end up making has to be cat-proof, but I think I'm up for the challenge. I do think I have the discipline for self-study though. After training for a half-marathon in 2016 and learning a second language using an app on my phone, I know I can persist if something really catches my interest. So I will explore.

I plan to use all the learning tools available to me. We have a fantastic library system in Salt Lake City with a massive art collection. There is also the Internet. I even have some artists in my life here that I could hang around. I'm not sure about posting pictures of my progress and projects, we'll see how happy I am with them. I'm not interested in being "good" - I'm too whimsical for that. I just want to make things that I like to look at. I joined Instagram a couple of months ago and that will help with inspiration.

If you, dear reader, have any recommendations what so ever - books, videos, podcasts, IG accounts - please throw them my way! I'd love to hear from you and get exposed to things I have not yet seen.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy this year-long journey with me!

am planning to return

Goodness it's been a year and a half since my last post. Forgive me. A lot has happened in that time and life continues to gallop apace. 2017 has been my 'year of fermentation' and I am declaring 2018 my 'year of art exploration'. That will mean all sorts of things, so stay tuned (if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them). 

Things I was told not to do today

Sometimes the people in a dental office can come across as accusing.

I went in this morning for my 6-month cleaning and check up. My teeth are in good shape; I brush twice a day and floss every day without fail. Still, I have sensitive teeth and bleedy gums. Both can be genetic predispositions, which I believe I have because the hygienist and the dentist listed the following reasons for my minor problems:

- not brushing enough
- not flossing
- sugary soft drinks
- unsweetened soft drinks
- energy drinks
- smoking
- brushing with a hard bristled toothbrush

I like my dentist, I do, but they do get a bit preachy at times. I very seldom drink sodas and never any with aspartame or energy drinks. (In fact, I eat very little sugar which is not only good for my teeth but my brains and gastrointestinal system) I have never smoked. I have never used a hard bristled toothbrush - I have always used a soft one.

I know that's just their bag of reasons they feed to everyone but good grief. Instead of telling me these are the reasons, they maybe could ask if I do any of those things instead of assume. I found I had to defend myself against their accusations. Maybe all their other patients lie?

Now to be fair, one of the things the dentist did mention was citrus and citric acid. I have been consuming a lit of citrus lately (I found a guy on KSL who goes to Arizona every other week and picks citrus there, brings it back & sells it in Utah out of his house - my citrus dealer). So I will cut down on that. I just get a bit annoyed when someone like me, with a sophisticated understanding of health and especially dental health, gets a lecture on how to brush my teeth properly.

/end rant

No cavities! 

Training for a Half: week 4

No you didn't miss all the other posts about the Half marathon I have signed up for. I've been bad at keeping the commitment to myself of blogging once a week. I think maybe it's the day/time I scheduled always got overtaken by other things. I first had it scheduled for Friday afternoon, when work was winding down and I was not likely to be interrupted, but then someone scheduled a meeting for that time. Then I tried putting it on Saturdays after I got back from Food Not Bombs, but by then I am so motivated to clean the house or do other chores that opening up my computer was the last thing I wanted to do. I'll work on finding the right time.

In our first year here (2014), I signed up for and ran a 5K race alongside the Salt Lake City Marathon. They continue to send reminder emails years later for past participants to sign up for something for the next race. When the reminder came in early January I decided now is the time, I'm finally going to do a half.

I did a 10-day juice fast over Christmas & the New Year and lost 6 pounds. I was lighter than I had been in more than 15 years, I decided I was ready to start training. I have a treadmill too, so I really have no excuse (such as weather) to not run.

I'm a big fan of health and fitness apps. I have a fitbit and check my fitbit app constantly to see where I am in relation to the people I am fitbit friends with. Back in December 2010 I discovered the newly released LoseIt! app and have been charting my ups and downs with that for more than five years now, it's so gratifying! I love my Nike+ Women's training app that combines dumbells and other equipment with cardio segments. When I signed up for this Half, I went to the "coach" section of my Nike+ running app, plugged in the date and length of the race I want to train for, and then 12 weeks of training plan was laid out before me.

