Reamer Day

John and I celebrated our second year of marriage on June 30, 2009. John suprised me by taking me up to Sundance for the weekend. Ebi went to grandma's and we took the beautiful drive up the mountains for a lovely weekend in a cabin, including a wonderful al fresco dinner sitting next to Robert "Bob" Redford (For Real!) and a hike and tour through Timpanogoes Cave. What a great weekend.

Thank you my love for always doing the laundry, helping me with dinners, catching spiders, having great ideas, going to yoga, listening to me talk about my feminist ideals, always asking 'why?,' caring about water consumption and bitching about people who waste it, trying to always understand and hear both sides before making a decision, hearing me vent about some of the people in my life, always being there for the people that need you, recycling whatever possible, going green, letting me watch the same episodes of Friends and ANTM over and over again (I'm really really sorry about that one), being my best friend, my laughing partner and simply a wonderful man. I love you.


Ebi thought she was going on our adventure but instead she went to grandma's. She seemed pretty please to spend the weekend snacking, walking, going on drives and napping. Thanks M&D for being such great babysitters

Arts Festival

I am trying to play catchup with the blog posts .. maybe one day


The pictures really will tell it all... blurry, swirly and fun. Say no more


I just love and adore this guy! He is so fun!

Lavender

I have just harvested my lavender for the year and its sweet fragrence is not only floating sweetly through the air outside but now inside as well. What a lovely summer treat!


More posts tomorrow.

Ebi 365

Ebi's old blog has turned into Ebi 365 a daily photo journal of my sweet pug. Check it out here:
http://ebithepug.blogspot.com/

Meet Phyllis

I want to introduce you to the newest member of our family. This is Phyllis (or on the chance the Phyllis might be a boy.. Phil).

When we first got the Cove House and were beginning to fix it up, each night when we left from working on our soon to be new abode there would be a cute wild cottontail rabbit sitting in the middle of the big front lawn eating some of our many weeds. I instantly loved her and each night would try to sneak closer and closer to take a better look. She would only let me get so close.. maybe ten feet, and then she would dash as quick as her feet would carry her into the Fitzer Bushes for safety and security. We decided that her nest and hole were probably buried in those horrendous evergreen bushes so you can imagine my concern when the day came that the Fitzers were to be eaten up by the backhoe.

In my mind I knew that the bushes had to go.. they were taking over the whole yard and they were so ugly and menacing looking, but I also worried about the rabbitt.. if we took her habitat away she would be homeless and forced to relocate like those poor Islanders whose islands are being covered with water due to global warming and forced to move to New Zealand. I was certain that my new bunny friend would dig her way to New Zealand and we would never see her again. Then I started having nightmares about what would happen if the rabbit was in the bushes when we demolished them and I started seeing grotesque images in my head of bunny blood, orphaned bunny babies and worse, my bunny getting knocked unconscious by the backhoe and waking up in the landfill having to fight off rats or worse.. the wood chipper....... holy shit. I have to save her.

So I talked sweet John into taking out all of the Fitzers except the one where I thought the bunny lived. I told John I could shape the bush and make it look nice. It was really in the best interest of our already sad looking yard (see how I work?). So John took out all of the bushes but the one. After a couple of week there was no sight of the rabbit and it was clear that the last remaining Fitzer had to go. It was so intertwined with the other bushes that as soon as the others were gone, the bush began to die. So I said goodbye to the bunny habitat and goodbye to my rabbit friend. She never came back.


Well... to my surprise and utter happiness the bunny returned a few weeks ago! (I realize it could be and probably is a totally different bunny but I like to think it is the same one.. let me have my fun) Only this time she showed up in the backyard. With all of the trauma of the front yard demolition I don't blame her! I quickly got to work earning her love and trust back. This has included an assortment of farm share greens, carrots and now rabbit pellets. John and I put a ground feeder out on the back lawn full of feed for the doves, quails, peanuts for the scrub jays and I have recently added the pellets for my furry friend who we decided to name Phyllis.

There is nothing cuter than to look out and see Phyllis up in the feeder with a dove and the quails wondering around below them. I need to get a picture of that!

