My 41st birthday

Last year, for my 40th, we had so much fun at the Natural History Museum of Utah, I decided that I want to do something like that - cultural - every year for my birthday. Today we went to the Living Planet Aquarium in Draper. It opened about a year ago but we were waiting for all the crowds to die down before we went. And then we forgot. But first!

Dan made me a terrific breakfast of corned beef hash. We had corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, the anniversary of the day we met (eight years ago!), and there was so much leftover we decided to have it for breakfast too.

The next thing we did was to get a family photo of me, Dan, Sam, and Mr. Cupcake. Everyone but Sam was excited about it.

Then we got in the van and drove to Draper. We were really looking forward to being there on a weekday when it was less likely to have lots of children. WRONG. There were school buses full of them. And pregnant moms with their little ones (this is Utah, after all). People referring to sturgeons as sharks and caimans as alligators and crocodiles. Anyway, we found lots of good stuff.

 Anaconda. 14 feet long.

 Pirhana!

 Electric eel.

 Macaw!

 Toucan. He was eating and I caught a video but he was behind netting so the pictures all have string blurring them.

 Tiny yellow frog.

 Another yellow frog.

 Otters! They were fun to watch. They move pretty fast though.

 This was the first time I had ever seen penguins. They all had zip ties on their wings and we didn't know why. I'll have to contact the aquarium and ask.

 Sea horses

 Pipe fish

 Sleeping sea horse

 Cuttle fish. He and Dan had quite a long conversation including posting and lots of color changes.

When I opened up Google a few minutes ago, I saw this!

Just this minute Dan is serving me up a steak curry so I have to go eat my birthday dinner now. No cake for me, I'm losing weight again and can't afford cake calories! 

There are no Cockroaches in Utah

So, we're moving to Utah next month.

I can't really go into details at this point but we're doing it for family.

I have lived in a lot of places and moved around a lot (I know some of my readers can relate) and I cling to the dream of one day staying in one place long enough to settle in and unpack, but unfortunately North Carolina is not that place. It's too far away from family who need us.

I have been here nearly ten months now, if you can believe that. In that time I have worked four jobs (furniture store, live music night club, health food store and art gallery), met hundreds of people, swam in the Atlantic Ocean, seen all three of North Carolina's aquariums (and one in South Carolina), visited our nation's capital three times, found every Asian grocery store in a 150-mile radius, saw sorghum, tobacco and cotton growing for the first time, experienced fire ants, killed dozens of cockroaches in my house, and have learned to love the south and all its charms. I will miss being here.

As a result of my jobs (especially managing the bar) and my relationship to the brewery (i.e. my husband's job), I have managed to build a lot of social capital in a way that was never possible in any of the other places I have lived. There are some really amazing people in this community and I have come to develop some great friendships. I am also pretty sure that I speak differently now - I bet if I go visit my people in Canada now they will notice how differently I pronounce vowels...

I have about four weeks to pack up the house, we will be traveling over Christmas. We have family near Salt Lake City, where we are moving to. I haven't been to SLC since our honeymoon in 2009, but certainly the few times I have been through Utah I have enjoyed it there. It is a beautiful state.

It turns out that Salt Lake City is a hotbed of health informatics research, the field I have not been in since I graduated with my Master of Science in 2009 and to which I hope to return. I have already put out some feelers and with any luck will be gainfully employed with the University of Utah in some capacity by my 40th birthday in March. Dan... well, you know, he can do any number of things well so he is extremely employable.

What about the Mormons, you say? I'm sure they won't hurt us. Just now we are in the land of the Free Will Baptists, and I think the Mormons speak a different language entirely, so we are not concerned. Even if we were at risk of converting I'm sure we wouldn't be eligible because we can't have kids and one wife is all Dan can handle. (Though having a second wife in the house to keep up with the housework would be useful, haha!)