The plan includes four days of running - two light (3 miles), two heavy (one longish run, one longer and longer run). It also includes one day of cross-training (so I use the aforementioned Nike+ training app) and two rest days. My main goal is to get through this training and race injury-free, so much the better if I can reach my goal weight while doing it.

A funny thing happens though when you are trying to reach a goal weight and then start an aggressive fitness program. The weight remains the same as you burn fat and start building muscle. I can't get discouraged by the number on the scale (but I sorta do) because the way my clothes hangs is totally different. I have to keep reminding myself that since moving to SLC just over two years ago, I have lost 35 pounds. That's no small feat! And now I am training for a race, a half marathon, something I have always wanted to do. Even if I never do it again, I will be pleased.

I am still juicing every day, sometimes twice a day. After doing that 10-day Reboot, I have a really hard time eating anything that has been fried, processed foods, or bread. It's been really interesting seeing how my body is adapting to this new regime in our house - Dan and I hardly eat meat anymore as we move to a whole-foods plant-based lifestyle. I am now one of those people who buys a 25-pound bag of carrots for juicing.

I digress. The race day is April 16, two weeks before I finish my second Master's degree, and a few weeks after my 42nd birthday. I'm looking forward to my training as it will give me time also to catch up on audio books and podcasts! 

The Story of Samantha Sophia 2002-2015

Okay I think enough time has passed now that I can write about what happened.

We had a holiday party on Saturday, December 19. Sam usually hid in the back room when more than three people came into the house, and when she didn't move for a few hours, we thought that was really strange but wrote it off as her learning to be more social. A couple hours after everyone left, she started behaving very strangely. Constantly walking around the house, walking on parts of us and the bed she doesn't normally go, constant swallowing. At 2am we decided to take her to the emergency vet clinic.

A few very expensive tests later, the vet told Dan that Sam had no platelets - no cause, no cure - and would not live to Christmas. While we were there Sam became very lethargic and went blind. It was so hard to watch. We were given the options of leaving her there for more tests, having her put down, or taking her home. We opted for the latter. We got home at 4am and she was totally unresponsive. She went peacefully an hour later.

It was just so sudden and there was no way we could have prepared ourselves for that, nothing we could have done differently to help. She did not suffer.

It's been a long time since I have had to mourn the loss of a loved one. She was my baby, we were together for 13 years - a long time for her breed as I understand it but I expected her to live at least to 17. That cat has been all over the place though - she was born in Korea, I took her to Canada in 2003, she moved between Alberta & BC for a few years until we settled in BC, Then we immigrated to the United States in 2013, moved to North Carolina and then Utah eleven months later. She lived in Utah just nine days shy of two years.

This all happened at a very interesting time, actually. If it had happened during a semester I would have been completely messed up. Because she died just at the beginning of the Christmas break, I had time to grieve with no work obligations - and we had no social plans for Christmas either (thank the heavens!) If it had happened at the end of this spring semester when we are also planning to move out of the house we are renting, that would have been difficult too. So really, it could not have come at a better time. Kitties know that, I think. Still, it's been hard getting used to our house being really quiet.

In the days that followed her passing, we took out all the kitty supplies. Her two scratching posts were nearly threadbare anyway, and with the mobility ramps that Dan built in 2013, all her paraphernalia took up a lot of space. I gave away her food to neighbours. We had to clean up from the party anyway but we have completely rearranged the house again.

It's also really changed our perspective on things. It was unconscious, but we had planned to stay in Salt Lake after I graduate partly because we didn't want to put her through another move. We don't have to worry about that now. We can also go away for a week or weekend and not need to find someone to look after the kitty. We definitely plan to get cats again in the future but not until we are a bit more stable and we know where I will be working.

