Sep 17
In the spirit of tonight’s rivalry game, I thought I’d post this clip we ran on KSL last year. This was my first BYU rivalry prank…courtesy of Brady and his brothers Jeremy and Jason. They’re all Cougar fans. Their brother Weston is the black sheep in the family…he’s a Ute.
So when the fun was over…I thought it would be fun to run this little story on the morning show.
If you think that was funny…check out what they did to each other this year.
Go Cougs!
Aug 20
Oxymoron? Not anymore.
Brady and I have been doing a little workout program lately. It’s called P90X. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Or maybe you’re familiar with this guy:
Yeah, we hang out with Tony Horton every day now…on our TV or in the gym on a computer screen. And aside from learning how to “Bring It”… we’ve also had to learn how to put ourselves on a diet. We’ve been eating a lot more fresh veggies, a lot fewer processed foods, and a LOT less sugar. To paraphrase Tony himself: a good body is like a sports car, and sports cars have to run on good fuel. This “sports car fuel” approach has actually turned out to be quite rewarding. We’ve been forced to try new recipes and different methods of cooking that don’t involve oil or butter (yes, it is possible, and quite tasty). We’ve weaned ourselves from creamy, cheesy sauces, and opted for lighter, but equally flavorful choices (like pesto with chicken broth and lemon juice rather than olive oil). We’ve also been bypassing dessert more often. This one has bothered me.
You see, something in my culinary life has been missing over the past seven weeks. With our new, wholesome, no-sugar-added diet, I’ve been feeling trapped in a world of savory dishes. No desserts in the house. I haven’t been able to make cakes, cookies…not even so much as a pan of brownies! My poor oven has been feeling somewhat neglected, and I’ve been itching to BAKE something for WEEKS!
Today I finally snapped. I needed to bake something (what a strange urge to have…I’m sure Brady wishes I had it more often). I had enough restraint to prevent myself from making a chocolate cake. But I did find an amazing cookie recipe online. And get this: NO SUGAR ADDED! I even used applesauce instead of oil, so these little drops of heaven are fat-free too! Am I good or what? (Okay, I didn’t invent the recipe, but hey, I’m still new to this “baking healthy” thing.)
Here it is (I made some adaptations, the original one can be found here):
Healthy Oatmeal Cookies (with Honey)
Ingredients (this yields about 2 dozen cookies):
Preparation:
Ta-daaa!
As you can see, mine turned out very round and fluffy. The original recipe suggests pressing the dough balls down with a fork before they go in the oven, so they’re flatter. I think I might try that next time, but these are still A-mazing! Thanks to the folks at wholegraingourmet.com for posting something that gives hope to us newly reformed health-conscious bakers.
Aug 19
I work in the news…and I see some funny things. Dogs on snowboards, ducks living in a penthouse suite on top of a luxury hotel, the world’s largest whoopie pie…
(You may not know this…but there are actually several states in the U.S. that lay claim to the world’s largest whoopie pie. This one was made earlier this year in Maine.)
So this week, I hopped on one of the newsroom computers to work on a story and found these.
They’re called “Anti-theft lunch bags,” and they can instantly turn your freshly-made sandwich into a moldy, undesireable mess. At least on the outside. The baggies have green “mold” splotches printed on both sides. I can see these coming in really handy if you have trouble protecting your food from your roommates or coworkers. Just stick your lunch in one of these little beauties, throw it in the break room fridge, and it’s instantly “theft proof.” Of course, your coworkers (or roommates) might get suspicious when they see the same mold pattern on every lunch you pack.
Of course, the manufacturers didn’t forget about the outer packaging. The moldy lunch bags come in an equally moldy box…
The lunch-packing world is certainly much more sophisticated than when I was a kid. Plain old brown bags and Ziploc baggies ain’t good enough no mo’.
Personally, I’m not sure I’d want to gag everytime I pulled out my sandwich.
But I must say…props to the inventors.
Aug 12
One thing we love about the Bay Area is that there’s so much stuff to do! (It’s also one of the reasons I haven’t updated this in a while…*cough*) A few weeks ago, Brady and I drove out to the Central Valley to visit one of his college buddies and go to Yosemite national park. His friend lives about halfway between our house and the park, so we drove to his house, spent the night, then drove into the park the next day. It was great, because we had our own personal tour guide to teach us the ins and outs of getting through a VERY heavily traveled national park.
Brady and Jared at El Capitan
While we were driving through the park we saw a bunch of cars pulled off to the side of the road…when Jared suddenly yelled, “BEAR!” So we pulled over too a saw a mama bear and two cubs climbing trees and playing in the grass. Too bad the zoom on our camera wasn’t better. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
Brady in front of Yosemite falls. It was a beautiful day…couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Us at the top of Sentinel Dome. That’s Yosemite Falls on the other side of the canyon. I think the elevation there was more than 8,000 feet. Pretty normal if we had been hiking in Utah…but now that we’ve been living just a couple hundred feet above sea level…8,000 feet is quite an adjustment for the lungs!
