Camera Obscura Concert


N and I went and saw Camera Obscura in concert on Tuesday night. Camera Obscura is a Scottish group and it was the first time they’ve played in Salt Lake City in ten years. So even though it was tough to find a sitter on a Tuesday night (Thanks, Jan and Mom!) we felt strongly about going.

I really like their music and the concert was a lot of fun. N posted a summary of the concert and one of their songs here–wander over and take a listen.

I Heart Art: Andrea Offermann


I love this print by German artist Andrea Offermann but since I don’t have any place to hang it I’m having trouble justifying the cost of buying it and getting it framed.

Andrea originally attended medical school in Germany for a few years before deciding to switch to a career as an artist. Besides creating fine art she contributed to volume four of the comics anthology Flight. There is a nice interview about her participation in Flight here.

I discovered Andrea’s work through Tiny Showcase but all of her prints there have sold out before I found out about them. Sigh.
In particular I regret not getting a print of the above piece while I had that chance. I love the fairy-tale/historical style of the piece and the delicate details like how the ladies’ gowns fan out like seashells in the water. Andrea describes the piece as follows:

This is a mixture of fable and truth. People used to believe that if a virgin touched a unicorn, she would find true love. The horns that people believed were from unicorns were really from narwhales. In 1711 a narwhale swam up a river all the way to Hamburg.

Isn’t that great?

I don’t know if anyone will put out another edition of the narwhal print, but maybe once I finish organizing my office I’ll find the perfect spot for “Pink Elephants.” I’m crossing my fingers.

Indian Cooking Class and Recipe

On Saturday I went to an Indian cooking class with my hair stylist/friend LeeAnn. It was a lot of fun. I think the teacher, Savita Puri, is in her late sixties/early seventies and she was very sweet. Her husband of 51 years (!) was assisting her and kept cracking up the class with jokes and stories. They were adorable.

The class was conducted demonstration-style, so we watch them cook Murg Makhani (butter chicken), Aloo Gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), Dal (lentils), Zeera (cumin) rice, naan (flat bread) and a mango mousse dessert while following along with the recipes. Then we ate everything–it was delicious.

I love Indian food but have only cooked it from scratch once and that was in the pre-E days. It has seemed daunting to gather all the spices and specialty ingredients needed. But the teacher gave us the address of a good Indian grocery store not too far from my house and so I think I’m going to go stock up on supplies and then try out the recipes at home.

If you’re interested in the class, it’s held the last Saturday of every month at Thanksgiving Point from 11 am to 1 pm. It costs $40 and different recipes are showcased every class. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it a regular thing, but I might go back in July because Mrs. Puri said that they might make one of my favorite dishes, chicken saag, that month. Yum!

In the past (i.e., that one time) when I’ve made Indian food I’ve just serve short-grain rice like I use for Korean food, but having the Indian rice really adds a lot to the meal.

Recipe: Zeera (Cumin) Rice
Serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups basmati rice
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 4 cups water
  • 2 T oil
  • salt to taste

Directions:

  1. Wash the rice 4-5 times, then soak for 15 minutes and drain the water.
  2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add cumin seeds, when it starts crackling add the rice. (Be sure not to let the cumin seeds burn!)
  3. Fry the rice for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
  4. Add the rice, salt, and water to a rice cooker. Stir well and then cook until done.

I couldn’t wait

I just picked up the photos I shot with my Holga at Goblin Valley. I was planning on posting a bunch of them next week but I couldn’t wait to share this one.


It’s one of my favorite shots of the bunch but it was exciting to see how all of the photos turned out. It made me realized how much I’ve missed the surprises that come from shooting with film. I’ll post some more of the Holga photos next week.

Have a great weekend!

Fun was had (eventually)

I had been wanting to take E to the local pool for a while now. I decided to take him yesterday because school gets out today and I figured it would be better to go when it wasn’t super crowded–you know, in case he freaked out. Which he did.

I honestly thought he would really like it. E loves taking baths. Anytime I turn on the water in the laundry sink that we use for his baths (it is super deep so he still fits) he runs into the room and hopefully starts tossing his bath toys into the sink. When he realizes that no, we aren’t taking a bath right now, he usually has a mini tantrum.

Anyway, the whole experience started out poorly. E was totally freaked out by the swim diaper. He did not want to wear it and kept trying to take it off. I changed him at home because E hates public restrooms (he is afraid of loud toilets) and so I figured the less time spent in the locker room the better. But, novice that I am, I forgot that swim diapers don’t really absorb anything: they’re just there to catch poop. So when we’re walking through the lobby and E slips and trips on some water on the floor I was first annoyed at someone having split something and not having cleaned it up but then very quickly the annoyance turned to embarrassment as I realized that E had probably um, made the water himself. But they were very nice about it. (Lesson learned–change into swim diaper at the pool.)

E was fascinated by the pool and the people in it but the fascination quickly turned to horror when it became apparent that, surprise, surprise, we were going in the water. The pool includes a little toddler section where the water’s only 6-12 inches deep and there are two small water slides. My friend Kristin and her little boy were meeting us at the pool and were already in the water when we arrived. As soon as I carried E into the water he started freaking out. He was terrified. When I sat down in the water he scrambled around in my lap trying to climb up me so the water wouldn’t touch any part of him. I was seriously thinking that we might have to leave. But little by little we splashed around and he got more and more comfortable in the water. After 15 minutes or so he was okay sitting in the water by himself and even going down the water slide on his stomach.

We ended up staying for about an hour and a half and E cried and cried when we left. I loved swimming when I was a kid and I’d like him to be comfortable in the water so I think I’m going to try and take him to the pool maybe once every other week or so. Hopefully next time we’ll skip all the histrionics and go right to the fun part.

Mr. Nice Guy

John Vanderslice is seriously one of the nicest guys in music. The show was really fun. If you’re local and want to catch him he’s going to be playing at the Kilby Court tonight.

**Update: N has posted a full review of the show here if you’re interested. **

In other news, I’m taking E to the public pool for the first time today. I have no idea how he’ll react but he loves taking baths and so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll have fun.

Goblin Valley Photos

The trip to Goblin Valley was really fun. Thunderstorms had been forecast but they were supposed to hold off until the late afternoon. The forecast was part right: it poured during the 4-hour drive there but it stopped raining once we got to the park in the late afternoon, which was nice. But the rain had turned the soft red clay dirt into super slippery, mushy mud. We had already invested so much time in getting there that we braved the mud and climbed down onto the valley floor to poke around. The scenery was amazing.



There were a few other people braving the mud.

E clowning around with N.

My shoes after walking around on the valley floor.

The mud was really something: it sucked my shoes right off my feet a few times. We hadn’t brought extra shoes and so we ended up driving home barefoot. We wanted to stop somewhere for dinner so we first stopped at a Walmart and bought some cheap shoes to wear. Before we went into the store we tried to clean off our muddy shoes the best we could but I still felt very self-conscious. It was the first (and hopefully the last) time that I felt under-dressed for shopping at Walmart.

We had one other little mishap besides the mud: we had miscalculated the amount of gas we needed. When we got to the park we were running quite low on gas so on the way back we drove straight to the nearest gas station which was in the opposite direction than our home. It added about 45 minutes to the drive home but I think it ended up being worth since we got to see this place:

Best gas station ever!

All and all, it was a really fun trip. If you go, bring extra shoes and clothes, towels, and a big jug of water to wash up with. (There isn’t any running water at the park.) And make sure you have at least a quarter tank of gas when you get there–learn from our mistakes!