During the week around New Year's eve, I looked after my friend Jenn's cats while she was away. She didn't know I had lost my companion. It was so nice to be loved up by her big fluffy kitties - I think they knew I was grieving for my baby.

Because of the full-on winter weather we had for the two weeks over the holidays, we weren't able to find a place to bury Sam. Finally, on New Year's day we found a good place in the western desert and gave her a perfect send off. We did everything we could for her, and now it's time to let her go and move on. I still get sad and cry every day when something reminds me of her, of course. She's the only pet I have ever had in my adult life. But as a gardener, I understand that all things must die that others may live.

RIP sweet kitty

Samantha Sophia 2002-2015

I'll write about what happened when writing about what happened doesn't make me cry so much. 

free food giveaways: Food Not Bombs Salt Lake City

Sometime last month when I was volunteering with Green Urban Lunch Box, one of the volunteers told me about the food giveaway at a park near downtown SLC by Food Not Bombs.  I went that day (a Saturday) and have been going every weekend since (except for the weekend I was away).

The volunteers for the organization rescue perfectly good food that has gone past its expiry date from going into the dumpster. So much food is wasted in the United States, and this is a way of keeping it out of the landfill. They collect this food, and then three times a week they set up tables to just give away, no questions asked. Below are photos of some of the things I have brought home - all for free. 

The above photo was from this morning. Dan has the weekend off for Thanksgiving, so he came with me for the first time. There was a lot of food from the post-Thanksgiving feast and only half of the usual people showed up, so there was a lot to be given away. Above we have salad mix, bananas, muffins, cookies, milk, gyro meat, apples, grapefruit, yogurt, snacks, onion dips, stuffing mixes, tortilla, garlic bread, eggplant, sauerkraut, peppers, a sandwich and potato salad.

Dan and I both hate to see food going to waste, and if we can not spend money by helping divert perfectly good food from going to the landfill, so much the better. Most of this food is usually organic, though not always. Between the food we grew and preserved, the $50 gift card I won from Bob's Red Mill thanks to the Splendid Table, and going to these weekly giveaways, our food costs have gone way down. Now it's just a matter of dealing with all this food. Dan has been cooking up a storm all day, and I am juicing all the vegetables I can. At this rate though, we won't have to buy groceries for a while, other than for staples like salt and rice.

How it works: everyone arrives at 11:00am on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The volunteers have the tables with boxes of food all lined up at Richmond Park 450 E 600 S. A coin is flipped, to decide whether the inside or the outside of the line gets to go first - keep it egalitarian. The line is divided in two and we go in circles around the string of tables, taking only one item per box each time we pass by. People who abuse this and take more than one item (if they know the rules and ignore them) are either told to go the back of the line or come next time. Mostly it's older people (immigrants who don't speak English well) and young people that come. Most people have all they need by the time they make a full circle around the table, but there is always more bread, apples, or potatoes leftover. There is a donation bucket for gas for the volunteers. When the weather turns too cold/bad, the giveaway will happen at the Boing house on 500 east, just around the corner from the park.

It's such an excellent service. You never know what you'll get. One week it was largely gluten-free. Another week there was a lot of dairy. Another time it was mostly produce. There is always a lot of bread though, we never need to buy or bake bread again.

Today, because there was a huge abundance of food and not many people, one of the volunteers thanked me for coming and taking food. Where else does that happen? I love this city. 

my field's biggest academic conference in San Francisco

So: the reason I wasn't able to write a blog post three Fridays ago is because I was in San Francisco for a conference. I had a poster accepted and therefore needed to be there to present it. My supervisor's grant would have paid for my trip, but I applied for and won two travel awards: one was a matching grant between my department and Graduate Studies at the U, the other was a travel award that only applied to international students. As I am not yet a citizen, I qualified and won!

