8...one more than 7

For the longest time I took up issue with "blog tags". In my mind they seemed like elitist forms of those absurd facebook applications like "throwing a goat" at someone or giving them a "super poke". I appologize for associating any of the fine blogs that I love and read with the superficial world of facebook applications. But the truth was, blog tags both confused me and made me feel like a loser. With no one tagging me I was left to think I didn't belong in this exclusive cyber game.

Until one day...all that changed. That was the day that I discovered that Cheese on Rye had tagged me. And this is my response. This is the story of how I became Cate the Great being tagged for questions eight.

8 Things I'm passionate about
1. My dear, charming Matt
2. Brooks and Sweeney fams
3. Running (especially where I can smell Sage Brush)
4. Mary Jane shoes
5. Art and understanding the visual world I live in
6. Baking up a party that bring friends into my home
7. Tomato Soup
8. A good book

8 Things I want to do before I die
1. Complete a full triathlon
2. Blow up the Glenn Canyon Dam (I got this from Claire and thought it sounded neat)
3. Have some chilluns'
4. Write a memoir
5. Learn the intricacies of French pastry cooking
6. Go to Argentina with Matt and sit in that tea shop he always tells me about
7. Learn the French language good and proper
8. Teach an art history course

8 Books I have read recently
1. Speak Laurie Halls Anderson
2. Out of the Dust Karen Hesse
3. My Antonia Willa Cather
4. Swimming to Antartica Susan Cox
5. Morality for Beautiful Girls Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Fountainhead Ayn Rand (well I tried at least-until page 350)
7. Twilight Stephanie Meyer
8. The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck

8 Things I often say
1. "I'm calling in a minute..."
2. It's not hip-hop, it's electro....
3. super much or super great
4. Can I have a bite?
5. Ain't no thing...
6. "I'm not okay with...."
7. lovely
8. "brrrriisssskyyyy" (thanks to TR)

8 Things that attract me to friends
1. sincerity
2. non-competitive
3. compassionate
4. loves good, interesting things
5. unassuming
6. non-judgemental
7. finds humor in irony
8. dedicated to being a good friend

8 Songs or albums I could listen to over and over
1. Anything Andy B.
2. About A Boy soundtrack
3. Underacheivers Please Try Harder Camera Obscura
4. "Mr. Tough" Yo La Tengo
5. The Il Postino title track
6. Quelqu'un qui m'a dit Carla Bruni
7. Round Our Way The Mint Juleps
8. Best of Sam Cooke

8 Things I learned this last year
1. No matter how much you love someone, you can love them more the next day.
2. Being engaged isn't hard....it's planning a freaking wedding that will ruin you
4. Fear doesn't help anything
5. How to write a coverletter
6. I am worth more than $7.00 an hour
7. Organic milk really does taste better
8. 1st graders might be cute but they are dumb

8 Random things about me
1. I am currently planning a high school reunion that I won't be able to attend
2. I adore Paula Deen (I have two cookbooks and I've read her memoir)
3. I hope I never have to go on a cruise
4. I once played Hamlet in the "15 Minute Hamlet"
5. I want a cardigan the color of split pea soup
6. I enjoy not liking Provo culture
7. The smell of pine and sage made me cry when we drove through a forest in France
8. I once ate a bowl of jam for breakfast as a kid until Mr. Swirly Patterns made me stop

I hereby tag the following:
1. Ellen
2. TR
3. Joy
4. Mary C.
5. Lauri J.
6. Chrissy
7. Allyson Ham.
8. Mairzy D.

Now you can all feel as blogily validated as I.

inverted Utah

January is really great. I mean the best holiday of the year is in January - namely my birthday (that's on the 23rd for anyone who hasn't bought my gift yet). I can be tough about sending sprays of ice all over my hands in the morning to see out my windshield. I can talk myself out of a depressive state when I get less than 9 hours a day of sunlight. And since high school, I have even learn how to swallow my pride and run around in spandex pants, even if it means scadalizing all those who are pruddish enough in this town to wear shorts on top

Now a brief word on wearing shorts on top of spandex pants. If that is you, consider the alternative. I plead with you. It will make the rest of us look so much less disreputable and you less chafed if we were all in this together.

But back to what I cannot tough out, talk myself out of, or swallow. I dread the imminent Utah valley-anywhere inversion. It is so brutal. Not even the southern happy valley where Provo stands can avoid it. I have already heard of the "the red alert" day announcements in Salt Lake. It is slowly thickening and spreading southward until it will finally choke me with shrapnel swirling with exhaust from soccer moms' Hummers and the ghosts of Geneva Steel. There is no avoiding it. It will find me. It will force me into recreation centers with crying babies where I will have watch The Rosie O'Donell show or the Country Music Awards instead of watching trees go by. Or worse it will slowly lead me, in desparation, to gigantic gym chains with men in circus pants flexing in the mirrors that surround me and I will run, run, run and go nowhere at all. Nowhere at all for 2 months.

New Years Eve syndrome

I hereby resolute in this 2000 and 8 year to:
1. write at least one blog a month

Most often, I really hate New Years Eve. Actually, I should modify that and say that I am usually miserable on New Years Eve. No fault of the holiday really except that it demands that you have the Most Ultimate Super Coolest Night EVER! Otherwise, you're some kind of loser who has nothing socially promising to look forward to in the new year. Also, the placement of News Years Eve as a chaser to a week+ of a lot of traveling, last minute frenzies of shopping, and feasting on rich foods in a house full of family is not so helpful for you to feel up to Ultimate Super Coolest Night EVER! By the time New Years starts making up its expectations I am usually sick, exhausted to apathy, or (as it went in high school) feeling like a loser for not having anywhere to go besides drinking Martinellis with my parents at home. At least, that's how New Years Eve always felt to me.

This year wasn't Awesome or Super Ultimate or even INCREDIBLE!!!! But it was nice and it was fun. After a campy Mexican dinner at La Frontera, my mom, Matt and I made vanilla cardamon cookies from my new cookie press. Matt and I then delivered them with tea to a friend of mine who had experienced the "sick" and "exhausted to apathy" News Years Eve syndrome of which many of us may be acquainted. When we got home my mom had set up the fixings for round after round of Rummy cards and Mexican Train.

Indeed we even went a little wild with the holiday crackers and noise makers. After resolutions we toasted in the New Year with Simply Grapefruit. Oh how lovely it was. Turns out dominoes aren't such a social sin on this holiday. Really, it can make one of the best endings to a great year.

Oh...and here's some pics from the christening of the aforementioned cookie press. It's great.