Tree pose…in front of a tree
The whole gang…Brady, me and Jared on top of Sentinel Dome. Half dome is behind us.
Brady at Glacier Point, in front of Half Dome.
This was my best “Titanic” impression from the “point” at Glacier Point. The view was incredible.
Something about National Parks is so awe-inspiring for me. We barely scratched the surface in Yosemite (we were only there for a day) so I can’t wait to go back and get deeper into the park.
Moving stresses me out. Especially when everything is in boxes…and you know you’ll have to unpack it all.
(That’s only the kitchen…but you get the idea.)
A couple weeks ago we moved into our official home here in Silicon Valley. And since Apple is totally awesome, they paid for movers to pack up our stuff and drive it out here. Of course, they hired the best of the best, so everything was packed VERY thoroughly. Everything was wrapped in paper. EVERYTHING. It’s great for keeping things safe in transit, but it’s a pain to go through.
I’m pretty sure that’s like two trees’ worth of paper…and that’s only a quarter of it.
Unpacking was fun. The boxes were labeled according to room, but we never knew what we’d find inside. Unwrapping all that paper was like Christmas morning…except that after we unwrapped things, we had to figure out where to put them and fold the paper in neat stacks to be carried to the recycle bin. That part was less exciting.
One thing I learned about unpacking…it’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you open too many boxes at once, you’re bound to get confused. It’s also easy to get distracted. I caught myself several times wandering off to a different room, or looking through a photo album I’d just unpacked, or rearranging the glasses in the cupboard because I couldn’t figure out the most usable location for them. Unpacking takes focus. Brady hooked up his iPod to the computer speakers he had just unpacked, so that we could listen to music as we worked. That helped. We found the best thing to do is just go one room at a time, one box at a time.
Three days later, we finally had everything out of boxes. We purged our home of cardboard and paper, and single-handedly filled two dumpsters TO THE BRIM with recyclable material. Good thing there are recycling bins at our place, otherwise I would have felt really bad about killing all those trees.
And, check out our new digs…(well, the living room, anyway)
Phew…with how much work it was to unpack everything, I think we’d better stay here a while.
It’s really amazing how quickly you can make a place feel like home. Throughout the month of May I felt lonely and uprooted, like I didn’t live in Utah anymore but I wasn’t really living in California, either. But now that we’re actually in our new home, with all our stuff unpacked and put away…Brady and I are finally starting to feel settled.
Now everyone just needs to come visit!
May 16
I found this recently…
Back in January I got to have a little more fun with my dear anchors. We did a fitness segment, and the trainer was supposed to bring one of her students to demonstrate the exercises. That didn’t happen, so the fearless producer stepped in to help.
(Okay, secretly, I sometimes wish I was a fitness model…)
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
May 11
It’s Saturday afternoon…a pleasant 70 degrees in San Jose, California. We’re parked outside an apartment complex, waiting for our 2 o’clock viewing appointment, applications in hand.
I feel like a vulture circling over my next meal.
Brady and I spent all day Friday prowling around Santa Clara, San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino, searching for an apartment to rent. We had some help from a relocation specialist, which certainly made things a lot less stressful. But let’s face it, apartment hunting is still exhausting.
Apartment hunting in the Bay Area has turned out to be somewhat of an experiment in the “survival of the fittest.” Be there fast, be there first. Do your research and ask the right questions. It’s best to shop on a weekday, because everyone else shops on the weekends. Take a completed rental application, along with a credit report and letters of recommendation from your landlords. That way, if you see a place that you like, you can apply for it right there on the spot. You have to beat the competition.
Then there’s the landlords’ and apartment managers’ side of the dance. They have to be able to sell you on the unit. Are they shy? Confident? Quiet? Talkative? Easy to work with? They know all the right things to say to give you a sense of urgency, without being too pushy. “We’re hitting our busy season, so these units probably won’t be available after the weekend.” We heard that a lot.
After visiting several apartment complexes, and a few condos, Brady and I decided we’d prefer a condo. (Note: Condo = privately owned, Apartment = management company). Condo owners generally take better care of their unit, since they only own one (or maybe two). It’s also easier to work with a private owner, rather than a faceless management company.
Okay, back to the vulture…
On Friday, we went to 11 different complexes, toured nine of the units, and gathered dozens of applications, brochures, and business cards. We felt like we came away with some pretty good options, but we still weren’t 100% satisfied.
There was one condo our relocation specialist found that was only open for touring on Saturday. The pictures looked nice. The location was better than most of the others we had seen. The complex was new, and it wasn’t sprawled out over dozens of buildings. Brady and I were intrigued, so we decided to go check it out on our own.
