the cats smell like litter and all kinds of other distasteful things.

It's true, they do.

It's been a relatively eventful past week, with plenty of rain, Indiana Jones, and just enough biking to get us through the Memorial Day weekend. Eric and I got to go see Indiana Jones 4 at the midnight showing on Wednesday night. It was a fun movie, but kind of weird. Not exactly what I was expecting, but lots of fun nonetheless. We also just got back from Megan and Jared's where we watched Temple of Doom. They're going to be watching The Last Crusade soon, so we might join. We bought the first 3 Indiana Jones movies from Target just before we went to see the fourth one since they were only $10 each (yes!). I'm excited. I love those movies, silly though they may be.

The weather wasn't as nice as we had hoped for this weekend. We wanted to take advantage of the 3-day weekend and go camping but since it was cold and rainy we decided it would have to wait. Goblin Valley isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and it will still be there later in the summer. We didn't want to just sit inside or stay in Provo all weekend, so we did go down to Nine Mile Canyon and do a little biking there. There is a fairly maintained dirt road that runs all the way through the canyon, so we drove about 25 miles in to a small day use area and then rode our bikes about another 5.5 miles in, and then back. The canyon was really pretty, and not what I was expecting. There was a lot of rock art there that was really interesting to look at. Of course, we took a few pictures for posterity.

Saturday evening we went out with Eric's parents to Eureka - a place I had never been to nor even heard of before. Apparently it was a mining boom town in the late 1800s which consequently lost a great deal of its population once they weren't finding a whole lot of silver there anymore. We drove on some back roads to this really remote area because Eric's dad wanted to do some shooting, but we ended up just walking around and looking in some old mine shafts. And Eric tried to help a lamb through a fence to its mother but it found a way before he could get to it (there were a lot of sheep there...). We were afraid Mick (the dog) was going to fall in a mine shaft. We also saw a mummified rabbit in an abandoned shed. Interesting.

It was a pretty good week/weekend. We bought a huge Utah atlas thing today at Border's so we'll be able to do even more exploring this summer...or at least as is possible in our little Malibu. What luck!

the weekend.

This last weekend Eric and I had a pretty good time (of course involving going to Cafe Rio for dinner one night). On Saturday, we decided we wanted to go hiking but not have to drive very far, so we went hiking up in Rock Canyon. It was really pretty up there, and the hike in the canyon was a lot further than I expected it to be. We didn't do the whole thing - less than 2 miles in, we decided we were done and turned around.

chilling our water in the snow runoff...it worked!

we found a sweet cave on the way back. we didn't have any light so we didn't go very far in...but we're definitely going back.

It was such a nice day on Sunday (almost hot even) that we took our bikes to go ride on the Provo River Trail. We left around 7 when it was cooling off a little and did a nice easy ride of about 10 miles, getting back just before it got dark a little after 9. We had a really good time.

safety first...yeah!

mischief managed

I have just completed re-reading the entire Harry Potter series, and I did it in about two weeks (minus the conference). Pretty good, I think, considering I still have to go to work every day and I can't completely ignore everyone around me. I noticed a lot of things this time around that I didn't recognize before, and I was a lot less sad when I read the seventh book. I got a little choked up reading "The Prince's Tale" chapter, but that was about it. I was already anticipating everything else (the deaths, surprises, etc.). So now I'm done. I had been planning on reading these books this summer, and now I don't know what else to do! Guess I'll just have to find something else to read. I think it's going to be "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" next. I've been wanting to read that again. Any other suggestions? Anyone read anything really great lately that I shouldn't miss?

I think Eric's glad I'm done with Harry Potter, now I'll actually give him some attention during our free time.

P.S. Nobody better recommend "The Celestine Prophecy"... or my mother will have your head.

happy mother's day...yesterday

Saturday was the Block Party at the Museum (to culminate Utah Prehistory Week). I worked for a couple of hours in the gallery, reading stories to kids and giving tours. It was pretty fun. I was almost sad I didn't get to be outside doing one of the booths, because it was such a nice day out. There was a family of Native American dancers who came to put on a show (they're called Morning Star), and they were really good. One of the kids especially was really talented. He finished the show with his hoop dance, where he used 21 hoops to make different formations while dancing. Awesome. After the dancing, I got interviewed about the exhibit by BYU Weekly, so maybe I'll be on TV sometime...

After the Block Party, Eric and I went to dinner at this new restaurant in Orem called Pizzeria 712. It's a cute little place with really eclectic (but delicious!) pizzas. We got one with goat cheese, olives, eggplant, onions, and chili flakes. Yum.

Oh, and on Friday we saw 10,000 BC in the dollar theater. It's a good thing we waited til it was in the dollar theater...that movie was terrible. And I usually can find things to like in really bad movies, so that's saying something. I don't know if it was the narrator or the mammoths (manak?) or the Jamaican accents or the dreadlocks or the screeching bird-dinosaur things in the jungle, or what, but it just wasn't very good.

In other news, Coldplay is coming to Salt Lake in November and Vegas in July...Eric's pushing to go to BOTH of those. We'll see...

owl on books

So. It's been a while. After classes the last semester, I worked fervently on getting the exhibit ready for opening on April 22. We were working until about an hour before it opened on finishing everything, and we managed to get it pretty well done. Not that many people came, which was actually a little disappointing (only people who work at the museum and their family/friends came). But whatever. My mom, Megan, Nathan, Eric, Eric's mom, his grandma and her husband, and my grandparents all came. That was kind of fun. A few pictures:

The case I worked on

The day after the exhibit opened, Eric had to go up to Salt Lake for a conference for his work from Wednesday til Saturday. He helped lots of people with their systems...at least I guess that's what he was doing. I wasn't there. I went up and stayed with him on Friday night, and there was a Sleep Number bed. Eric liked it, but I didn't really. Then on Saturday, I drove to Denver with my boss and a few other girls I work with for the American Association of Museums' annual conference. It was really good. I loved most of the sessions I went to, which basically gave insight into all different aspects of working in the museum profession. I especially loved one called "Stories are Serious Business," which talked about this program that this cooperation of museums was doing where Native Americans tell stories of their heritage in association with exhibits to help visitors better understand the collections.

After the sessions were over every day, we were able to walk around downtown in Denver and eat dinner. On Monday, we went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for this dinner thing and to walk around and see the exhibits. I had a headache all night, so it probably wasn't as fun as it could have been, but it was ok. Tuesday we went to this Japanese place (kind of like an upscale Panda Express) called Tokyo Joe's, and on Wednesday the museum paid for us to go out to dinner at this Mexican place called Croc's. Yummy food.

The blue bear looking inside the Denver conference center ("I see what you mean")

Dancing people sculpture outside the conference center

At the capitol building - the mile high marker!

A neat sculpture thing outside the Denver Art Museum. It was all about grievances of the U.S. against Native Americans, and includes all sorts of events (AIM movement, Dawes Act, etc.)

After dinner, downtown on the 16th street mall

Yesterday Eric and I went up to Ikea in Draper and got a new bookcase! Now I can actually fit all of my books on one place...without them being strewn all over the living room. It's a pretty color. I love it!

Waiting in line for Iron Man. We were about the 30th people in line, and we got snacks to hold us over while we waited...

Eric wants me to mention that last night, on our way from getting gelato to going to the movie theater to see Iron Man (which was awesome), we saw this guy in a fat sumo wrestler suit riding a longboard down the street. It was so weird...and really hilarious. We tried to get a picture, but he skated away too fast. Surprising for a guy in a sumo suit.