Altered Taste Buds

I have a hard time going out to eat anymore. It seems that most restaurants don't know how to make things TASTE. Even olive garden isn't that good any more. I often want to ask the server for more basil garlic or cumin. We went to Red Robin for dinner and I got a hamburger. I asked for light mayo - they didn't have any - so i decided to go without. Turns out their burgers taste like cardboard without the mayo. It must be cheaper to add a lot of mayo than it is to buy quality meat. I didn't even have a desire to finish it. We could have made some good stuff at home for 20 bucks!

I wonder if we took someone from Italy - you know - one of those people that has a self sustaining farm w/chickens and cows and veggies and wine and stuff - and fed them a nice meal from red robin - would they like it?? I bet not. When it comes down to it, once you've eaten REAL food for a while, the fake stuff just doesn't taste good. simple as that.

I think it also goes vice versa. Once you've been hooked on fake food for a while, it's hard to get used to eating things with real flavor - like veggies. And I don't mean raw and steamed veggies. I mean roasted, sauted - turned into sauce - veggies. I think america has the wrong idea about what healthy eating is all about.

maybe I'm just a WACKO nutrition lady, but those are my thoughts. what do you think?

Crater Lake

Our Weekend in a nutshell: We drove 650 miles in 24 hours to snowshoe 4 miles.

It was worth it.

OFFICIAL REQUEST FOR MORE SHERPA POSTS

that's it. We need some more funny laughs in our lives dearest sister. You better come back from your trip with some good posts.

Art in the Park

Who knew people did art installations in the middle of the forest? Turns out in the state part near lake oswego there is this ongoing art show with different installations like this:

This knitting ball is as tall as me. Crazy. There is just a bunch of junk in it, and its just in the middle of the forest, you're walking along and whammy....random knitting ball. Very interesting.

25 things. well i think this is just supposed to be on facbook

but oh well. i want richard to write one, but i dont know if that is going to happen.

1. my favorite thing about the church is the whole idea of how light can enter our hearts and make us new creatures - creatures that are more christlike - which is the process by which we get to heaven to fulfill our divine potential (ie become gods ourselves). Everything else, all commandments, the priestood, baptism, sacrament, word of wisdom, EVERYTHING is just means by which we can get that light into our heart. Really love that concept and love the church.

2. I'm not that good of a cook, but I love to do it. And I wish I had my own little bakery.

3. working out has always been, and probably will always be a huge part of my life. When running ran down my joints, i took up biking, when it got to cold to bike, I got a gym pass. I don't like working unless i have good music though.

4. I eat my vegetables.

5. I brush and floss my teeth at work.

6. I believe there are multiple sides to every story.

7. I hate it how america worships their celebrities. Inside edition is NOT news.

8. i get addicted to TV shows and love it, but at the same time, I hate it becuase I find myself thinking of the characters as real people - like my friends.....I wonder if rory gillmore ever got married.....I wonder what liz lemon would do in this situation.....that's bad.

9. Richard and me are best buds. More than anything else, I hope that we are best buds even when we are old. I don't want to one of those old fart couples who never talk to eachother.

10. I am terrified to have kids. Absolutely terrified.

11. I did some stupid things in high school. Sneaking out, being a punk. Wouldn't give that up for the world though - learned alot from it.

12. my 2 favorite words lately are slime and creature. i love calling people slimes. I also love saying "have a nice life" to people instead of goodbye. Most people take that the wrong way.

13. Most progress just ends up making things more complicated and difficult.

14. I am a minimalist. I dont like having too many gadgets and gismos. I despise the PDA's we are supposed to use at work. I don't like having too many kitchen gadgets - you can do almost everything with a few pots and pans, a blender and a good knife. I wear the same pair of pants to work almost everyday. I have exactly 7 pairs of underwear. I don't want to buy a new car until mine doesn't work. I usually only have 3 pairs of shoes - one for church, one for workingout and one for work. Less is more.

15. I am not - even remotely - attached to my cell phone. I have never had text messaging.

16. I would rather email someone than call them on the phone. I think better while I am typing than while I am speaking.

17. i had a mullet throughout all of gradeschool and was often mistaken for a little boy. i suppose you could call me "mokey-looking" Because of this i would often get snowballs thrown at me while walking to and from school. One winter day i decided to defend myself. I beat up tony bergeson with my umbrella because he was making fun of me and throwing snowballs. I cried the rest of the afternoon. it was very traumatic.

