Jonsi in Salt Lake-Hengilas

Unfortunately, this footage is not too hot AND I missed a few seconds at the beginning and end. Still, the song is so beautiful.

Fall, Again

While last week was wintery and snowy, it feels like fall again--although it's still gray. This week is supposed to be sunny--hurray! I'm about to make granola bars and butternut, potato, leek soup. Maybe this time I'll have winners...I've been procrastinating working on my own stories/poems and instead have been enjoying this blog. Also, at first my writing blog was open to anyone, then I started to feel a bit shy...so I only invited a few people. But now some time has passed since I last posted anything there--now I have some distance from those poems and am no longer feeling raw and shy. So I've opened the blog once again--if you care to check it out.

First Week of Work Winter Wonderland

Driving up the mountain in a swirling snowstorm, dark of morning. The baby sleeps, and still the snow falls.

ChchchChanges...and Pumpkin Pancakes

I truly wish I had my camera with me yesterday, as instead of leaves crunching under our feet--it was snow! Keith and I had headed up to Snowbird in the morning as they were giving free tram rides if you brought a can of food. Since we plan to get our ski passes there, it was the perfect oppurtunity to check out the mountain.

When we first arrived there was just a fine drizzle, but after breakfast, fat drops of snow were falling from the sky! By the time we reached the top of the mountain (at 11,000 feet!) we were in the middle of a storm! It was truly beautiful!

As for other changes, Jonsi cancelled his acoustic in-store performance, but not the show. It was good, but not amazing. Still, I'll post some footage soon. Also, tomorrow is my first full day of work! I went up to Park City for a few hours Thursday and geeze, the baby is so unbelievably tiny!! She's two months and only weighs 9 lbs! Unfortunately, she, "has a little bit of a gas problem." Here's to hoping she doesn't cry too much due to her gas pains!!!!

Also, I had hoped to post a butternut squash soup recipe, but alas, have not been able to find one I like. Every one I've tried so far has been too sweet for me. However, this morning I made pumpkin pancakes. They were really good! Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin Pancakes

Mix: 1 1/4 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves

In a separate bowl mix: 1 cup milk
6 tbsp pumpkin puree
2 tbsp melted butter
1 egg

Mix the dry and wet ingredients together and cook!

Along Desolation Lake Trail

Back in MA my mom's already wearing layers of wool. But here in Utah it's been Indian Summer. However, when K and I reached the Salt Lake overlook on our hike yesterday, I donned a hat for the first time this season. Today, I've put the summer clothes away...

PS I'll try to post some recipes soon!

Fall List

*Shuffle through dry leaves to hear their crackly noise, smell fallen leaves

*Collect leaves and press and dip in beeswax and hang throughout the house (so that Keith says, "it's an autumn wonderland in here!")

*Find elderberries and make elderberry syrup

*Gather wild rose hips and make rose hip syrup

*Eat lots of winter squash: buttercup, butternut, acorn, ambercup, white buttercup, carnival—search for blue hubbard

*Drink hot mulled cider/drink unpasteurized cider

*Knit a hat

*Buy snowboard boots/helmet/goggles

*Carve a pumpkin

*Roast pumpkin and squash seeds

*Hike lots

*Eat soup from a pumpkin bowl

*Find a good granola bar recipe (finally—after many failed attempts!) and make

*Make butternut squash soup

*Make bread

*Make and eat apple pie!

*Pot herbs and bring inside to window seat

*Make apple chip nut cake

*Learn how to use Itunes!

*See Jonsi + Sufjan Stevens and maybe Azure Ray!

*Unfortunatley, I still have not found a good butternut soup or granola bar recipe!!!

Inexplicable

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm in the exact right place, at the exact right time, doing the exact right thing...I've been feeling this more and more each day since moving here to Salt Lake. It is unheard of. If someone had told me last year at this time that I'd be living here and feeling this way, I wouldn't have believed it. There's this joy that just keeps bubbling within. It really is the strangest thing, especially considering that one of my good friends nicknamed me "sourpuss" once upon a time...

I mentioned all this to Keith and he said that I should expect this feeling to soon go, that maybe I'm just feeling this way because I haven't been working! Well, we'll see, as I start work in four days...

However, it's not just that my mind is happy, but good things are happening in the outer world too. Recently I have received two wonderful, unexpected bits of news.

Cherry Blossoms ...Lovely, Heartbreaking Film

Battling the Gray

If September was brilliant blue skies, October is gray. I'd been staving it off with lights, candles, hot tea and peppermint oil. Telling myself the dark was actually cozy--to stay inside on an autumn day, wrapped in wool and fleece.

Also, how do I know that winter will soon be upon us? No, it's not the dark, not all my snowboard talk or the changing leaves--it's the chap. It's like I'm some washerwoman from some bygone era--my hands all rough and scratchy. Especially noticeable when holding K's hand--his oh-so-soft "delicate genius" hands (have you seen that Seinfeld episode?).

Anyway, today is the first truly sunny day in I think a week. It feels like a miracle. And so today I don't actually have to battle the gray (or the chap so much as I have implemented the use of purple rubber gloves for dishwashing--they make me feel like a 50's housewife in a commercial). Today, K and I are going to the Dental Spa, and then hiking again. Yes, you read right: the Dental Spa! where we will proceed to sit in massage chairs and drink tea and get our hands dipped in parrafin wax before getting our teeth cleaned!!!

PS Aren't these grapes sunshiney? I still can't believe they're from the alley behind my house! Oh Bountiful Utah!

Yesterday

Yesterday Keith and I drove up MillCreek, hiked Alexander's Basin to Gobbler's Gnob. The earth moist from the rain, cold air in my lungs. K saw a little gray pheasant, or was it a quail? There were men dressed in camouflage on horseback with bows and arrows in their backpacks, bright berries, the air spicy. I brought home moss for the bottom of my terrarium.

At the Farmer's Market we bought cheese rubbed in salt and honey, black walnuts, buttercup squash. Ate hot fries with andalouse sauce at Bruges.

One of the mountaintops is white! And I got a snowboard! Woohoo!!

Jónsi - Kolnidur live in Toronto

Cold!

It's cold and my mind is turning towards pumpkins, warm soup and bread, cardigans, glowing candles at dusk, ski socks, the colors brown and orange, weather stripping the windows, hot chocolate and apple crisp for breakfast, converting our gas fire place to a real one, corduroys and the heat for a few hours in the morning, snowboarding! A possible trip to Palm Desert? Only 2 weekends left of the Farmer's Market! Oh, and tickets to see Jonsi (Sigur Ros' lead singer)! So happy about this as we had tickets to see him in Boston in May but ended up staying in Nepal longer than we thought and so missed the show...How exciting we can make it up and see him here in Salt Lake! And oh my goodness, I just found out that Jonsi's also doing an acoustic performance in a record store in town! The excitement knows no bounds...

More Nepal...

So, it's rough, and definitely a bit shaky...These clips begin in Kathmandu at the Boudha stupa, then there's Karma Chagme's place in Bangjang and then K in Guru Rinpoche's Yangleshod cave and lots of little monks and roaming animals!

Windows Movie Maker!

Well, thanks to dear Ed and Jared too, I actually own a copy of Windows Movie Maker (unbeknownst to me until yesterday). I just started fooling around with it. Here's the result.

It's Fall, And The Light is Shifting

The light is shifting and I can no longer tell what time it is from a slab of sun bursting under my bedroom door. The morning light and I need to get reacquainted.

I wake and go out to check the garden. 20 tomatoes. 5 cucumbers.

So much wonderfulness from the library: cooking magazines and movies  (Syndromes and a Century which I've been wanting to see for years, and the Saltmen of Tibet).

In the grocery store they play the The.

Big Cottonwood Canyon to Silver Lake, hiking up through aspen groves--oceans of yellow. It smelled like sage and pine and fall! The moose on the way home.

Feeding Lopon yesterday and checking the english on translations of prayers by Khenpo Naga, mind ter from Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

K and I in the tree. It was dark. We listened to Juana Molina.