The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a mad dash. Like I mentioned a bit ago, Andrew and I joined the Salt Lake Avenues Community Choir. The practices have been going really well-- we're learning 14 pieces of music, and as to be expected Andrew is a bass and I'm a soprano. I'm certainly not the best in my section, but I think Andrew is likely the best in his. In terms of the general demographic of the choir, we're both a bit outliers-- most everyone else is over the age of about 50 (there are a handful of other 20 and 30 somethings), and I think the majority of the choir comes from the same ward, whereas Andrew and I aren't LDS. It's not stopping us from jumping right in feet first though! It is SO nice to be involved in an artistic pursuit on a weekly basis again. I'm really excited for our performance in December, and I'm secretly hoping I might be able to snag a solo/small group parts in one of the pieces.
On the 3rd was the Great Salt Lake Audubon annual fundraiser. Andrew went and brought our friend Eric, since I was on event duty all night. It was a small but entertaining fundraiser (and wouldn't you know it, most of GSLA is over the age of 60... I guess we're just really good at getting involved in things that are mostly attended by senior citizens) at the Organ Loft, which has a Wurlitzer organ. I didn't really understand the significance of the organ before a part of the fundraiser where the Loft's organist played to Winged Migration, a bird nature film. Basically most of the room was a part of the organ. There were bells and whistles, clackers and (it feels like this could turn into a Dr. Suess story really quickly)... needless to say, very neat. A poor comedian (boyfriend of the girl who put the whole thing together) had a 15 minute set of bird-related jokes, cloacas included, and even had a small segment about the ridiculousness of how John James Audubon used to talk (using thees and thous and what have you). The older folks in the crowd didn't appreciate it, but it had Andrew, Eric, and I in stitches. Andrew and I even won some dog beds and tickets to Les Ballets Trocadero from the raffle!
Andrew submitted his veterinary school applications too! Whoopee! It was a lot of work for him to put it all together. It involves writing several different essays, some small, some short... some repeats of others, with prompts worded just differently enough that he has to write something mostly new for them. I think his application is a lot stronger this year than last year, and we both have our fingers crossed for the results.
Which brings us to today. Today we had a slow morning with a breakfast of eggs and bacon, and then we went to the Body World & The Cycle of Life exhibit. Andrew saw it the last time it came through town, but I wasn't able to attend. It was fascinating! We were able to see all of the body systems in very different, unique ways, and from a lot of different perspectives (literally, the exhibits allowed you to walk 360 degrees around all of the pieces). Since Andrew took Anatomy this summer, he had a totally different take on the exhibit than he did last time, so I think it was especially fascinating to him. We're both biology nerds, and ultimately it ended up being a great little outing.
The topic of dinner came up, and at the grocery store we came across some reasonably priced duck legs (gasp!). We've been wanting to try confit for a while, so it seemed a good opportunity. Thankfully Tony Caputos had two containers of duck fat left, which we picked up, and then went home to prep everything.
So we DID have duck fat, but we didn't have eight hours to cook the confit... thankfully THIS recipe gave us meat-falling-off-the-bone duck legs in 3 hours, and boy was it yummy!
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What else could we do when we found duck legs like that? WE HAD NO CHOICE.
My Fall Break camps are coming up this next week. We're short staffed, and my educator and I have to do both the full day camps and Little Chick classes (both programs require 2-3 people to really run correctly). I've roped in a few volunteers, including Andrew, so I think we'll be fine, but it's been a rush coming up to it with so much going on at work and not really enough man power or time in the day to get it done. I still feel little pangs of frustration when I think back to how close I got to the Reddit position, but I am grateful that the way things worked out allows me to have holidays with my families, and to have a significant break around the holiday season. Plus, with Andrew applying to vet school, who knows what the next year will look like? Hopefully we will, at the very least, be heading up to Logan, or maybe we'll be headed to Colorado? It's nice to have some prospects, even if they seem interminably far away.
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