My flight was for 6:30am on Friday the 13th. I arrived at the airport at 5:45am which, it turns out, was too late. I had not accounted for the 300 people in the TSA lineup. They rescheduled me for another flight, four hours later that would take me to Seattle first and then SFO. So I settled in to a day of airports and airplanes and trying to catch wifi and charging stations. It wasn't so bad, really, but travelling is tiring. When I finally did get to my hotel around 6:00, I met up with my friends from the department, my roommate for our five days at the hotel, P, and my office comrade, B. We dropped our luggage and found dinner before retiring for the night.

Saturday was a day of pre-symposia tutorials. The first one was one on getting evaluation education into biomedical informatics programs. I was finally able to meet some characters I have only connected with online or whose papers I have read. Yes there is such a thing as academic fandom. It was great to put names to faces. I had also started tweeting the sessions I attended from my research twitter handle (not @yarnsalad). The afternoon session I went to wasn't very interesting but I did at the coffee break connect with a friend and former student of our department who moved away a couple of months ago, so it was good to catch up with him. I knew this conference would be one big happy reunion. Then I snuck off with some friends from SLC whom I had not seen in a while and went to a pub for a pint. That evening, I went with those same friends and one new friend to a fancy restaurant and discovered how awesome Uber is.

Sunday morning began with getting to the hotel gym at 6:15am, and I should have gone earlier to get a full workout in. I had to rush because I had a breakfast date arranged via Twitter more than a month ago with two Twitter friends - one I hadn't met yet (great sidebar story: Kim and I found each other on Twitter because of knitting, then we discovered we work in the same field and that we were both going to this conference! Also we both have personal as well as professional Twitter accounts.) and one who graduated with a PhD from my program at UVic the year I began my first Master's. Nice breakfast, too.

That morning's tutorial was about how to be a good leader within the organization and how to get into positions of leadership. I made some good connections there and met some more people who are famous in our industry. That day I found David's Deli and had an excellent kosher lunch.

It was after lunch on Sunday that the symposium officially began. Before the opening keynote speaker, the president and CEO of the organization welcomed everyone. He mentioned the Twitter stats for the day and a half of tutorials, and in the top 4 tweeters, he named me second! After that and for the rest of the conference, everyone from my department commented on my Twitter fame.

Sunday evening was busy, socially. There was the welcome reception where all the vendors and schools had booths in the exhibition room; ie, the place where all the free stuff is. I am happy to report that I now have 15 new pens, three water bottles, a couple of bags and some other fun trinkets. Later there was the reception for new members and new attendees. I'm on the membership committee for the organization so I went to interact with the new people. Rob, our organization's membership coordinator, brought some of us up to the front and gave us all a lovely introduction as "people we should talk to". It was Rob who I hold responsible for getting me back into the field at all, so I am happy to give back. I met some nice people, had too many extremely excellent desserts, and waited in anticipation to see if maybe I would win the raffle prizes of the bluetooth wireless headphones or the Apple watch! But alas, no, the headphones went to an alum from our department (so that's nice) and the Apple watch went to my friend and office mate mentioned above, B. After that reception, my hotel roommate P and I went up to the 46th floor for the Women in Informatics Networking Event. It was kind of an awkward space though so we ended up mostly just talking to each other. We haven't spent much time together outside of our one class prior to the conference, so it was really fun getting to know her, actually.

On Monday, P and I met for breakfast the group of people who had agreed to be mentors for the 10 high school scholars for this conference as well as the students themselves. I met the student I had been paired with, but for reasons, we didn't actually get to see each other much that day. I did get to meet his dad later though and got a photo of him with his poster. Nice kid, I was glad to hear he is planning to do a computer science degree (and then I recommended doing our Master's at UUtah). I live tweeted some interesting sessions. I spent some time with Barb in our booth in the exhibition room, talking to people about our program. Went back to David's Deli for lunch, this time a salad to go, which was also excellent. My committee chair gave a presentation about why our department is so awesome and other than the four people from our department who attended (and were also live tweeting), I think there were maybe three other people, so that was a bummer. We need to figure out a way to show people how great it is to live in Utah.