The condo opened for tours at 2 p.m. We arrived ten minutes early, and started eyeing the other cars pulling into the parking lot. I was convinced that every one of them were coming to tour the same apartment, and I don’t take kindly to competition.
1:56 p.m.: I couldn’t wait any longer. I called the landlord and asked if we could come up and see the unit. We had to be the first people in, so we could be the first ones to apply, and hopefully, get approved and sign a lease on the spot.
After six hours of apartment hunting the day before, we figured we’d know a good thing when we saw it. And this condo was definitely it. We walked inside and instantly I knew I had to live here. Full-size washer and dryer, two bedrooms, plenty of storage space, HUGE kitchen (especially compared to our previous one)…oh, and within walking distance to the best shopping in San Jose. Yes, I was home.
But there was a problem. Just as we were about to swoop in and lay claim to our find…the landlord got a phone call. Someone else wanted to see the place. He went downstairs to let them in, while Brady and I paced around, making sure we had done everything we could to let him know we really wanted to rent from him. I started mulling over possible scenarios. He might show the apartment to 20 different people, and find someone he liked better. Maybe because we were the first, we had set a high standard and left a good impression. Or maybe because we were the first, he’d forget all about us by the time the day was over. We left the condo just as the landlord was bringing the the next prospective tenants down the hall. A man and woman, middle-aged…certainly we had to be better than them. Brady and I paused to thank the landlord and tell him we were looking forward to a phone call from him, while I sized up the other potential renters. We said goodbye…and left.
The next 24 hours were a mix of anxiety and agony. I had already convinced myself we weren’t going to get the place, so I was gearing up for bitter disappointment, and not looking forward to jumping back into the hunt. But I still kept a faint glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d be accepted.
Then, Sunday afternoon, my phone rang.
It was the landlord. He asked if we were still interested in renting the condo. I tried not to sound like an over-caffeinated cheerleader as I said, “Absolutely!” and started doing a little victory dance with myself. We agreed on a move-in date, he emailed us the rental agreement…and WE GOT THE APARTMENT!!!
*Sigh* What an eventful weekend.
Apr 29
This week we launched a series on our morning show called “The Great Escape.” Every Friday for the next three weeks, KSL 5 Today goes on the road to a different quadrant of the state, to spotlight the lesser known activities that area has to offer. This week: Northeastern Utah.
I was the field producer for this adventure. I traveled out with anchor Scott Haws and crew man/camera operator Jeff Smith. We met up with the rest of our production team at Flaming Gorge, in a place called Red Canyon.
I wish I could show you the viewpoint of Chopper 5 of where we were standing…literally on the edge of a 1,500 foot cliff. We got there at 5 a.m., and were taking live shots from the chopper just as the sunrise hit the red cliffs around 6:24 a.m. It was incredible.
Here’s a clip of the show.
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
I was mostly communicating with the chopper and control room from inside the satellite truck, so I didn’t have to be out in the cold for too long. But it was definitely nippy out there in those early morning hours.
After our morning show, we packed up the truck and moved down below the Green River Dam, for a couple live shots during the noon show.
While not perfect, I felt like the show was a huge success. It certainly reflected in our morning show ratings. We beat the competition by a pretty big margin. But more than that, it was fun to do something so completely different for the show. Utah is a big place, and there are so many undiscovered gems in every part of the state. How awesome that we get to showcase it on live TV!
Mar 18
Bracketology – “the process of predicting the field of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, named as such because it is commonly used to fill in tournament brackets for the postseason…
“A bracketologist’s credibility is judged on how many teams he predicts correctly being in the tournament and the average difference between the bracketologist’s projected seed and the actual seed assigned by the NCAA Selection Committee.”
And according to the great Wikipedia…apparently I’m good at it so far.
I’ve never been a huge college basketball fan, and I’ve never followed the NCAA tournament very closely. Hence, I’ve never filled out a bracket.
That being said, I married into a family of sports nuts, where every adult fills out an NCAA bracket every year to compete against each other. I figured I could never be truly accepted as a White until I gave in to March Madness.
So here it is…my first bracket.
Before you criticize any of my picks…let me just say that, two days in, I am currently in first place in the White Family bracket challenge…and I have proof.
I can’t say I had much of a rhyme or reason to my picks though…and that will probably burn me in the next few days. Actually, I’m fully expecting to be knocked down once we reach the sweet 16. I chose many of my picks based on which name looked better…and which state they came from. If I like the state, they advance. We’ll see how my strategy holds up to my much more sport-savvy husband and brothers-in-law…
At least for now, while I’m on top…this bracketology stuff is pretty fun!
Nov 12
I produce the morning show. I thought it meant that I would never have to be in front of a camera…
Until last week.