18. I have never been toilet papering or toilet papered. I did, however, get my windshield bashed in the school parking lot once. Someone really musta hated me.

19. I don't like my profession most of the time. It's not a good fit for me. Wish I would have been an artist, landscape architect, horticulturist. I like to create things, not tell people what to do. I often feel like no one cares about nutrition, and if they do, they aren't willing to listen to what you have to say. They'd rather listen to commercials or things they hear on TV or read in magazines. I don't blame them - the messages we give are so confusing a elusive. I do like the science of nutrition and the cooking part and I like writing tube feeds- its just the people part that I am not so good at. Oh well, you gotta make money somehow right?

20. I get nervous and very shy in big groups. I'm not very shy one on one. I dont like parties.

21. I wash my feet before I put shoes. If I dont take a shower in the morning i still have to wash my feet. I just hate it when they feel slimy and clammy.

22. I pretty much only keep in contact with one friend from bountiful/high school days. Jen Neeley. We have been friends since 7th grade. that is a long time.

23. Make up / hair styling is a waste of time. Maybe I just get that from my hippie mom, who still wears tye-dye shirts, but it makes life a whole lot cheaper, which leads to 24.

24. I am a tight wad.

25. I'm really happy where I am right now. Actually i've never been happier before. I dont really like my job, we live in a tiny apartment that looks over a billboard for liposuction, i am far away from my family and friends, the recent forecast is for 3 months of straight rain- but you know what, none of that matters. I've got my smoopy poo richard and we are just starting out our lives and things couldn't be going any better.

If the subaru and I are friends much longer, we'll start to look alike.

the subaru and I have been friends for way to long. It has now gotten in the habit of losing things, just like me. For example, when i got to work on saturday, the subie confessed that it had lost it's front blinker somewhere on the trip. Poor little guy.

Since autozone/shucks doesn't sell this part, we went to the U-pick. Amazingly enough, the subaru had a twin that had been in the U-pick lot for 5 days, which means it still had the headlights on it. So, I did little gravedigging (with the help of some guy who was digging out a transmission - I forgot to bring tools- ) and we got us a new front turn signal.

Sadly enough, when we got home, we found out that the dead subaru was wired up differently than my subaru, thus we are still blinkerless. {they signs all over the U-pick parking lot that sya NO WORKING ON CARS IN PARKING LOT!!! - so i thought i'de wait till i got home} The light may be there.....but its not hooked up. Maybe, virginia, this is why people dont use their blinkers - they simply dont work.

grocery shopping.

I had to work Saturday, so Richard was the wife for a day and went to the grocery store all alone. (after fishing for salmon all morning)

this is what he says:

"it was horrible. people everywhere. no room to push cart. not knowing where anything is. walking around in circles looking for ginger. 1 hour + 15 minutes. then I thought....the only way this could be worse is if I had a screaming baby sitting here in the cart."

I had a good laugh over that one. He even had a list, organized according to Winco's layout, which had exact amounts of everything, so that he didn't have to even think while he was there.

I did a quick google for men and grocery shopping, and I found this hilarious article - It was long, but here's bits and pieces - It was written by Lisa Hunt Warren.:

Men have difficulty buying the small-sized items, even when they've been requested to buy small. Men are taken in with their understanding of unit pricing, but they also like to buy huge quantities of things so they won't have to return to the store too soon. Women often know they would pay less per unit if they bought the huge load of whatever it is, but women often also know that the family won't eat that much soon enough; and a lot of wasting will occur. Women (often the house-keepers of the family) are also not thrilled to have huge-sized packages of things that require finding yet more storage space.

Men may know how to run to the baby formula, grab the diapers, run to the orange juice, and then go get a head of lettuce. They will postpone finding that unusual item until they have picked up the items they've managed to master. (Speaking of orange juice - always specify whether you want pulp or don't. Men don't usually know to look at the pulp factor.) Once men get the familiar stuff they will then try to tackle the odd item they've never been asked to buy before. ("Wondra? What's Wondra?" "A Hershey bar? They don't have Hershey bars. They only have whole bags of little Hershey candies. I'll get a whole bag." "Teriyaki sauce? I wonder if that's the same as soy sauce. Hey, look - they have low sodium soy sauce. That's probably better. I'll get that." "I don't see chicken rice soup, but there's chicken noodle. That must be what she meant." )

I think that pretty much sums it up. That's why you gotta make a detailed list. (: