Tracie's World

This just in: "High-Fat Diet May Make You Stupid and Lazy". " A new study on rats finds that 10 days of eating a high-fat diet caused short-term memory loss and made exercise difficult. While the finding may not seem a big surprise, the researcher says it might suggest that high-fat diets make humans lazy and stupid." The article goes on to say that "After nine days on a high-fat diet, the rats took longer to complete a maze and made more mistakes in the process than their low-fat-diet counterparts." Seriously? Some moron gave money to this idiot to perform research that gave him an answer to something we've basically known all along? This should go down in the annals of ridiculous research. What a waste of research funds.

Last night my friend Angel and I went up to Park City for the Deer Valley Music Festival. Now, an outdoor concert in Deer Valley is always a fun time, but we were looking forward to it even more because it was the Utah Symphony and some stars from Broadway for a performance called "Bravo Broadway". The symphony does this a few times a year and it is always incredible. At Deer Valley you can take dinner in with you, so we stopped at Squatter's (along with half the audience) beforehand and picked up some take-out. It was pretty chilly yesterday - for some reason it was 20 degrees cooler than normal down here in the valley - so imagine the temperature outside in the mountains. Thankfully Angel had prepared thoroughly, and we had blankets and coats to wrap up in. The concert was fabulous! It was a tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein (I just so happen to be a Rodgers and Hammerstein savant), and I had a terrific time belting out all the tunes. You'd think I was up th...

For most of my life I've been a bit of a news and current events junkie. I watched the morning news show, I watched the evening news, and I read the paper in-between. I've also been a bit of a freak for entertainment news. So in-between all of the hard news, I was watching Entertainment Tonight. But something happened to the news with the advent of the internet. It's like the hard news people and the entertainment news people sort of meshed, and they created a show that became nothing but gossip or just plain depressing. I mean, there's Matt Lauer every morning talking to the latest celebrity politico's mistress. Really - what's newsworthy about that? And then there's Nancy Grace every night doing the same thing. And meanwhile, the hard news organizations are getting scooped by TMZ. Since when do TMZ and NBC (or CNN or any of them) go after the same story, let alone the same demographic? My solution to all this? Forget the Today Show, it's Spo...

Yesterday was the Wildflower Festival in the Albion Basin up Little Cottonwood Canyon. The ward went for a hiking activity. Other than it being incredibly hot yesterday (even in the mountains), it was a gorgeous, sunny day. And the sky was as blue as you would ever see. We hiked the Cecret (pronounced Secret) Lake trail. It's a fairly steep trail, but the wildflowers were fantastic. Colorful and really on display in all their glory for the occasion. The trail takes you to a small lake, in a bowl area right on top of the mountain. Being as it was the festival weekend, the trail and the lake were plenty crowded, but it was really cool that so many people were there enjoying the beauties that Utah offers.

In the last few years, I have taken up golf. I have my own clubs, and have begun getting all the accompanying accessories that go with the sport. I even took some lessons through Community Education. In the summer, I try to play a couple of times a month. Mind you, I'm by no means good at golf. I'm probably somewhere in-between Bill Murray and Charles Barkley. The minute I think I should be able to make a particular shot, it takes me three shots instead. There is no more frustrating, contradictory, stress-inducing and aggravating game than golf. But there are few sports as fun, exhilarating, challenging and fulfilling as golf, either. It fools you by making you think it should be easy. But actually it requires a tremendous amount of skill, technique and coordination. So today I went golfing with a couple of my golfing buddies, Debbie and Janeen. Other than being a little too humid for us Utahans, it was a great morning. By the time I walked 9 holes and pulled a cart...

I have to admit - one of my guilty pleasures is People magazine. I buy one a few times a year, mostly if I'm in an airport somewhere. Or if it's the Sexiest Man Alive issue (hello, that's a no-brainer). If I happen to be on my way home to see the family, I'll take one to read on the flight and then pass it on to my sisters after I get there. We all love it. So I picked one up today that happened to have been put out for recycling at work. I just couldn't help myself. There on the front page was a huge headline THE REAL STORY. Something about Brangelina. Followed by a photo of Jon and Kate. Followed by a photo of David Carradine. Well, ok, moment of truth here, but let's not kid ourselves. There's no REAL STORY in People magazine. If it were real, it wouldn't be a guilty pleasure now, would it? The point is to enjoy the photos of celebrities who are too stupid to go out without make-up, and to revel in the gossip. And of course, it's th...

Good news (hopefully) for Dodger fans. Manny Ramirez finished serving his 50 game suspension, and rejoined the team last Friday. No hits in his first game back, but he did have a solo home run in Saturday's game. He only played through the 5th inning, then was pulled and replaced by Juan Pierre, who has been filling in for him (and doing a mighty fine job of it). Yesterday the big guy didn't play at all. Something about his legs being sore. But I'm wondering how, if you haven't played for 50 games or so, your legs can be sore? The only thing I can think of is that maybe all the estrogen he was taking is causing him to retain water or something. Just to caution any other guys out there who think a female fertility drug is the answer, you might want to think twice about that. As women, we're more used to it - the mood swings, the cramps, the bloating, the emotional meltdowns. I'm just not sure the male legs or psyche are up to the challenge.