The last session of the day was the presentations of the high school scholars. Five of them had papers, the other five (including my buddy) had posters. It was a very well attended session, standing room only. One of the organizers introduced the program and the names of all the graduate student mentors went up on the big screen - three students from our department, Utah was well-represented!

The thing about these conferences is that you are not done when the sessions finish at 5pm. I still had two other events to attend. The first was the membership committee - we usually meet by Citrix for an hour every month, but this time we finally got to meet in person. It was really cool to put faces to names. I had to leave that meeting early though, because our department chair had arranged a dinner for our department people and alumni at a nearby restaurant. It was a fun evening and I was glad for an early night - after all this busy time I needed some down time.

Tuesday morning I got up at 5:30 to get to the gym earlier (since I had another 7:00 breakfast date). When I got to the gym at 5:45, every one of the 20 exercise machines were full and there were three people waiting. Eventually I got onto a spin bike and put in a 45-minute workout. The 7:00 breakfast was to meet with all the people who had been working on the Year in Review - 18 of us had spent the last six months reviewing 1400 articles to see what was relevant and what kinds of themes have emerged in our field since the last Symposium. That was awesome. It was great to meet those people just before the session where our leader, Patti, presented them to an overstuffed room with at least 1,000 people. Again my name on the big screen. She did an amazing job of condensing all that information into a synopsis.

Tuesday was my big day partly because of that, but also because it was my day for my poster presentation (there were about 400 posters, split into two days). I had bought myself a suit back in August to wear for that day, that moment. I attended my poster from 5:00-6:30pm. At the end of it, one of the organization's staff members came up to me with the photographer and asked to take my photo. I was so touched! They appreciated all the tweeting I had done and my level of commitment to the organization. So lots of arranging of hair and ears, turn this way, lean in, he took a few dozen snaps. A week later, she sent me these:

She said "you never know where this photo will turn up". Of course I sent her an email back, squeeing, which made her day. :-)

Back to the Symposium. After my poster presentation was done, I went to my room and changed into the dress I wore to another fancy restaurant for dinner. I also got in a half-hour phone conversation with Dan - in the few days I was there I hadn't had much time to chat with him other than to say things were going great (me) and the kitty misses me (him). Dinner was great and fun, I really enjoyed my dinner company. When I got back to the hotel I found my office mate B and we ended up chatting with one of the organization's leaders for half an hour about movies, of all things. So great to make that human connection.

Wednesday was the last day. We had no breakfast plans so were happy when they had muffins out for the morning coffee break. (My room mate P and I are both students and experienced free food scavengers). The closing keynote was just after lunch and once again they mentioned the conference's Twitter stats. They showed a slide with the top 10: I was number 5, a post-doc from our department was number 7, and our department (me) was number 10. Go Utah!  The closing keynote was great and I think he gave us all some good ideas for how to move forward.

I was sitting next to B for the closing, and afterward when people were leaving, we stood up and turned around to find one of our department's alumni with two people on his team from South Carolina - I had not met any of them before but we all became fast friends and decided to have lunch together. We found a great little Pakistani restaurant (one of the women we were with is Pakistani) and I swear it was the best meal I had in San Francisco. Sooooo good. (why didn't I take a picture of my chicken tikka masala?) Then we walked over the hill to Ghirardelli Square because of course, it's San Francisco. Burned off all the lunch calories doing that walk! Had a fabulous time with our three new friends and we hope to turn that into a more formal collaboration in the future.

B and I retrieved our luggage from the hotel and went to meet a Twitter friend whom I've been Twitter friends with since I first signed up back in 2009! We've been through a lot together and we finally met in person! It was so awesome to meet Heather and I hope next time I can spend more time with her in her city. B and I took BART to the airport, went to our departure gates, and he went off to another conference on the east coast while I went home, to sleep, to catch up on a week of being away.

