Backdated posts ahoy!

I know, there's been a dearth of posts lately. Just to be clear, I actually did do quite a few things in July; in fact I attended two family reunions, one for each side of the family. But as mentioned in the do's and don'ts of social media, one should not make it too easy for stalkers and burglars. So now that my travels are complete and I'm safely home again, I'll be posting information about various adventures on the days they actually occurred.

Anyway, prepare yourself for a spate of backdated posts!

The Arnold reunion - Day 1

I was up at 3:45 this morning. The less said about that, the better. CM kindly drove me to the airport, where I had one of the smoothest boarding processes since 9/11 using SeaTac Airport's Save a Spot checkpoint option (no, they aren't paying me to say this, though I wouldn't complain if they did). The Alaska flight to Sacramento boarded on time, but departed nearly an hour late due to some unknown mechanical issue. Thankfully we had no cases of Feral Human Syndrome aboard and everyone stayed reasonably chill. The flight itself was blessedly uneventful and I slept at least part of the way.

Sacramento was a new airport for me; I wandered around a bit looking forlorn before finding the shuttle bus that took me to the car rental area. Eventually I got to the Thrifty counter, where they'd reserved me a cute little Nissan Versa *meep meep* car. After a few minutes of tossing luggage in the trunk, adjusting mirrors and turning down the radio which had been turned ALL THE WAY UP TO 11, I headed out.

It's about a two-hour drive from the Sacramento airport to the little Calaveras County town of Arnold. On the way, you drive through suburban sprawl, farmland and high desert. I stopped at a CVS in the little desert town of Valley Springs for a quick bathroom break and some road snacks. Past the desert, you begin to encounter the rolling "golden hills" and oak trees typical of rural northern California, and then start your ascent into the Sierra Nevadas on SR 4. Things change subtly, the oaks slowly shifting to evergreens, the underbrush becoming less dry and more green, the dirt by the roadside turning a vivid orange-red, and sweet peas blooming here and there. The road becomes narrower, more treacherous on the turns. Your car has to work at besting the incline, especially if it's a little *meep meep* car.

Somewhere between the airport and Arnold, Captain Midnight texted me to let me know that V had been in an accident and her car had been totaled. Fortunately, V herself was unhurt, nor was anyone else seriously injured, but she'd been badly shaken up by the accident and was very depressed at losing her transportation.

I describe Arnold as a "town," but according to the Census Bureau it is a "census-designated place" of about 3800 people. It's a typical little mountain town where the local cost of gas and groceries is so astronomical that most locals drive to Costco, nearly two hours away, to stock up every few weeks. I stopped first at Big Trees Market to pick up some late lunch (a mediocre stromboli and a banana) before checking into our rental cabin around 3 p.m. Since I was the first to arrive, I started up the air conditioner (it was unusually hot for the area, regularly getting into the mid-90s while we were there), then locked the place up and went for a drive around Arnold.

My mother's side of the family has been renting cabins and staying in Arnold for a week of summer vacation since at least the 1970s. One auntie now lives in the area full-time. (She wasn't there while we were visiting, but that's a story for later.) The cabin we typically rented when I was a kid, close to Blue Lake Springs, was still there -- but I didn't recognize it at first, as someone had bought it and added onto it to make it even larger. Some things were pretty much the same, though: the lake itself, the Giant Burger at the side of Highway 4, the twisty road that led up to Calaveras Big Trees State Park. My sibs and I didn't find a cabin close to Blue Lake Springs that was available to rent, so this time we picked a place nearby in the Lakemont Pines area.

I headed back to the cabin, took a nap, read a little Pride and Prejudice (yes, first time ever reading it; took me long enough, right?) and wondered where my sibs were. They had intended to drive out from Utah, and I thought they'd be in the area sooner than they were. Plus, nobody was responding to texts. I decided it would be better to get up and do something than sit around worrying, so I went for a pizza run. By the time I got back armed with pizza, the fam had showed up. So we sat around eating pizza, chatting about our various adventures getting there and deciding on who got which room. Michele and I decided to share the big king-sized bed and we bunked down for the night.

