Confessions of a Brunette on the Internet 322

It has been a busy week and has flown by.

Over a month ago I bought a newer GoPro. I finally put my old GoPro on KSL and it was sold in a day. I have had pretty good luck selling my stuff on KSL. Not the facebook yard sales, I have had no success there so far... but KSL is golden. Glad to have a little extra cash.

Actually... all the cash I am collecting from selling stuff is going towards something. What you ask? A paddle board! On Tuesday I actually made an appointment with the paddle board shop by Utah Lake to go try out different boards to see which kind of board that I want. The guy at the shop that was helping me was awesome. Really helpful. Their boards are quality but still light weight and sturdy which is what I really wanted. Best of all, they sell them at whole sale. So they are as cheap as the ones as Costco... except for better quality (Maybe not, but I would imagine) and you can test it out before you buy it. ALSO... if you don't want to pay for it all at once, you can make payments on the board and then they will keep it in the shop (for you to ride whenever you want) until you pay it off and then you can take it home. It comes with the paddle board, paddle, foot leash and case for the paddle board. I paid for half of my board already... now I just need to go back in and choose which color I'm going to get and pay the other half and the board is mine. I am all kinds of excited. I need to buy straps first though before I can take it so that I can strap it to the racks on the top of my car. Thank you Utah Paddle Boards! Another cool thing they told me is that they are cleaning up Utah Lake (at least that part of it) and are putting in a sand beach and going to make it a cool hang out spot where you can not only paddle board, and such (you can also rent paddle boards, kayak's and wave runners) but where you can lay out and just relax. Right now... you can't really do that. I would love to have a place like that because I don't have a pool to lay out next to. Plus it is so close to where I live. Supposedly it's supposed to be done by the end of this month. We shall see.

This week I watched all of the second season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I didn't think it was as good as the first season. After that I just caught up on all of my other shows. Now I am trying to figure out what to watch next.

Work has been pretty slow, but that is normal after quarter end.

Monday I started my detox and personal training. I thought that doing both would be the worst... but so far my detox hasn't been bad. I haven't craved sugar and I have stuck to my veggies and protein and limited fruit and raw nuts and protein shakes after my work-outs. Hopefully I will see the results of this. It's been the personal training that has about killed me. My body hasn't hurt this much in a long time... and I feel like I have never been pushed this hard. To the point where I physically can't do anymore. Then starting another work out the next day when my body already hurts. I'm not going to lie... right now I hate it, but I hope that it gets better after this week. First week is the hardest right? So far I totally dread the hour that I have to go in. It is the LONGEST hour of my day. But seriously. I feel like I am paying someone a lot of money to torture me...and kill me.... slowly. I'm hoping for great results.

Wednesday I went with my parents to see my niece, Sierra, in the program called "Hope of America". It made for a long night, but I was glad I went. It was pretty cool. I will do a separate post on it soon.

Over the weekend... I guess I already posted about my weekend. I stayed late at work on Friday and then came home and watched a little tv and went to bed. Pretty boring... none of my roommates were even around. Saturday I went on a hike (which I posted about) then went out to lunch with my friends Kyle and John (enjoying all the food I can before starting my detox) and then last minute went to the Lantern Festival with my roommate MacKenzie. I'm so glad that worked out because that festival is magic. It really is. I never get tired of it. So it was a pretty great weekend. Sunday I hung out with my crew and brought them to Sunday dinner. We had a blast... up until Kyle tossed me out of the golf cart. I have some scrapes and a huge bruise on my hip... but whatever... at least they can't go that fast. I just didn't realize he was going to drive the golf cart like it was a 4 wheeler. Still a good weekend. I'm glad that I have these new friends. I think we will be doing a lot together this summer. In fact... Kyle is buying a paddle board as well, so we can go lots together.

Tonight I got my hair done. Nicole never fails me. I love my hair, as usual. After I met up with my crew at the food truck round up for a little bit... obviously I could eat anything, I just went to hang out with my friends. We also stopped in the Beehive Bazaar which my friend Kristen had some paintings in there. Ran into some other friends I knew. It was a happening spot tonight. After that... I went to hang out at my parents house because my sister Jamie is in town! That will be my only chance to see her, so it was fun to get some sister hang out time... Kristy was over there too. It was nice chatting for a few hours. Too bad I can't see more of her, but her and her family are coming back next month so... I guess I will see her then.

I guess that is it for the week. I'm pretty exhausted, but I have been sleeping great because of it. So I guess there is that.

