"Who Vacations in Orem, Anyway!"

The last five days were pretty awesome if I do say so.  I wasn't at work, so that made it all the better.

The drive to Utah did not take as long as I thought it would.  Raven and I left the house around 7am and arrived in Salt Lake City by noon.  There we met up with a friend that I haven't seen since high school.  Seeing him again was really great.  His family is very nice.  His wife was especially nice and very understanding.  She was a lot of fun to talk with.  They gave me an open invitation to come visit anytime.  I was especially surprised by the fact that he carried a picture of he and I in his wallet.  It is the same picture that I have in a photo album, one of us sitting on Santa's lap during my senior year I believe.  He also showed me something I thought I would never see again.

When I was younger, I was a lot more creative and I used to write a lot of poetry and short stories.  I had written him a poem and given with them a set of candles.  He told me that he would send me the poem.  I remember the premise, but not the actual poem/story.

We met up with my mom and stepdad in the park, and it truly has been a while since I've seen my mother.  She looks great for her age, but she still looked a lot older than the last time I saw her.  I will be very glad when she finally moves back down to the Lower 48.  They have been considering moving to Emmett, which is not far from where I live.  I think it would be nice to have her closer.

The whole point of the trip was to watch one of my cousins graduate high school.  I have not seen her family in roughly 13 years, less my uncle who is a truck driver and has made several trips to the Boise area.  None of my cousins really remembered me, my sister or my mom, their aunt.  I am not surprised by that, but it felt really weird.  I don't like being so out of touch with family.  They moved around a lot to various states following the work, but still.

The graduation itself was the same as every other graduation I have been to, including my own.  The smart kids made speeches and the staff spouts off how this class is the most special and talented of any of the classes they have ever had the pleasure of teaching, just like every class before them.  Just once, I would love for the speech to be about how we barely made it, and the future might be so bright that we actually need a flashlight instead of shades, but the illusion of future success is important to young minds, I suppose.  Overall, it wasn't terrible.

My sister and I spent Sunday together.  It is no secret that we don't really get along that great, but this trip we didn't really have any issues.  Sunday was a bit odd for us.  Since Orem is so heavily populated with Mormons, the Orem mall wasn't even open.  I'm not much of a mall rat, but my sister needed to find a dress for a wedding she is attending.  We found out that the Provo mall was open, so we drove on down.  It wasn't that far.  We arrived to find that the mall didn't open until noon.  We got there around 10am.  NOON??? Really?  Might as well not have been open at all that day for as much good as it did for us.

We drove back toward Orem and found a Savers thrift shop had opened.  It was previously closed the first time we drove by it and I assumed that it was closed on Sunday.  I was glad that I was wrong.  My sister ended up finding the cutest skirt.  Actually, I found it for her, but it looked great on her.  She ended up saving tons of money that she would have spent at the mall.  Sucks to be the mall!

We ended up going back to the hotel for the rest of the afternoon.  There wasn't else much to do anyway.  While we were at Savers I found a Brad Thor novel to go with the set.  It is a book that doesn't come until later so it will sit on the shelf until I've read the rest of the books.  I also found a brand new copy of Star Trek Next Generation: Q & A.  It is a 20th anniversary novel that stars Q, my favorite Trek villain.  I have never done this before, but I read the entire thing in one sitting!  Six hours, roughly 400 pages.  I really scared myself with that one.

I did drag my sister to sing karaoke with me on Saturday night.  We ended up at a cafe, yes a CAFE, and when we got there, there were only three patrons in the entire building.  I like it that dead.  It give me a chance to try new songs with little chance of sucking in front of too many people.  By the time we left, there were about a dozen people in the cafe, and I had sang about a dozen songs.  The crowd, such that it was, was really tough and we left out of sheer boredom.

Swimming was awesome while we were there.  The weather was great.  I got back home to grey skies and RAIN!  More rain!!!  I couldn't believe it.  I couldn't even go swimming when I got back.  I managed to let Raven go swimming for a short while yesterday, but it was too cold for me.  Brrrrrr...

Anyway, long story short. The trip was good.  I am glad to be home.  I have so much cleaning to do that I don't know where to start.

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