Sleep was... sporadic. I kept worrying about V and the accident. There wasn't much I could do for her from where I was, but I knew she had to be shaken up and unhappy, and rest doesn't come easy when you know someone you love is in a bad state.

Da fam!

Yay, my fam is here! Well, at least some of my fam. (Being the oldest of six kids means that as an adult, you rarely see all your sibs in one place at one time.) My sister Jenny is visiting, which isn't unusual, but what's even niftier is that she brought Tim-my-brother with her. Tim hasn't been to visit us since before his first child was born, some 18 years ago.

So are we doing the touristy Seattle stuff all week? YOU BET WE ARE.

Liquid diet is blah

Typing this up on an iPad, not my normal mode of composition, so I’ll likely keep this entry short.

I am super grumpy this week. It’s another all-clear-liquid, sugar-free diet week, which I’ve done before, but this week also happens to be my family reunion, which further complicates things. It’s doubly difficult to make do with chicken broth or a protein shake when everyone else is chowing down on favorite family recipes. (Doing this on the say-so of my surgeon, who intends to set a date to cut me up some time in July.) I don’t want to be Auntie Grump all week, but it’s going to be tough to maintain a cheerful attitude when I’m starving.

Wish me luck, because I’d kill for a burrito right now.

Yay V!

See this cute (and smart) girl?

Her family came to Seattle this weekend to see her do this.

It was a large crowd, but I was persistent and eventually found her.

A rather blurry pic of V being presented. (It was the best I could do from up in the nosebleed section.)

Here's a better one.

Miss V graduated in her school colors of red and white. And as she walked across the stage to receive her diploma, this silly, sweet thought flashed through my mind:

And out of the pieces of red and white shell,
From the egg that he'd sat on so long and so well,
Horton the Elephant saw something whizz!
It had ears
And a tail
And a trunk just like his!

I'm so very proud of her.

Both of V's parents were here, PLUS both her grandmas, AND she received beautiful flowers and a necklace from her great-grandma. The day after commencement, everybody had a chance to get together, eat, tell family stories and celebrate V's achievement.

My sisters and V went to Pike Place Market and brought back a loverly bouquet of flowers. 'Cause they're thoughtful like that.

Also, Michele decided to take advantage of any downtime during the trip to Make Some Art. Here is what she made:

The Roxy triptych, inspired by our very own Roxy-cat.

Made with small canvases from Daiso, lots of origami and other found paper, scissors and Mod Podge galore.

Sadly, Roxy-cat really does like to drink from the Forbidden Fountain. She has been teaching us to put the lid down. Every. Single. Time.

Also, we went to The Crab Pot to bash some seafood.

It is a time-honored tradition, as we come from a long line of seafood-bashing people.

Here, my sister Wonder Woman demonstrates proper bashing stance.

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

Alas, no leftovers came home for the Roxy-cat. We bashed that seafood but good.

Only in Salt Lake City: Gilgal and grub

[Hello, many visitors from the ex-Mormon Reddit site! Come back to church; we miss you!]

[Post is backdated to reflect the actual date on which these events occurred.]

So Captain Midnight and Miss V and I have been in Utah for the better part of two weeks.  First we enjoyed the company of my family, then CM and I packed up and headed up Ogden Canyon to attend CM's family reunion.

Many happy activities occurred there, including mass T-shirt tie-dyeing.  By the time we were through we all resembled exuberant hippies.

However, by today CM and I were ready to have some different adventures.  So after packing up our stuff and departing the family reunion, we decided to go looking for geocaches, waymarks and other random interesting bits in the Salt Lake City area (because, after all, that's what we do).

Here's where we went:

Maybe you've heard of this place.  Maybe you haven't.

It's a sculpture garden, hidden away in a discreet corner of a Salt Lake City residential block.  The entrance is sandwiched between two houses.

Looks rather lovely, doesn't it?

All the beautiful plantings, and the paving stones and quotes carved into the rocks...

... and the huge sphinx with the head of Joseph Smith...
wait, what?

Yeah, Gilgal Sculpture Garden is one of those places.  Weird, wonderful and surreal in the extreme, it exists in the freakish no-man's-land somewhere between art and camp.