Photo of the Week 320

The barn in Mapleton... right before the most amazing sunset that I didn't capture. Sad face.

Lantern Fest - Take 2

Last September I went to Utah's Lantern Fest out by the Salt Flats. I guess they started doing it twice a year now... once in the Spring and once in the fall. Because I went to the last one, I now get emails for when they come back. I don't mind.

I bought 2 tickets because I had planned for Stacey and I to go so that we could add it to our dancing through Utah video. Well... when Stacey bailed on the video, I now had an extra ticket to this even and had no idea who was going to go with me. I already paid for it, so I didn't want to waste the money and not go... although I was no long excited to go to the festival... mostly because I had nobody to go with and it's a big ordeal that I wasn't in the mood for.

At first I almost got my summer adventure club to come with me, but then non of them bought tickets and I found out most of them had a friends wedding that night. Then I asked my friend Amber if she would go with me, and she said she wanted to go but it would depend on if she was feeling up for it since she was under the weather. I kind of counted on that but then didn't hear from her Saturday, so I text her early in the afternoon and she said she wasn't going to go. I then gave up on trying to find someone to go with me and decided to try and sell both tickets. So I posted them on 3 different yard sale pages on Facebook and also posted it on my ward Facebook page. Apparently my roommate MacKenzie saw me posting it everywhere and she text me saying she really wanted to go. Funny... you would think I would ask her first since we live together but I hadn't really seen her much that week and she never really takes me up on those kinds of things so I just figured she wouldn't want to. I figured WRONG! I was so excited.

So MacKenzie rushed home and we grabbed some warm things and left to go to the Festival. It's an all night thing so we of course stopped by Sodalicious to get a drink and treat and then stopped by Freebirds to get some dinner to eat once we got there. The traffic was nuts... but once we got there, we found a tiki torch to set up our chairs next to and we listened to the live music and ate our dinner and watched the sunset. It was a bit windy and a little chilly... but I was content. I was worried that we were not going to be able to light the lanterns because it was so windy. However... it cleared up just enough for us to do it.

Even though I had been to the Festival before and even been to the real Festival in Thailand... it never gets old. It is seriously magical, especially when they put music to it. I maybe kind of teared up a little bit when they were playing Josh Groban. It never gets old... I would go to the next one in a heartbeat. They changed location this time so that they could fit even more people in to the Festival so there were even more lanterns than last time. Such an awesome experience. I'm so glad that MacKenzie wanted to go with me last minute so that not only my tickets didn't go to waste... but it also made my entire weekend. Experiencing a festival like this makes you smile and think of how great life is.

It is so hard to do this festival justice with pictures.... so I decided to include a video this time as well.

Slate Canyon Trail

My friend, Kristen, asked me if I wanted to do a little hike on Saturday morning. The answer to that question is pretty much always yes. She wanted to do something close and not too hard since she has bad knees... so I suggested we just hike on Slate Canyon Trail right up the road from where we live.

I forget how awesome that trail is. It's not too hard... it is just a path that goes along the mountain and has an awesome view of the valley. Funny story... as we were hiking along, I heard something behind us all of the sudden and then before I could even look back this guy paraglided RIGHT over our heads and then landed right in front of us. It scared me so bad because I had no idea there were people paragliding. We looked behind and there were 3 more people coming in to land. We watched each one of them land right by us and moved out of the way for each one. Pretty cool. Wish I were brave enough to do that... but I am terrified of heights. Maybe if it were tandem, which these guys were not.

Anyway, it was a beautiful time to do this trail. The snow capped mountains are beautiful... everything is starting to turn green and lots of wild flowers are popping up.

Kristen is a cool girl, so it was fun to spend some time chatting and admiring natures beauty on a beautiful Saturday morning.

I will have to remember to take this trail more often. I mean... it is walking distance from my house... Lucky me!

Sunday Fun Day

These are my new Besties that I made on the way to the Sun Tunnels... minus Corey. We started a summer adventure club, so we plan on spending lots of time together this summer. I'm pretty excited about it.

I haven't known any of these people for very long, but I seriously love them. I'm so glad that trip to the Sun Tunnels happened for this reason a lone.

Today Kyle called me wanting me to come hang out... so I went over and we went over to Utah Lake (In Lindon) so Kyle could take some pictures and it was a nice day and we all just wanted to hang out outside. So we did just that. Also John gave me my first sign language lesson. I have been doing a little on my own as well... but it's better with someone who actually knows. I hope by the end of the summer... that I can be pretty fluent. That is if we all spend as much time together as we say we are going to. Which I hope we do. Later Kyle, John and Corey all came over for family dinner at my house. People that want to come have dinner with my family... I like them. Kyle even had my mom play piano so that he and Corey could sing. We also of course had some fun on the golf cart. It was a good day. I LOVE the warm weather and being outside! It makes me happy.

