Lake Powell

Ben's sister and family were generous enough to invite us down to Lake Powell to stay on their new house boat over the 4th of July. It was just the getaway I needed and oddly enough, my first time at Lake Powell.

I got to soak up some sun, relax and read my book, climb red rocks (my favorite), learn to drive a wave runner, see American Indian ruins, get up on waterskis for the first time EVER, and hang out with some really cool people. I also learned a lot about boats and what can go wrong... Many fun experiences and stories to share. It was very fun. SO much fun, in fact, I took very few pictures. Turns out it is hard to keep a camera with you when you are always in or around the water, so most were taken on our hike.

Chicago

I got to do a quick work trip to Chicago to the American Diabetes Association scientific sessions conference. Our diabetes center did a study about continuous glucose monitoring devices and was chosen to present a poster on our findings at the meeting. There was some good interest in our study and we got to meet people from all over the world. They wouldn't let us take pictures in the poster hall but here is what it looked like.



I stayed a couple days to attend some of the sessions and learned a lot of interesting things about better diabetes treatment and upcoming research. (No we really are not that close to a cure...it's way more complicated than you think).

I took a few hrs to do a little sightseeing: shopping on the Magnificent Mile, a riverboat tour about the interesting architecture but it's really not as fun when you travel by yourself. I got a good feel for all the crazy traffic there riding shuttles to/from airport and to/from the conference each day-I soon learned to bury myself in my book rather than watch out the window...that is, unless you had to sit in the front seat with a very talkative shuttle driver that wouldn't let you. It is fun city right downtown and the building are very interesting.

Madame Curry

My trusty companion, Madame Curry, crossed the threshhold of 100,000 miles today. That's a lot of time spent together over the last 7 yrs.  Although she is starting to show some of her age and has needed some surgeries and extra attention lately, she has been pretty good to me and still gets great gas mileage.
When I knew it was time to say goodbye to my last car, Ljubicica the purple wonder, I looked specifically for cars that I knew would last a long time and settled on buying a Honda civic. I haven't been disappointed. We are going to treat her well and hopefully she'll stick around for another 1-200,000 more.

If you haven't heard how my car earned her name...here is the story:

One week after I bought the car, my roommate got married. My assignment was to pick up food from a few Cambodian establishments to deliver to her reception. I filled my trunk with large trays of vegetables, rice, noodles and such. Lastly, I went to pick up the curry, which would have to fit in my backseat. These Cambodians were not used to catering because they put all the curry into one VERY large metal pot with an ill-fitting lid, weighing about 100 lbs. The 4 Cambodian men looked very perplexed at my car and decided they better tape on the lid with packing tape and put cardboard box under it. I had brought towels to keep things from sliding around and packed them around it. Off I went, with a friend in the back to hold it upright. It smelled wonderful. I must mention at this point that I had never seen or tasted Cambodian curry before and figured it must be very similar to other curries I was familiar with...like Indian curry or Japanese curry...which usually involve large chunks of meat and vegetables with a very thick, spicy sauce. I learned very quickly this was not the case. As I slowly drove down the ever-busy 405 interstate, I heard a sound that I did NOT like. My friend gasped as a stream of red oily liquid poured out of the pot as we turned... She tried with all her might to hold the bent, dented lid down to stop the flow, but really, there was nothing we could do. It gushed out every movement the car made and the towels quickly saturated. When we finally got to the church, we called for help to get the heavy leaking pot out of the car. Several people ran to our rescue, the liquid sloshing out and burning our hands as we pulled it out of my new car. I was finally left to survey the damage: red oil stained my backseat and floor. I laughed in disbelief and got to work cleaning it up best I could. I took it to 2 different auto cleaning places to see what they could do. All I got were stupified looks and broken English offers to vacuum it out. A weekend of shopvac, steam-cleaning tools, carpet cleaner, wipes and scrubbing and I finally got most of it out and looking presentable again. I spent the next few months (summer in Southern California) driving with all the windows down and a bottle of Febreeze to spray every time I got in. Curry residue does NOT smell good days later after being baked in a parking lot all day. The car was officially dubbed Madame Curry in honor of her faint curry aroma she held for the first year.

Gardening

I doing a garden this year! A REAL garden. Well, I hope it turns into a garden. Right now it is a plot of dirt, but that's more than I  have ever had. No, my backyard hasn't grown, it is still a  2 ft. square of artificial grass. But there is a community garden area down the street that just had a plot become available!

I know what some of you are thinking...the girl who can even kill plastic plants is going to grow a garden? I LOVE home-grown produce and flowers, so I am determined to get a green thumb someday and won't give up. I have had some small successes lately that helped me get the courage to take this on: my annual amaryllis grew beautifully 2 yrs. in a row, my 3 potted tomato plants last year yielded exactly 5 small tomatoes and I got some herbs to grow for about a month before they went moldy. Like I said, small successes. Be Nice!

The great thing about this garden plot? It is outside in a sunny area and has a drip line for watering.  I can't remember ever getting past the obstacles of consistent water and sun before... I guess that means I will have to worry about the more complicated issues of adequate mulch, compost, spacing, companion planting and weeding. Eek! Hopefully, mother nature will help me out a bit even if I get those things wrong.

Published

I had an article published in the AADE (American Association of Diabetes Educators) quarterly newsletter!  They sent out a request for articles on the subject and I thought... hey, I could write on that!  I sent in my draft and they called me saying they got a lot of submissions for that topic but they liked mine the best!  It may not make sense to anyone not a diabetes educator but I thought it might be cool for you to see it in print. Now I have to come up with more content because I have been asked to speak on this subject at the annual Utah Diabetes Educator conference.  Anyway, this is just the beginning of seeing my name in print... just wait until my awesome news later this summer!

no more ice cream

Our house has been over 6 months without ice cream. I never thought I would say that, it used to be our favorite dessert and my emotional escape when I was upset.  I stopped missing it around month 4. My husband decided to do it for health reasons and I wanted to support him on that. I feel proud of us. We might still eat it at other houses but it just doesn't live at our house. Hooray for more healthy lifestyle at the Gilgen's!

Denim quilt

I finally finished my denim quilt project after about 4 yrs. I started keeping old jeans really because i was attached to a certain pair that i couldnt bear to throw away. I had some other great donations from family and friends to make more squares than i actually ended up using, in fact. It became my "something-very-productive-to-do" when Ben was away for long periods of time for work trips.
It ended up being more work than I thought but I like the finished product well enough to use for a great picnic blanket.

I wanted the design to be a little less traditional so I decided to do the squares at an angle, used no batting (just a flannel back), machine-tied it with just brown tacking stitch, and did a zig-zag edge of denim triangles. My favorite parts are probably the few pocket details I kept and incorporated as squares.

I really hadn't sewn much since I got married. I'm still trying to find the perfect sewing/craft table so without it, projects like this can be a bit more difficult on a makeshift card table but it worked alright!

My husband loves it for how heavy/warm it is. Perfect for our cold basement room right now.