The sculptures are bizarre in composition and somewhat clumsy in execution, but there's also something compelling about them because they were created with complete sincerity.

Gilgal's creator, Thomas Battersby Child, Jr., was an earnest and devout Latter-day Saint bishop who decided it was his destiny to create one thing the world lacked: an LDS-themed heroic sculpture garden in his own backyard.

By the look of it, Bishop Child took the apostle Peter's suggestion to be "a peculiar people" a little too much to heart.

Some of the pieces in Gilgal are actually well thought out, such as this literal interpretation of Isaiah's prophecy of the last days: "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks".

And then you turn around and catch sight of the dude with the brick pants.  Seriously, what?  Why?!

But that's just the kind of place Gilgal is. It's hard to know what to make of it.

In the years after Bishop Child died, before the sculptures and plantings were restored and became city property, Gilgal used to be known locally as "Stoner Park" because kids would hop the fence and hang out there to get high.

I think you can kind of see their reasoning.

Some pieces, such as this decorative well, fairly cry out for a garden gnome.

Random quotations from scriptures, poems, hymns and philosophers that Child found interesting or astute are carved on nearly every stone in the garden.  (A few are misspelled.  Hey, I'm a proofreader... I notice this stuff.)

There's even a monument to Child's wife, Bertha.  Heaven knows what she thought of all this.

Ah, but look, he was a man after my own heart: a huge stack of books.

After a certain point, Captain Midnight and I had taken in our fill of Gilgal.  So after bidding it goodbye...

(bye, weird sphinx dude!)

 ...we repaired to a more civilized location.

A place of elegance and refinement.

A place of comfort and good cheer.

A place of... ah, whatever, it's Crown Burgers.

But scoff not, unbelievers!  For the Crown Burger is a wonder of nature even more delectable than the sculptures at Gilgal (and far easier on the teeth).

First behold CM's fantastic fries (and even more fantastic fry sauce, another Utah original).

Then behold the Crown Burger itself, charbroiled, topped with a slice of cheese and piled high with pastrami!  Believe me, friends, it is a thing of beauty.  You might not think pastrami to be a fitting addition to a hamburger, but that's only because you lack the proper vision.  Trust me, if you like bacon on your burgers you are going to love pastrami.

This particular Crown Burger is a special order, dutifully wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun, but if you've got the intestinal fortitude (and a working pancreas) I suggest you try the original.

Also heartily endorsed by Captain Midnight.  Om nom nom nom.

Thanks for the treat, good people of Crown Burgers.  No doubt we'll be back soon!

More of our adventures coming shortly.

To vlog or not to vlog? No question.

I have this brother named Tim. (You may have heard of him.) A while back, for reasons which now escape me, Tim was urging me to make some video blogs and put them up on YouTube or something similar.

My gut response to this suggestion was something along the lines of "Oh HELL no."

There's a good reason why I always prefer to write or speak rather than appear on film. During family reunions, when we make goofy renditions of various fairy tales, I usually contrive to be the narrator or the screenwriter or some other role that requires me to be off-camera 95% of the time. When my sister Julie made an art book with cut-paper images of family and friends, I didn't appear in it because I couldn't provide a halfway decent photograph of me for reference material. I have been known to dive wildly behind the couch or flee the room to avoid being photographed by a still camera, let alone a video camera. All this because I have a face (and body) made for radio. Seeing myself on film is painful. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to terrorize you if you come across me in a dark alley or anything, but I'm also not going to win any beauty contests any time soon. And I'm not masochistic enough to subject myself to the sub-literate ridicule of 13-year-old boys worldwide by putting my pasty face and blubbery body on display online.

Just to verify that what I've said here still holds true, though, I made a few experimental video clips this week of me sitting in my computer chair and holding forth for a few minutes on any subject that came to mind. Replaying each one was torture. My voice isn't too bad, but I look like a double-chinned dead fish on camera. Plus I have all sorts of visual tics: my eyes wander, I scratch my nose, flip my hair out of my face, pick at my teeth. Gahh. Just shoot me now. (They were all promptly deleted.)

So, Tim, I love you and all that, but after some deep cogitation on the subject: HELL NO.

