A Western Christmas Carol

What would happen if the Old American West met Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol? The American West Heritage Center in Logan attempted to answer this question with surprisingly fun results. My friend from Park City came along for the experience.

We attempted to try to find era appropriate costumes.  I think we could have succeeded if I had noticed the event a little earlier.  We only had two days to figure out our dress.  My original thought was to rent some costumes from a costume shop. We found plenty of stuff for me...but for some reason costume shops only carry saloon girl outfits. Yea, I didn't think that was the best idea.  After consulting with various families and friends we wimped out. Jeans and flannel shirts it was.

Entering the center we were greeted with the sounds of young voices singing Christmas carols and a table full of cookies and brownies. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was more interested in the cookies than the singing. There were good sweets!  I couldn't spend the entire time eating so I decided to talk to my date.  While we occupied several chairs a well-dressed British gentleman talked briefly to us. We had spent too long sitting in our chairs; he wondered if we had paid for them or not. Moments later our British "friend" was accosted by an angry miner/ghost.  Miner Marley warned our British friend Scrooge that he should make some changes in his life. Scrooge wasn't very receptive to the message.


At that point the horse-drawn wagons showed up and we proceeded to our dinner appointment. Half-way our wagons stopped. Our British friend appeared to have found a friend on a horse.  They were watching a bunch of kids throw snowballs at each other. One child was off just watching. Our British friend and his companion on a horse had a short conversation. I'm sure it had something to do with the kids throwing snowballs at each other. I couldn't tell because their voices weren't loud enough to reach us.

Shortly thereafter we arrived to a dining hall filled with food. Dutch oven cooking smells really good; just saying.  I ate too much of course.

Our British friend got a visit from a plunger bearing ghost before dinner. I'm not quite sure what the first visitor was attempting to say. It had something to do with a family in the back who was only eating broth while the rest of us were feasting. Our British friend for some reason chose to eat with us on our tables rather than with the broth family.  Can't imagine why.  He had to make rounds around all of the tables though.  He claimed that none of us were good dining companions. Maybe because he spent the entire time insulting everyone at the table; just a thought.

As we were finishing up the grim reaper showed up.  Pallbearers and a gravestone showed up in the room at the same time. Our British friend seemed a little freaked out by the gravestone.  He had a rapid chance of heart and started to give gifts and candy to everyone. He even gave me a fistful of gold coins. To celebrate his change of heart we pushed back the tables and danced.  A square-dancing crier then proceeded to teach us how to square dance. I can't even remember the last time I square-danced. 

It was a fun date.

How to get to know a person

A conversation with one of my friends yesterday brought up an interesting question.  Initially the question didn't seem that interesting to me because I thought that the answer to the question was obviously one choice. Imagine my surprise when my friend completely disagreed with me. I'll give you all the question so you can think about what you would answer.

Would you get to know a person better by:
1. Having lunch with that person once a week for an entire year. (52 lunches basically)
2. Spending 15 minutes in their house unaccompanied and unannounced.

In my mind the answer was obviously you would learn more about the person by talking with them for more or less 52 hours than by spending 15 minutes in their house. Here is my reasoning:
1. While objects can provide a glimpse into a person's life. It's the story of that person's life that is interesting.
It's for this reason that I sometimes feel sorry fore those poor souls who ask to see my pictures. They probably think that they are going to get a rapid fire photo album show. Nope... they have to sit through my life stories too.
2. Objects/possessions show past glory; conversation can reflect past glory but also show future aspirations.
 Our past and present contribute to our future but do not define it. One can look at my house and know that I was a swimmer; one does not know by looking that I plan to be a triathlete. One can only come to know my future desires and dreams through conversation.

Devil's Advocate: When I was talking both with my friend and others there were several counterpoints brought up to the above position.
1. False face
It's much easier to put on a false show when the other person's information is entirely dependent on what you tell them.  All sorts of inconvenient truths can be hidden; all sorts of tiny to huge exaggerations can make you look better than you are.
2. What we own, what we display shows what is consciously and subconsciously important to us.
For instance. One does not have to be a genius to know what my favorite animal is. A simple look around my living room indicates that. It goes much deeper than that though.  What kind of books does the person have? What magazines? What do they cook? Possessions can give all kinds of insights into how a person lives their daily life.

I admit that I was somewhat skeptical that possessions could really provide that much insight into a personality.  I challenged my friend to indicate what my house/possessions indicated from me.  Considering this young ladies intelligence I probably shouldn't have done this; it was fascinating though.  She proceeded to give a fairly accurate and fascinating summary of myself as shown by my house, what's in it, and how it's arranged.  I was impressed by how well she related things to me.  At that point I was forced to go from full on skepticism to curiosity.

Which leads us to my random question of the day. To pique my curiosity in a wide range of subjects lately I've been asking people at work and friends through e-mail/text their opinions on things. I thought this would be an interesting question to ask. Once again the results surprised me.

In my purely unscientific survey I found that far more people agree with my friends position than my own.  In a rough ration of 3:1  people thought that ransacking a house for 15 minutes would provide more insight into a person than a year's worth of lunch conversations. Yea...I was not expecting that.

Snowmaker for hire!

I have recently started visiting a young lady in Park City. After our first couple of dates we noticed that something interesting.  Novels and movies always talk about "sparks" that occur when two people get together.  It does not appear that this young lady and myself have "sparks" per say.

Instead we have the opposite effect.  Every date in the past month or so has been accompanied by extreme climatic change.  We don't make sparks; we cause severe winter weather. I'm not talking about little tiny storms either; I'm talking about snow fall measured in feet instead of inches.

