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June’s almost over, which is probably for the best, it having been a fairly tumultuous month.
We kicked things off by packing up our house. I’d already gotten 80% of our belongings into boxes (my attempt to depersonalise the house – not everyone appreciates $15 sideboards and ugly couches you get free from an old workplace break room) but we had to pack those boxes into a crate. Here’s the visual:

There was something strangely satisfying about having all of our belongings compacted into a single box. We noticed that the majority of our belongings are comprised of books and music-related paraphernalia. Good stuff, but really heavy to shift. We very literally emptied the house so it looked exactly like it does in these pictures. We sold our remaining few bits and bobs of furniture and then gave our bed away too, so we could clean effectively. When we gave our bed away, I half wanted to attach a badly composed poem on die-cut to the mattress, about how we got the bed free from someone who got it free from someone who got it off craigslist and for the new sleepers to pass the bed on to others when they were finished sleeping on it.

After emptying the house, I returned to Nu Skin for my last day of work, which was busy but uneventful. I ended up giving my bosses little kits comprised of a film rental, popcorn, and snacks because honestly, what do you give people who have everything when you’re on a tight budget? Andy and I also popped up to the 10th floor to get some pictures of Provo.

Then we hit the road for Colorado. We paused for a little REI trip en route. I sold the tent I bought when I was fourteen because it wasn’t well suited to how we camp, and we bought this new one. It looks like a giant chocolate truffle to me, and that’s not even the best part. The best thing about the tent (aside from its minimal weight) is that I can stand up in it. Andy can even almost stand up in it. While I’m on the topic of height and camping gear, can you believe I had to buy a ‘long’ sleeping bag because regular was too short? Isn’t 5′7 an unremarkable height for a girl?

After making our outdoorsy purchase of the year, we continued on our way to Colorado. I drove the entire way, which I like to do, because I feel like I have something to prove after Zion’s 2007, an excursion that ended in me heartily convincing a dubious Andy, Justin, and Tyson that I could handle a three hours drive home at midnight after a day of hiking and then deferring driving responsibilities to Andy, forty minutes into the drive.

We drove to Colorado because Rachel got married to Rob Brill. So she’s now Rachel Brill, and every time I hear her new last name I want to give her some very enthusiastic thumbs up. Brill! They were sealed in the Denver Temple, and then the day after that they had a lunch reception and then Rob’s mum did an open house the night. The reason why the lighting is whacked out on the following photos is because I was snapping aimlessly for the most part, and the photos were taken over a 36 hours period when the clouds presence was intermittent at best. The wedding was nice, the ceremony was short and concise but kindly presented and all in all wonderful. The actual sealing was lovely. The advice short and relevant, and kindly delivered. The gospel itself is entirely perfect.

It was great to see Aunt Dolly, Wallace and Veronica again. My dads side of the family put me and my man-made science to shame – they’re all Chemistry PhDs, biorobotics, biochem, and pharmocology types. A combination of them, us, Sarah and Graham proves to be quite a lark. While in Colorado for the wedding, we were able to stay in a hotel room which had a full-kitchen and sitting area. We’ve been living out of suitcases for months so we spent the weekend truly feeling at home and getting giddy at the sight of a real live couch.

After Colorado, we sped back to Provo, cleaned the house thoroughly, and said goodbye to a few more people. Early Tuesday morning found me in Salt Lake airport, shoving Moses into his pet-carrier stupidly wondering if he was going to have to go through the X ray machine. I was fretting about Moses during the longer leg of the flight to Pittsburgh since he was whining miserably. Andy pointed out that no one was happy to be squashed onto a plane and wasn’t entirely sure why I thought Moses would be. Good point. The flights were uneventful, and our arrival in PA timely. It was a relief to arrive in a state that is naturally green. Utah stresses me out with it’s obsessive lawn watering, trying to grow something that clearly doesn’t belong in a desert. I’ll definitely miss parts of Provo (late late night walks that don’t end in filing a mugging report with the police, easy bike rides, the mountains) but in general, I’m relieved to be in a less polarised climate and moving towards a more polarised community.

Franklin (Andy’s hometown), is a small town with a river, courthouse, and a gratuitous number of youths who may need to quit joyriding and enroll in a technical college instead. Just today we had a mild-mannered altercation with a kid wearing clown size shorts bagging around his thighs, his boxers puffing up inside his butt-long wife beater. Noting Andy’s non-Fubu jeans, he yelled something like “What’s with the chick pants?” to which Andy swiftly replied, “Oh, you like those? They’re pretty sexy, huh?”. The belligerent youth seemed adequately confused. The fact that I seriously just typed “belligerent youth” makes me sound worth heckling though, come to think of it. Anyway. Franklin is a nice town. We went to the mall yesterday to buy Andy some new socks, and I got distracted by Claire’s accessories. I was noting their horrible racks of neon bracelets and earrings dangly enough to double as reins when I spotted something amazing.
Brace yourself.