I will be finishing my degree, my second Master's degree, in April 2016. While they are still encouraging me to do a PhD, (and made a very persuasive pitch), I think I am going to stay the course. Part of my effort at this conference was to see what kind of work is out there (I was invited to go to Seattle, Nashville, and Portland). I really love Salt Lake though, I have no plans to leave it any time soon. More on the job front as I find out what's happening...

my first encounter with the health care system in the United States

Some of you may recall it was February 4th, 2013 that I entered the United States. While it seems like it was only a blink of an eye ago, we are actually coming up on three years. Can you believe it? I am less than four months away from being eligible to apply for US Citizenship.*

One of the things that scared us about moving to the United States is health care. It's a very confusing system from the Canadian perspective, so navigating insurance and then what to do once you have insurance and need care was really daunting. It was only in the last couple of months that I bought health insurance for myself, despite the Affordable Care Act, because it just seemed like too much of an expenditure for something I may not even use.

I'm pretty healthy, see. I exercise, I eat really well, manage my mental health, etc and don't have any outstanding health issues that require care. However, I work in health care and I acknowledge I am aging. It's also been four and a half years since I had a physical so I had no idea what my numbers were. Getting my student health insurance sorted out and making an appointment at a clinic was just on my to do list.

And then I had a health scare a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't a big one, but I know just enough about anatomy and disease to be worried when I had pain in my chest and shortness of breath. Pain in my chest where my heart is. My grandfather died of a heart attack at 67, though he was morbidly obese. Anyway, this freak out was the kick in the pants I needed to see a care provider, that very day.

Wouldn't you know it, there is a student health clinic just half a mile from where I work and they are all hooked up with my student health insurance. I was able to get in that afternoon to see my new primary care provider, who is a Nurse Practitioner rather than a physician. That's something I have no experience with (though I think we do have NPs in Canada, they just aren't as common) but I do have a friend who is a nurse and wants to become an NP. She explained to me that NPs are the ones you want to go to for preventive and maintenance care. Doctors do the diagnosing. Ok, got it.

The visit to the clinic was mostly like any other clinic visit. The New Patient Intake form asked a bunch of questions I had never encountered before ("How many sexual partners have you had?") so that was interesting. Giving urine samples has gotten to be really sophisticated. The blood pressure machine had me at 132/86 which of course worried me.

I spent an hour with the nurse practitioner, gave her my full medical history and all the family medical history I know. The physical itself was just like every other one and thank goodness she said I'm not due for another one for five years (in Canada it would be every two years). She did strongly encourage me to get a mammogram, which I am extremely opposed to (I don't have a family history and I'm not convinced they actually help with early detection).

I wasn't expecting it but we talked about my acne, how I had done the 5-month course of isotretinoin in 2007 but my acne has returned. She can't prescribe that drug (only a dermatologist can) but she did give me a script for a tretinoin cream which I'm hoping will help. (I'm leaving in a week for my industry's biggest academic conference and I intend to launch my job search there, so I really hope it's gone by then!) They checked my blood pressure again at the end of the visit and it was down to 113/73.

The best part about this whole experience (aside from the assurance that I probably just pulled a chest muscle because my heart is just fine, and the potential for clear skin) was that this visit was free. I couldn't find information anywhere on the health insurance website that said how much this visit was going to cost and when you are worried there is something seriously wrong, you care less about cost and more about getting well. And it was free! My first visit is free, any subsequent visit is only a $10-co-pay. I mean, my insurance cost me $190 per semester, but still, that's way better than I was expecting.

For my American readers, I'm sure this is all no big deal but I confess I was really worried about accessing care because I thought it would be so complicated. It was for the same reason I delayed getting dental care but that ended up having a happy ending too - I thought because it had been several years since I'd had a cleaning that I would have a number of cavities but no! All clear, thanks to my nightly dedication to flossing.

