new book club

well, i'm finally going to my neighborhood/ward book club. i've meant to go in the past, but just never got around to it. they meet on a thursday night, which could be a problem if there was a new episode of the office on tonight, but alas there isn't a new episode on tonight.

so, i didn't read the book and have never read it (gone with the wind), but i did read a synposis of it....and i saw the movie a long time ago. it is quite a story though...many, many twists and turns (and at least as many men in scarlett's life). since i haven't read it i won't be able to get super invovled in the discussion (or will i?), but it's always good to just get a feel for a group. it's amazing how they're all so different: some are good at having/sustaining discussions, others have good food, some have both, ect, ect. i'm interested to see what this group is like.

i already know that the book for next month is marilynne robinson's new one: home. i just read gilead, so am excited about reading home too. having a good book for next month seems like a good omen at least.

a snowy snowy valentine's day

well, this is a bit late, but better late than never.

brian and i, along with his younger sister whitney and her friend chris, went snowshoeing on valentine's day. we got up early and got to the trail head at rock canyon shortly after 7am. it had snowed a lot that night and was still snowing, which seemed like good snowshoeing weather to me. we got started with the absolute goal of making it to squaw peak.

there wasn't much of a trail for us (and we later realized that the trail we were following was three guys hiking up just ahead of us without snowshoes on--we couldn't belive people could make it all the way up there without snowshoes), but we carried on. the steep parts once the trail forked were quite challenging. i remember at one point when i was leading the way thinking "i just.....have to make..... it....to that tree....up there."

we finally made it up to the top and it was really cool. it was so snowy (we were really socked in) that you couldn't see anything down in the valley. we had to remind ourselves to stay away from the edge since it seemed so inocuous (as if you really wouldn't fall hundreds of feet down if you went over). we took some pictures at the top, but whitney discovered just how cold it was up there since she almost immediately lost feeling in her fingers when she took off her gloves to snap the pics.

the hike down is always colder (and it didn't help that i fell down a lot), but we did ok until we made it to the fork in the trail. at that point the wind and snow seemed particularly strong, and it just felt really, really cold. poor brian got very cold...so we really snowshoe walked fast to make it back to our car.

once we got back home it still took us awhile to actually and fully warm up, but finally we did. although there were times when we felt super cold (at least me and brian), it was a lot of fun. it was really pretty up there and cool to actually make it to squaw peak. now we'll have to make it there when the weather's warm and summery to compare which time of year is the best time to summit the peak.

seorang anak laki-laki mau gula mera

brian decided awhile ago to start studying indonesian. he checked out a book from the library and has worked on learning the language for the past several weeks. it's amazing how quickly he is picking it up. as he has practiced, i have learned a number of words too. one of them being "gula mera" (aka brown sugar, although mera actually means red. so in indonesian it's more literally red sugar.)

last friday i found out that, through my work, i have free access to rosetta stone for the next year. i was very happy to learn that rs offers indonesian as one of their 30 or so languages. so today i did my first learning exercise. i've gotten down a number of new words.

seorang (article for people--ie "the")
seekor (article for animals)
sebuah (article for things)

anak laki-laki (boy)
anak perempuan (girl)

bola (ball)
kucing (cat)
kuda (horse)
anjing (dog)

i'm going to have to keep practicing (of course) since some of these words are still hard for me to remember (ie, say off the top of my head). but boy can i recognize them. can you match up the text with the right picture in the picture above?