Funerals, Fentons and flu

Aunt Nell's funeral was lovely. There was the sadness associated with mourning, but like most LDS funerals, it was balanced by the hope derived from faith. Then, too, Aunt Nell was a hoot and there were plenty of funny stories going around about her. People laughed as much as they cried.

There was also a lot of singing. My extended family is very musically talented (I've always felt a bit sorry I didn't get much of it, but you can't have everything) and not only did we sing hymns as a congregation, but the service included recordings of Aunt Nell as a young woman, singing selections from Mozart and Delibes' "Les Filles de Cadix." My Aunt Marcia and Uncle John also sang a heartfelt rendition of "I'll Be Seeing You," which was a perfect match -- the song was popular when Nell was a young mother, and the lyrics work all too well for a funeral. They broke down a bit in the middle of the song, which was only to be expected; both were very close to Aunt Nell.

Afterward there was a family dinner, where everyone sat around and yakked heartily at length. Sitting and listening to people talk and laugh and exchange stories, I wished there were regular family reunions for the entire extended Kest clan. There are family members I tend to see only at weddings and funerals, and I'd love to have an opportunity/excuse to see them more often.

That evening I was fiercely jonesing for Fentons toasted almond, so my cousin's wife Joy and I drove over to Oakland for some primal ice-cream therapy.

Mmm, Fentons. As far as I'm concerned, this is the premiere place on earth to get a black & tan: vanilla and toasted almond ice cream, served with Fentons caramel and chocolate fudge sauces, whipped cream, nuts and a cherry. "Good" doesn't begin to describe it.

It was a Saturday night and the joint was jumpin'. People were milling about in the street outside, and every table was taken. Even the take-out line stretched out the door.

Fortunately we were there for take-out, so we didn't have long to wait. We bought ludicrous amounts of toasted almond ice cream, caramel sauce and chocolate fudge sauce and promptly beat feet.

I don't know how well you can see it in this picture, but way in the background there is a stuffed Dug from the movie Up, wearing a Fentons shirt and cap. Watching Up, especially the ending, inspires Pavlovian drooling in anyone who's ever been to Fentons.

Alas, all is not quite well, despite copious quantities of ice cream. There's a 24-hour flu virus going around the family and I'm thinking of self-imposing a quarantine in the hope that it will die with me. Mom's had it already, and Miss V has been suffering with it, vomiting most of the morning. (No, I do not and will not have pictures of this particular experience. Sheeze.)

What I did on my summer vacation, part 2

We enjoyed our time in the past so much that the next day we tried it again. But this time we tried sticking a little closer to familiar territory.

First we went to This Is The Place Monument in Salt Lake City...

...and then flung ourselves back to the 19th century. This is the Fairbanks Home, built in the mid-1800s.

This fine middle-class edifice is the Samuel Jewkes home, built in the 1860s. Here we learned a great deal about spinning and weaving.

The Huntsman Hotel, in addition to offering the finest lodging in town, has a restaurant within.

Captain Midnight ponders the lunchtime offerings.

After lunch we wandered over to the Deseret News printing office (not shown here) where a refugee from the Renaissance era (based on his frequent use of the non-19th-century interjection "Huzzah!") was busying himself printing the day's news.

Across the street was the Heber C. Kimball residence. As you might observe from the size of the house, Brother Kimball was a wealthy potter and farmer, a devout Latter-day Saint and a husband to several wives (back in the day when Mormons did the polygamy thing).

The pony corral.

Most of the houses weren't nearly as fine as Brother Kimball's. The majority were one-room shacks built by their inhabitants, in which as many as 12 people took refuge during the winter months. This little home was right next to the village pottery.

In the old days, settlers didn't plant their corn in rows as they do now. They planted in mounds, as the Native Americans had taught them. It was common in many places for three crops -- corn, beans and squash -- to be planted together, along with a few fish to nourish the growing plants. The beans were trained up the cornstalks, and the squash leaves provided shade around the base of the plants to keep down weeds and prevent the soil from drying out too quickly. Pretty clever, no?

It was a fun excursion, and Captain Midnight successfully returned us to the present day when we grew weary of using 19th-century privies.

After returning to the present, we had an only-in-Utah moment. Spied in Wal-Mart.