*so I have more or less been planning to apply for citizenship, but I think it would mean renouncing my Canadian citizenship. That hasn't been a really big deal to me, since I had no intention of ever moving back. Mostly because we can't afford to live in the places where we want to be that also have work in the fields we want to be in. There is just so much more opportunity for me in the United States in my career (by the factor of 100x or more) so why would I go back north? Well, given the recent political developments in both countries, I am now not ruling out a return to Canada (oh gosh I'm saying this publicly). I say that because of the crazies currently running in the Republican primaries but also because of the amazing thing that happened in Canadian federal politics recently. Someone from my generation with my values is now the Prime Minister of Canada. The other day when Justin Trudeau was sworn in, afterwards he took questions from reporters. I was listening to the live webcast. A reporter asked why it was so important for him to have half of his cabinet be women, and his response "Because it's 2015" - I swear to you I nearly cried in my office. He took a solid and public position not only for women in Canada but around the world, and I've seen the reverberations in the aftermath. I believe he will make Canada great again and do more than repair the damage Harper did. I have never been much of a nationalist but in that moment I have never been more proud of my country of origin. 

September 2014 part 2: stranded in the desert

It's sort of fun going back through my photos from last year to see what I took photos of, which means documenting what we were doing. We had adventures!

We've been thinking about buying a plot of land in the Nevada desert. It's super cheap if you don't mind being hours of driving from somewhere, which is fine with us. Our destination was sort of the middle part of northern Nevada but we left a bit later than we planned and ended up staying the first night on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land somewhere around Elko, Nevada. We arrived at our spot on the dark so couldn't really see what we were getting into, but somehow managed to put up our tent and get a good night's sleep in. When we woke up, this was our view:

If you've never been desert camping, I highly recommend it. It's dark, quiet, and has no mosquitoes. Also the smell of desert sage is lovely. Sure you have to watch out for snakes and scorpions at higher elevations, but that hasn't been an issue for us. On this particular morning, it was so lovely to just get up, put on some shoes, make coffee and sit in my camp chair.

Some sort of ant hill?

While I was sitting in my camping chair, drinking my excellent camp coffee, a couple of antelope pranced by and one came close enough to say hello! It was quite a magical moment.

Mr. Cupcake checked out the cactus.

Oh hey don't mind the cattle moseying by.

We put the truck in 4WD and climbed some pretty steep terrain to check out this plot but we decided it did not suit our needs. It was interesting though, there was evidence of some structure built out of rocks on the top of the hill, long since unused but you wouldn't be able to see it until you are 20 feet away from it.

Don't worry, dead snake is dead.

Well then we packed up and headed west towards Battle Mountain. There were some properties just south of the town we were going to go look at. We were about 11 miles out of the town when suddenly we realized the AC stopped working (which is a problem when it's 85 degrees in the desert) and then Dan knew we were doomed. The battery wasn't charging which meant that we were minutes away from not being able to drive the truck.

We turned around and got not very far when the truck died. It was a Sunday, 1:30pm. The only auto parts store in Battle Mountain that was open on a Sunday was Napa and they closed at 3:00 and they don't deliver. What do we do? With no truck battery we also had to conserve our cell phone batteries. We weren't there long when a grumpy old timer came by to see what we strangers were up to, gave us a boost and advised us to drive as fast as we can into town. Meanwhile, Dan called back to the unhelpful Napa guy and ordered & paid for a battery and alternator, please leave it outside, we'll find some way to get it. So we got about three miles towards down on the charge from the old guy before the truck died again. Now we were only eight miles away. Stranded. 2pm.

This was a lonely country road with not much traffic. Still, you'd think that people driving by seeing a vehicle with their hood popped and then two people walking towards town who are obviously not from the area would maybe, maybe! stop and say "hey do you need any help?". Now to be fair we didn't stick out our thumbs or anything but already Battle Mountain seemed like quite an unfriendly place. Not even the cops who drove by twice stopped to investigate.