So once again we will be divesting ourselves of the stuff we have accumulated and buy ourselves a trailer for the essentials. Dan has some wood and metal tools that will be coming with us, and hopefully one day soon he will have a shop where he can build stuff for us. But it will be, unfortunately, starting over again. We have very little furniture so will have to buy a dining set and living room furniture when we get there - we will have time for thrift store shopping when I get there I hope.

It's a bittersweet move. Just when I feel settled, we need to uproot, but I am happy to be nearer to family (my sister and mother are ecstatic - cheaper flights for them to come visit). I am also happy to be living in a city again that has things like coffee shops that are open evenings and weekends, bookstores, yarn shops, public transit, orchestra concerts, and access to nature. Also: IKEA! (Our nearest one here is clear across the state and is an entire day trip to get there and back).

I'll be sending out holiday greeting cards in the next week - if I don't have your mailing address, please let me know and I will be sure to send you one!

trip to the coast

On Saturday (July 20) we drove out to the Fort Fisher aquarium, one of three North Carolina Aquariums.

An albino alligator. She's by herself because they are rare, and in the wild they are susceptible to all kinds of bad things, including sunburn. 

 Turtles mating.

 I forget what kind of fish these were, but they had really interesting scale patterning that I think might be fun to replicate in a knitting pattern one day.

 The poisonous snake collection.

 More turtles!

 All the fish were really responding to Dan. He was wishing he was in the water with them.

There are three snakes in this photo, two big ones and one little one nestled in the other two.

The only shrimp in the whole place. 

Mr. Moray Eel coming to say hello.

 All around the aquarium they had art projects done by school classes. This goes to show you it is amazing what kids can do with cardboard.

This was the highlight of my day. In all the aquariums I have been to I have never seen an active octopus. I felt sorry for her because all the kids and stupid people were tapping on the glass and talking about how gross/ugly it is, and I said "no, she is beautiful!"

 Jelly sculpture

See even I could do this. Crocheted jellies all around our house?

 Aquatic creatures are so beautiful that they beg to have art made in their honour.

 The octopus was in a cylindrical container. I took about 50 photos of her.

Glowing jellies!

The big puffer fish. It was one of those moments when I wish I could say "hold still". 

The little fish in the middle was just somebody's lunch. 

Skeleton of a moray eel. 

Mr Camouflage.



It really was a fantastic day for us. We stopped in Jacksonville on the way to grab lunch at Jeff's Burgers and Shakes and I had the best fries in North Carolina there. Dan and I got a membership/family pass to the aquarium for $60/year, well worth the money, and now we can see zoos and aquariums and science museums all over the country for free or 50% off. After the aquarium we went to the beach, just half a mile down from the aquarium parking lot. I had never swum in the Atlantic Ocean before and it was quite a strange feeling to be in the ocean and have it be warm. We didn't go out too far in the waves because the tide was coming in and there was undertow as well as a rip current, and I am still mighty scared of big water. It was fun riding the waves though and feeling flopsy. The salt water cleansed us both and we felt great after.

We headed from Fort Fisher back up to Wilmington to go to Trader Joe's and then to Flaming Amy's Burrito Barn. I hadn't been to a Trader Joe's since I was in Arizona in 2004 and it is still pretty awesome. Impulse buy: chocolate covered espresso beans. Also maple syrup from Quebec.

I realize it has been more than a month since I last posted. Things are moving along at the night club and my job is at times really fun and other times really stressful. I'm still learning a lot but I'm working six days a week and putting in about 45 hours a week, which isn't really sustainable so I'm trying to find a way to better manage my time. I have hardly touched my knitting in months, and it has gotten so hot that I have also sort of lost interest in maintaining the yard (combined with being in full view of all our neighbors, I'm not used to this kind of scrutiny). Dan is distilling now and I have also become keenly interested in the world of spirits. There has been some weird stuff happening in my family, not bad, just weird, but events are still unfolding so I'll say more about that later. I'll just say that 23 years after having divorced my dad, it looks like my mum will finally get her settlement from that marriage so she can get on with her life.

Also I have unlocked my Twitter account.

More soon, I promise!