BUMP-ITs!
Only I initially read it as “BUM PIT”. I’m not sure which is worse.
Behold:

Utah suddenly got a whole lot less complex. You slide this crescent shaped thingy under your hair and voilà, insta-nasty!

Nothing I say is going to top that website, so I’m going to leave it there.
No wait, I found the colour script for UP too. That’s pretty cool. See here.

It can be sort of difficult to concentrate in the Temple when a gaggle of Bro’s are in attendance. My observation of Bros in the Temple has led me to believe that Bro’s are incapable of diluting themselves or toning down their Bro’isms. Back-slapping hugs are just as loud, texts equally necessary to reply to, and annoying ’supportive’ cat calls just as frequent in the Temple as they are out.

I just got on CNN to read the latest Obama inspired drivel spurned by CNN and instead, found this:

(CNN photo)

Inititally, my brain spouted two dumb comments:

1) Good luck, morgue cosmetician
2) I hope Janet doesn’t sing “Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” at the funeral

Half-hearted random neurological synapse firings aside, I’m disappointed Michael Jackson’s dead. I’m not sure why, it’s not as if I knew him, or that he was in the prime of his career, or that he hasn’t been accused of paedophilia. I just have some good memories sound-tracked by his music, and always assumed he’d be around to unknowingly be tributed at my children’s birthday parties (I figure that “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” is an appropriate tune to make Pass the Parcel less inane). In fact, Off the Wall was my second vinyl acquisition (the first was Nelly & Kelly, Dilemma. Bet you didn’t see that one coming). Shout out to Nicola for both of those class items.

Anyway. I may have moved across the US, flown in two planes, sailed in a boat, been stuck driving a car for 10+ hours, but Michael Jackson’s death is all the news I feel like posting about. Once I get my computer up and running I’ll update the internet on the recent escapades.

In the meantime, let me leave you with a tribute to Michael Jackson, created by a random French teen. While it isn’t the most quality tribute to Michael Jackson ever (note the kid’s oven mitt) I believe it to be appropriate. Or fitting, at least. Or just earnest.

I don’t have any photos to prove it, but we hiked Angels Landing and the Subway in Zion’s over the weekend. I learned that one person falls off Angels Landing bi-anually and that I’m super unfit. I also learned that I have sufficient body fat to maintain homeostasis when submerged in freezing water for five minutes while searching for a waterproof camera I dropped in the drink because I catch like a girl.

I’m under a bit of pressure with family/house stuff/packing/job training/blah blah blah right now, but shall resume updating the internet with the tedious minutiae of my life eventually.

I found this photocomic blog called My Milk Toof”. It documents the supposed activities of two teeth, Lardee and Ickle. At one point in the blog, ‘Ickle’ the tooth starts teething (wrap your mind around that one):

Here we have one tooth summoning the other for bathtime.

 This picture comes with the caption:“Oh, have you seen my new teeth? they are crazy awesome!”

I especially like the“Toof Cleaning” and “My Sweet Wilting Tree” tales. I also liked the picture of a tooth riding a tricycle saying “I’m fast and furious!”.

And dress your wounds with Leather Louis Vuitton plasters.

Disney/Pixar get me everytime, but Up tops them all. Even Monsters, Inc. By an adventure.

I’m rather pleased with the Summer book list I was able to form, thanks to friends recommendations.
I should be receiving the following books in the mail anytime now:

• Another Roadside Attraction – Tom Robbins
• The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
• Fraction of the Whole – Steve Holtz
• Paradise – Toni Morrison
• Beneath the Wheel – Herman Hesse
• Outsider – Albert Camus
• Killing Pablo – Mark Bowden
• Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami

I’ll also be re-reading a few Vonneguts, because it’s been a while.

Thanks to those who indulged me with recommendations- I’m insanely excited to get my hands on these books. I love getting things in the post too, and am tickled knowing that most of these books will arrive at random times from independent sellers. It makes my office day all the more exciting, wondering if a package will be on my porch when I get home.

I was rather delighted to find that I own and cherish a number of books that were recommended to me by people whose literary tastes I respect highly. I was also amused by Quinn listing the Wizards of Earthsea – he’s now the second person I know in the whole world who has read that book. Before I load up the moving crate next week, I’m going to drag that book, and a couple other classics out of the boxes currently labeled “BOOKS! STUPID HEAVY!” to add to my collection of Summer reads.