So we walked for 5 miles on a Sunday afternoon in 85 degree weather. We had about a litre of water between us. After walking for an hour and a half on a hot gravel road, I had severe blisters on my feet so when someone finally stopped and offered us a lift into town, of course we gratefully accepted.  The guy lived outside of town, was just running in to the grocery store, and on hearing our story, gladly gave us a lift back to our truck with the 40-pound battery and alternator. He wouldn't take any money for his kindness (so there is one nice person in Battle Mountain).

Dan had the tools to get the new battery in but not the alternator. We drove to the O'Reilly in Elko (Dan knew they would be open late on a Sunday), borrowed tools and the tester, only to discover Napa had given us a faulty alternator. At this point, we were dirty, dusty, sweaty, hungry and tired, so we decided instead of camping again we'd get a motel room and finish dealing with the truck in the morning. Meanwhile, I could barely walk for the painful blisters on my feet, so I was happy to have a bath.

The next day (Monday now) we went to the Elko Napa (much more friendly) and they not only replaced the alternator and provided tools for the installation, but they also upgraded the alternator to a better quality one at no extra charge.

Then we drove home. The end. 

Juicing: a thing I am doing now

Ok so sometime last month, Leilani Munter came to give a talk at the new law building at the University of Utah. The Law department at the U has a strong environmental program and I have been to several of the events. This one was part of a series called "Trailblazers of Clean Energy", and how could I not attend a lecture by a "vegan hippie chick who loves race cars"? Also: it's only six blocks from my house.

So she talked about a lot of things, solar energy and the race car industry. Toward the end of the talk she hammered home the point about a vegan diet, encouraging all the attendees to at least start with "Meat Free Mondays" (now a popular thing in the US). She is part of the team that brought out The Cove, Blackfish, and soon to be released Racing Extinction. The take home message with the latter was "start with one thing". She included watching documentaries.

I sat on her ideas for a few weeks. Then I happened to open up Netflix last week and came on a couple of titles she mentioned, including Forks Over Knives (which I watched first) and I felt the pull to move towards a plant-based, whole foods diet. Yes, for the environment and to keep livestock out of terror, but it was more about my health. I eat really well, I exercise, drink lots of water, get enough sleep, I have good skin hygiene but I still have terrible acne and I feel tired all the time. And I seem to be producing a lot of mucous. And a few other minor symptoms that, when you add them up, point to a common culprit. This was validated for me a few weeks ago when I was sick with a cold, and any time I have a cold I avoid dairy. I love cheese and enjoy yogurt, but you know, I could probably live without them. So that was the first step.

Then a few days after watching that film, I saw (also on Neflix) Hungry for Change and that really hit home for me. They have a book and things you can print and hang on your fridge. I was finally convinced about the virtues of juicing. I bought a crappy old juicer at the DI thrift store a few months ago and dusted it off. Today I made juice for the sixth day in a row.

I want clear skin. I'm going to be looking for a job soon for when I graduate in May, and I'm going to our field's biggest academic conference in three weeks (I'm presenting a poster), so I want to look my best. In the film they said we can expect a difference (in skin) after 10-15 days, and it's already happening for me on day 6. I've also lost 2.5 pounds in that time. I haven't noticed a huge change energy-wise, but there are other factors there too, I'm sure.

I look at all vegetables now in terms of their juicability in the little machine that I have. It's a centrifugal grinder so it's not awesome but hey, for $8 I can't complain. I remember a time when I was living in Victoria, everyone was giving them away after the last juicing craze. They were all over the place in second hand stores. I'm guessing they have gotten a lot better in the interim because I was lucky to find the one I have. One day, when I have a job after I graduate, I'll get a nice one.

Meanwhile, I am planning a lot of beets and carrots and leafy greens in next year's garden, wherever that may be.