Now we just need a group shot with Corey in it. Then our club picture will be complete.

Utah Dining - Take 8 Santa Barbara Style

I had to do this special Utah Dining post because there are two food joints that started in my hometown of Goleta/Santa Barbara and they are RIGHT next to each other in Sandy. WHAT??!! I asked them if that was on purpose.. and they gave me a clueless look and said no.

The Habit

Just some of the best burgers. People made such a big deal about In & Out and how lucky I was to grow up with it. Sure.. I grew up with it and it was ok, but we would ALWAYS choose the Habit over In & Out. Fresh and delicious. They do it right.

Freebirds

Awesome burritos. I don't know what else to say except that they are delicious. Fresh, flavorful and amazing.

I'm proud that these little places from Goleta have turned out to be such a big success. All I have to do is drive to Sandy to feel like I'm back home in Goleta/Santa Barbara California. It makes me happy. If only they were in Provo... well, it's probably a good thing that they are not. It will stop me from eating there often.

Mr. Flake

Like MANY others... I met Mr. Flake online. We chatted back and forth for a few days and it seemed to go pretty well so he asked me for my number and then asked me if he could "have the honor of taking me on a date". Well, how do you say no when someone asks you like that? 

Looking through each others schedules (especially mine this week) we decided to meet on Wednesday. Home boy doesn't have a car, so I agreed to meet him in Salt Lake after work. Typically I like to meet in the middle, but I was feeling nice. He asked me to meet him at a Tea place. I agreed. 

Wednesday came and I ended up being at work until after 6. He called me right around the time I was about to leave. He called me to make sure we were still on and to set up a time. I still needed to go home and change because it started raining and I also needed to fill up on gas before heading up to Salt Lake. We decided that 7:30 would give me enough time to do that and drive up and give him plenty of time to get dinner. He told me his phone was about to die, so that is why he wanted to set the time. It was all set.

I run home, change and fill up on gas and start my drive to Salt Lake. It was raining. I hate driving in the rain. You can't see as well, people drive like idiots... I just didn't want to drive to Salt Lake in the rain... on top of that, I was tired from a hard workout and a long day at work.... but on I went because I am a woman of my word. 

I get to the tea place right on time. I drove 40 minutes and I got there on time. Mr. Flake lives in the area and he was not there. So I waited outside for a few minutes looking around, waiting for him to walk up at any minute. I felt awkward waiting outside by myself... so I went inside. It was awkward waiting inside by myself too... but at least it was the type of place where you could sit and hang out or study or whatever... so I sat at a table by myself and played on my phone... trying to act busy and not awkwardly waiting for a guy that I have never met before. I sat there... waiting by myself for a HALF HOUR. I hadn't heard anything from him, so I was irritated and I didn't feel like waiting any longer. So I walked out and I went to my car. 

As soon as I sat down in my car, he called me. I almost didn't answer, but I was so curious of what he was going to say. I pick up. I'm annoyed so I know this conversation isn't going to go well. He tells me he is so sorry. He just plugged in his phone and saw what time it was. He thought he was early... he had lost track of time because his phone died. He told me to drive back and to let him make it up to me. Even though I was still there, just in my car, I told him that I had already left and I didn't want to drive back. I drove 40 minutes, waited for him for another 30 and then had another 40 minute drive home... I didn't want to waste anymore time on him. Also, I was already mad at him before I met him, I don't think it would have gone well anyway... that isn't a good way to meet someone. So I drove home.... in the pouring rain which made me even more mad. 

While driving home there were things that went through my mind that made me more mad at him. He called me knowing his phone was dying... so don't you think he would have prepared for that? Bring a watch, look at the clock at the place that you got dinner, charge your phone enough to get by for the night before you leave. He plugged his phone in at the place that we were supposed to meet and started talking to me then. So.... why couldn't he plug it in while he was at dinner... or somewhere else? So much that didn't make sense to me. 

He begged me to give him another try. I said I wouldn't go all the way to Salt Lake just the meet him again. He reminds me he doesn't have a car. I tell him, well.... next time I'm in Salt Lake for another reason, I would let him know and maybe it would work out. Honestly, I have no interest in doing that.  We haven't spoken since and I'm fine with that. 

This is the first time I have EVER been stood up on a date. I hope it is my last.