Sunday, June 28, 2009

I've lost that bloggin' feelin'...

It has been many a month since I last posted on my blog. And even longer since I made a substantial post on my blog. At this point, who knows if anyone out in cyberspace even bothers to check my blog anymore. Have you ever noticed that we often become that which we most despise? I used to hate going to a friend's blog only to see that they hadn't updated anything in ages. Now I am that person. Shameful, absolutely shameful.
I think the biggest reason that I haven't blogged in a while is that I have been having an affair with Facebook. There, I admitted it. I cheated on Blogger and I think I may even love Facebook more. It's less time intensive, it gives me something in return...almost instant gratification if you will. Status updates, quizzes galore, online chat...what more could I ask for? Blogger has never given me so much power at my finger tips.

But eventually I guess we must return to our roots so here I am. I guess for now I will just throw in a few little tidbits about what's been going on the past several months in hopes that I can slowly get back into the habit of blogging. Where to begin?

Let's head back to March 2009. Probably one of the two most significant things that happened that month was, first, that I attended the open house for the Draper Temple. What a beautiful building! I can't believe how many temples are in the Salt Lake Valley alone! Which, here is the shameless plug...from now until August 1st, there is an open house for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It is free and open to the public. They just ask you to make an online reservation for certain times to help with crowd control. You can make a reservation by clickig here: http://http//www.lds.org/temples/openhouseinfo/0,12357,1921-1-597-0,00.html

Secondly, I went on a trip to El Paso, Texas and it's not-so-beautiful sister city Cd Juarez, Mexico. There were a few of us from work that went on this "fact-finding mission" to explore options for making changes to our outreach clinic held there. Border cities have long been dangerous places, but with the escalating warring between drug cartels, Juarez is now considered "the most dangerous city in the Americas." Fortunately we have not had any problems at our clinics...in fact, I feel as safe going to our clinic now as I did when I started going 7 years ago. However, that does not change the fact that Juarez is EXTREMELY dangerous and anything could happen at any time. Our fact-finding mission was not entirely successful because there only real viable option is to move the clinic across the border to El Paso and our border patrol is not willing to cooperate to make that happen. Anyway, I'm ok with that because the clinic itself runs very well...the only problem with it is it's location. And again, I feel safe in our clinic because it is literally a stone's throw from the border (I could probaby spit into El Paso if I tried).

Now onto April. Heidi, Hurley and I made our spring pilgrimage to visit my family in California. We ended up dejunking my mom's garage yet again (she ended up with a lot of furniture and other items after my Aunt JoAnn died) and organizing her food storage. We also found plenty of time to play. We went to the Santa Monica Pier, LA Farmer's Market, the tattoo shop featured on LA Ink, Universal Studios and enjoyed America's favorite pastime at a Dodger's game.

Me & the fam at Santa Monica Pier

High Voltage Tattoo, aka LA Ink


Me & the fam at Universal Studios


Heidi and I at Dodger Stadium


April also included another trip down to Juarez, this time for clinic. We knew that we had a large amount of patients scheduled and also wanted to screen as many new patients as possible. To make a long story short, the majority of clinic staff (minus the doctors, who never wait for their "dead or wounded") missed the return flight to SLC. So we spent an extra night in El Paso and wearily arrived the next day.

May's main events were the Bear Lake Golf weekend with the "Ladies Plum Golf Association"--some friends from work that I have been golfing with for the last few years. We had absolutely the best weather of any of our trips and just a grand old time. One of my friends, Angela, has a cabin up there so we always plan our itinerary full of our favorite foods, games, movies and a round of golf. I sure love those girls and look forward to our good times together.

Me, Robin, Angela & Kristen


Best dang food at the covered wagon

Memorial Day brought a trip up to Heidi's grandparents' cabin in Kamas. It is so nice to get away and relax. I really hope that one day I will be able to have my own mountain retreat to escape too.


Now to the present month. Besides the unbelievable monsoonal rains that we've had this month, the highlight of June...and every June for the past 5 years is the annual canoe trip with the LCLC (Labyrinth Canyon Ladies Club). Forgive me for being lazy in recounting the happenings of the trip but two of the ladies have already blogged about it so you can read Kim's account for more details. There are some picutres for your viewing pleasure on Facebook because it takes too stinking long to upload them all here. Here is the album


On a final note, I know some of you are missing the quotes from my crazy ward. Well, today was a doozie that shouldn't be left out. An older sister in her 80's spoke in Sacrament Meeting today. She is a super funny and random lady...if you've read the other ward posts, this is dear Sister Dachsund (who sees Jesus when she looks into the eyes of her Dachsund). Anyway, as she's talking she kind of stumbled over some words and then said, "I hope you heard that ok. I'm having a little trouble with my teeth today. Oh well, at least I found them this morning." At the end of the meeting, she and another sister were to sing a duet for the first two verses of the closing hymn, with the congregation joining in for the last two verses. Well, as she started singing, you could see her top teeth fall off her gums & kind of swim around in her mouth until she chomped them back upwards. This happened a couple of times. At the end of the first verse she said, "Just a minute, I need to take my teeth out." and proceeded to spit them into a Kleenex. She then "gummed" her way through the rest of the song. Priceless, simply priceless!