To recap

This last week was rather Summerish (couldn't come up with a better description). Larry had his weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday, and since it has been record temperature hot, I spent most of the weekend doing "inside" stuff. Since buying this house, I have come respect the master craftsman. I have learned a lot about woodwork and and what it really takes to make wood look beautiful and rich. What does it take most of? Patience, and lots of it. I have 5 wood doors in the hallway that I have procrastinated on refinishing. So last weekend I started to tackle the beastly job. Triple steel wool, followed by a layer of Tung oil, dry for 24 hours, repeat. The more layers of Tung oil, the more beautiful the wood. By about the 3rd door my wrists were aching and I was starting have thoughts like "why are their two sides to each door?" I am still continuing on and will eventually have 3 coats on each door. I figure that will be enough for now, and I can add some more later this winter. I broke away from my work to eat and read Harry Potter's 5th book. I am trying to finish it in time for the movie. Only 600 pages to go.

Tuesday we decided to finally make our way south to Draper and go to the recently opened IKEA. Having lived in So Cal for many years, IKEA is nothing knew to us, but the weekend it opened in Draper there were people that had been waiting days, camped out, for the grand opening. That is just a little ridiculous in my opinion. We wondered around for hours. If you have never been to an IKEA than you probably can't understand how one can get lost for hours inside of one. It is like going through a maze of bedrooms, wall units, couches and chairs, all with names like IFLAVO and BILKLAK (I'm just making them up), and it just goes on forever. I used to really love shopping at IKEA when I was younger, but now the furniture looks a little too "temporary" to me. They do have some great gadget stuff though, and really inexpensive. I did like their kitchen designs as well. Very contemporary and European. Not big, but very well organized. We probably spent 3 hours there and left with only three things. Probably the biggest difference from this experience vs. the California stores was the buffet. Inside each IKEA is a Swedish buffet (Swedish meatballs and stuff), and in California we would hardly ever see anyone in these restaurants, but here....there was a line out the door! Must be some good meatballs!

The 4th of July was very low key. Most of my family was out of town, but since Larry had to be back at work on the 5th, we stayed home. We started out the day with a walk to the park and fed the geese and baby ducklings, came home and mowed the lawn while consuming large quantities of water and Gatorade. Afterwards we passed out in the air conditioning for a few hours trying to cool our body temperatures. Around 3:00, we went to Sugarhouse for their annual Arts Festival. It will probably be the last of its kind. Old Sugarhouse is changing, and in most ways for the good. In August, an entire block of the area is going to be torn down and replaced with newer retail, office, and some residential. It will be sad if all the independent business close their doors, but I am hoping that they just relocate. The Arts Festival had more of "farewell" feel to it, then one of creativity and fun. For me, I like seeing the improvements made, but I do have my own memories of "clubbing" here in the 80s when it was considered a somewhat sketchy part of town. One of my old hang outs is now a restaurant, with another converted into an Old Navy. My only hope is that with change they do take the history of the place into account and design accordingly.
I digress.....After sweating in the hot sun, we stopped off at an Italian Ice place and made ourselves sick with overly sugared Ice. Once you've had the real thing, not much compares.

For dinner we barbecued some chicken I had marinated, with corn and fresh pineapple. We finished it off with apple pie a la mode. With the Gatorade, the Italian Ice, pineapple, and apple pie, I realized that I had consumed too much sugar, the result being a nice stomach ache. Once dusk hit, we headed back to Sugarhouse to the park to watch the fireworks. It was, to say the least, a crazy madhouse. We ended up sitting across the street from the park on the lawn of some office buildings. It really wasn't the best place as we couldn't hear the music for the show, instead we were bombarded with the crap music from the cars piling up in front of us. After the show we came back home and passed out.

Hopefully this weekend I will get up to the higher elevations and into some cooler temps. We'll see!