So. I have decided to accept sponsorships from all of the local ski resorts.  Our dating is obviously improving their business.  Clearly we should receive remuneration for the snow we cause to fall along the Wasatch Front.

I like October

Pumpkin carving date

I've decided on my favorite month. I think it might just be October. There are so many great things about October. First and foremost it was when a very important person in the world was born; me!  That's already giving the month a great one-up on the other months. There's so much more that I like about October however.

The weather. I like variable weather. During the summer I become tired of being hot all the time; during the winter I'm tired of being cold all the time. October is great because you get a little bit of everything. In fact; it's conceivable that you can have a 70 degree warm day one day; immediately followed by a foot of snow on the ground the next day. For a person who likes variety but not extremes it's about as perfect as you can get.

Me and my pumpkin

Then of course. There is the holiday. Now; I know that a lot of people don't really like Halloween because it's based off of a pagan holiday or that it's based off of candy.  I think the holiday has grown on me; especially as a single person. Think about it. What other holiday provides as many opportunities for easy dating as Halloween?  You can: pumpkin carve, go to a haunted house, haunted forests, corn mazes, hay mazes, Frightmares at Lagoon, watch scary movies, go to various masquerades and or dances (Howl in Logan), or decorate your apartments.  All easy, all relatively cheap, and all fun.  What other holiday gives you all that? Then;  just as a bonus. You get all kinds of candy.  Who doesn't like candy?

Wing Decorations

 Finally there are the costumes. One thing that I think is fun about Halloween is the opportunity to pretend to be something that you're not. Ever dream about being an astronaut? Well, you can pretend to be one for a couple of days and all of your coworkers won't look at you like you're insane.  This year unfortunately both of my costumes didn't work out.  My first idea was to be a shamanistic medicine man. I tried to make a costume that looked cool; failed miserable.  Because I procrastinated I didn't have a lot of time to make another costume. So I thought I would cheat and become a nursing student. I used my old Weber State nursing uniform, was planning on wearing my glasses, had all of the knickknacks that they make nursing students carry around but that no one ever actually uses, and even laminated a purple nursing student name tag. It wasn't great...but it could have been fun.  However; I forgot to set me alarm clock on the day we were supposed to wear costumes at work. Hence I woke up; panicked because I was late, hurried and got dressed, and didn't remember until I was at work that I was supposed to be wearing my "costume" and not my normal scrubs. Whoops.

More wing decorations

San Diego Trip - Day 7/8 Balboa Park, Sunset Cliffs

On our last play day we decided to go to Balboa park. It's advertised as the best Urban Cultural Center in the nation. There are 15 museums and various botanical gardens in the area. I thought it might be interesting. I found that I am definitely not an art aficionado. We went into a couple of the art museums and I basically skimmed over most of them. I could admire the artists ability; but so many of the scenes were boring and uninteresting. On the other hand I was rather fascinated by the architecture of the buildings in the area.

We went to the science museum in the park and enjoyed that.  There's something about hands on science that still appeals to the 30 year old child inside of me. Most of the science wasn't anything new to me; it was still fun to see the weird things that nature does under certain circumstances.

That night I found us a Singles ward to go to the next morning.  I really am not a big fan of family wards right now so was willing to drive a little bit in order to get to a singles ward.  I found one but it didn't start until 11 and we had to be out of our hotel by 10. So in order to blow some time we drove along the coast south of San Diego along the Sunset Cliffs.  It gave a nice contrast to the beaches that we had seen farther north.

After church we drove the 10 hours home straight. It's the longest drive I've ever done at once. I was actually proud of myself that I actually made it.  Long distance driving isn't exactly my forte.

San Diego Trip - Day 6 San Diego Zoo and Improv Comedy

Tourist trap day again. San Diego Zoo it was. While the Wild Animal Park spread it's animals over extremely large areas the San Diego Zoo tried to jam pack as much stuff in it's 60 acres as possible. I was impressed at how well the zoo used the landscape for their exhibits. They also did a great job with the actual animal enclosures. I've always wondered why some people don't like Hogle Zoo because they say the enclosures aren't very good. After seeing what the San Diego Zoo does; I can understand why some people think that. A lot closer to natural habitat. Of course; I'm sure the San Diego zoo's budget is also 30 times that of Hogle Zoo.




After going to the Zoo I decided to introduce Debbie to the enjoyment of improvisational comedy. I had a roommate once who loved to watch  the show "Who's Line is it anyway" and he got me hooked on improv. Since then I've gone to improv shows in SLC and Logan multiple times. I thought I'd try out the San Diego improv.  It was a good choice. Ended up being one of the best shows that I've seen. Sure there were some duds, there always is in improv, but the overall quality of the show was great.  Pretty sure my sister enjoyed it.

San Diego Trip - Day 5 Lazy Day at the Beach

After playing the tourist and going to two animal parks the previous day I felt it was time to take a lazy day. Instead of going to a tourist trap we spent the day out on the beach. When we were at Seaworld and the Wild Animal Park the sky was completely clear and blue. Not a cloud in the sky. Sounded like perfect weather to go to the beach.

The weather sprites were attuned to my thinking. Our beach day it turns out ended up being the only day out of the seven that we spent in San Diego with overcast. Even more annoying was the fact that the overhanging clouds only existed right above the beach. Drive back a couple of miles away from the ocean and you had perfectly clear skies. Someone really hates me. I could almost hear the sprites were laughing at me, "ha ha ha you’re not getting sun on your beach day ha ha ha."  The did however make up for it by giving me a really nice sunset at the end of the day.

Despite the overhanging clouds we still managed to entertain ourselves. I got to play in the waves. Read a book on the sand. Write my name in the sand and all kinds of other beach things. I did forget to bring a bucket to make sand castles. My one regret.