Last night as John was working on the back patio and I was watering the plants, Phyllis layed out on the back lawn and watched us. I walked over to her and slowly walked by maybe two feet away from her cute self and she looked up at me and didn't move an inch. I see it being two ways:
1. Either she was daydreaming and didn't notice I was so close until it was too late to run and decided to do the whole "if I hold perfectly still no one will ever see me" act. Or..
2. she knows we won't hurt her and she is perfectly fine sharing the lawn with us.

I hope it is the latter.

So without further adue.. Meet Phyllis

Day 8: Monuments

Our last day in DC was spent having a delicious brunch and then off to the monuments before being dropped off at the airport for a early afternoon flight back to SL,UT.


Washington Monument (aka in Visual Culture terms.. the "Big White Phallus." I like to call it the "Big White Penis" that exerts its power over and over again... ok we know you're HUGE! Get over it!)


The Korean Memorial


Vietnam Memorial


I have spent alot of time and intellectual study on Maya Lin's Memorial and it was so incredibly powerful to walk down into the memorial, walk down into the silent tomb and be surrounded by all of those that were lost in the Vietnam War. I could have stayed there for hours taking it all in.

In 1981, at age 21 and while still an undergraduate at Yale, Lin won a public design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, beating out thousands of other competition submissions. The black cut-stone masonry wall, with the names of 58,253 fallen soldiers carved into its face,was completed in late October 1982. The wall is granite and V-shaped, with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument.

Lin's conception was to create an opening, a wound in the earth to symbolize the gravity of the loss of the many soldiers. Although initially controversial, the memorial has since become an important pilgrimage site for relatives and friends of the American casualties in Vietnam where personal tokens and mementos are left at the wall daily in their memory. We saw everything from beer cans to zippo lighters to flowers.

Looking at the many names carved into the smooth and polished granite one cannot get away from one's own projected image on the flat surface and it really hits you how powerful and haunting the memorial is. Your image is reflected back off of the names. You could be one of them... and in the background the symbol of American power and strength, the Washington Monument looms and is reflected back through the black cold stone. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. It moved me to tears.


Lincoln Monument




World War II Memorial








A fitting last picture for not two hours later we were on a plane flying over the Mall and beautiful DC heading home to Utah.


Thanks Bec for letting us sleep on your floor, dropping us off and picking us up at the metro every day and going with us to get delicious food! We are so happy for you getting your house and even more pleased that we were able to help you, from paint to boxes, with this new life changing step into becoming a home-owner!

DC Day 7 and recap of the week's work

You will have to forgive me for the dry unwitty post today. Work has left me absoutely fried in the brain. The following pictures sum up Day 7 in DC which was the big moving day from Bec's old apartment to the new house. I didn't document this very well because I was hauling boxes down three flights of stairs and into the Uhaul.. but I can assure you that it happened. The pictures also show a tiny bit of all of the hard work that John and Bec put into the new space, with sanding and painting and fixing up.. oh my! Go Team Ream!

Dove in backyard






Isn't her carpet so beautiful!


New paint!

DC: Day 6

DC Day 6: Was spent on the Mall hitting as many museums as humanly possible before a delicious lunch in Capitol Hill at Capitol Hill Tandoor and Grill. My favorite Smithsonian museum which I am sure will come as no suprise to anyone is the Hirschhorn museum of Modern and Contemporary Art but we also saw the Freer, and the Castle.

Inside/Outside the Hirschhorn


Robert Rauschenberg, Dam, 1959


Ron Mueck, Untitled (Big Man), 2000, from the Strange Bodies: Figurative Works from the Hirshhorn Collection exhibition


John and I just loved this big guy. He looked so real that at any minute I felt he was going to grab me or stand up and smash me. So cool! The aesthetic quality and output of this object was simply incredible. It was eery, creepy and fascinating to move around. I have never been a fan of heroized Renaissance statues, I need something I can relate too and for some strange reason I can relate to this and not that. John and I sat and watched people for an hour relate and take pictures with this giant. It is so interesting and fun to see people interact with an art object such as this. To me... this is what art is all about. Did my nerdy museum side just come out?




More museum nerdiness.. unpacking crates for an upcoming exhibition