While the amount of time I’ll get to spend reading this Summer remains constant, our Summer travel plans seem to evolve on a weekly basis. I fantasise about travel a lot and as a consequence I regularly come home sprouting new & wild plans to Andy about what we should do with August; the month we realise our wildest dreams. Kind of. Dreams on a budget. Curse you, reality. As I was saying, I daydream about travelling a great deal and I would bet that I spend at least an hour a week researching random flight routes, checking the price of tickets from London to Goa, what the best way to get from Bangkok to Rangoon is, what there is to see in somewhere like Iowa, or how long it takes to process Ghanaian visas (the only places I don’t care to visit include central India and anywhere where the majority of landmass resembles ice). So far, all we have booked are return flights from New York to Manchester, leaving on the 28th July, and returning on the 1st September. Not to sound desperate, but in between school, education debts and all that, this looks like our last shot at international fun for quite some time so we want to make it count.

My dad wanted someone to go to Burma for him to find relatives and go over some property issues on his behalf. On his behalf, because his name is Ne Win, ill-fatedly like the Burmese ‘politician’s’, which would cause a port-of-entry stir my dad could do without. After some conversation, my dad decided that he wanted to go on this quest himself, and so will wait until things settle down after the re-election this year. There’s little point us going to Burma right now if it’s not for family business, so we turned our plans back toward Europe. While trying to work out where we’d backpack around, we realised that hostels are increasingly expensive and have to be booked so far in advance to secure a spot that it take all the spontaneity out of having a rail-pass. The alternative, sleeping on a rail station floor, would be fine on occasion, but a month of doing that doesn’t really appeal to me as I’m partial to a good shower now and again. Long story short, we looked at other options and now we’re going to spend the first two weeks of our holiday staying in Corsavy, France with ‘Jeremy and Michael’. We’ll be working their vegetable patches and gardens, doing whatever chores they need doing (laying driveways, breaking up concrete, picking fruit, painting rooms, whatever) for twenty hours a week, in return for free board and meals (and plenteous red wine apparently, although that doesn’t do us any favours ha). Seriously though, twenty hours a week, for free room and board in their little self-contained annex in Corsavy, France, by a house that looks like this:

(That’s Jeremy and Michael’s house apparently). They have good reviews from other helpers they’ve had stay there, and apparently have two large dogs and a number of cats. They live about 2.5 miles from Arles-sur-Tech which appears to be the loveliest town, a 1 Euro bus ride away from Perpignan, and the Mediterranean. After two weeks staying there, we’ll move on and bop around to a couple other places, we haven’t decided where yet but Rome, Munich, and Amsterdam might make the list. Free room and board for half the trip is welcome relief for our budget and will make me less stressed about paying $33 a night for a shady hostel beds we’ll sleep in during the last leg of the trip.

I’m having a hard time concentrating on my work since Jeremy emailed me to confirm us staying with him, so I’ve been googling Arles-sur-Tech, Perpignan and Corsavy quite a bit this morning. Twenty hours of work a week is nothing, that’s four hours every weekday, which leaves weekends free for trips up the Pyrenees, or to the seaside, and evenings hanging out in local villages or walking the dogs. Two weeks doesn’t seem long. I imagine the fun it would be to spend the rest of my life just roaming the world with Andy, picking up jobs in new countries every few months. Then reality kicks in and I realise that I don’t want to be a nomad, and I want to have a job that contributes to a community and helps people. At any rate, I’m excited to spend two weeks in Corsavy, and can’t wait for Summer to begin. Andy and I have spent so many Summers rotting in offices that we’re determined to make the most of our freedom this year. Eleven days until we leave Provo, and Summer begins. Let’s hang out before we skip town. Eat pizza or something.

Oh yes; if anyone’s interested in a working-holiday, you can go to helpX.net to cruise through options. You need a premier account to view contact details and photos though. It’s $28 for a two year membership, which is worth it if you’re serious.

For me, the absolute worst feeling in the world comes from being emotionally obligated and constricted by or to something I don’t want to be. I don’t do well with those kinds of restrictions. I don’t know if anybody does.

Baby birthed via sweat pant leg.

Apparently, the woman stands up and a baby falls out of her jogging bottoms leg…
Aaaand if you haven’t lost your Captain Crunch yet, how about some ketchup-covered-butter?

This woman has a ‘Sleep Related Eating Disorder’ which prompts her to sleepwalk her way to the fridge and munch through tubs of peanut butter, cream cakes, and ketchup covered butter hunks.