Seventeen Months in Review

In 17 months, a lot can happen in a person’s life. You could get married and have a baby. You could buy a house. You could win the lottery (or you could lose all of your money). You could move across the country. You could even (almost) serve a full-time mission.

Since February 12, 2011  — the date of my last blog post — none of these things has happened. I still live in Merritt. I still work at the Merritt Herald. I still stay in my little apartment with a view of the Merritt Funeral Chapel. And, I still occasionally get locked both inside and outside of my apartment.

That’s not to say my life has been uneventful over the last year and a half. I’ve managed to keep myself busy.

Each year the Herald publishes a ‘Year in Review’ as the last paper of the year. This post is my attempt at a review of the last 17 months.

• In June 2011, I became the editor of our little paper, which publishes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

• That same month, I ran my first half marathon — the Seattle Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon — which I completed in 2:04 plus a few seconds.

• Last year, I formed an alliance with a competitor  — the reporter from Merritt’s other newspaper. We still frequently compete in eating contests, like this Canada Day watermelon-eating contest, and the annual corn eatin’ contest in September. We also still try to scoop each other on the good local stories.

• In July 2011, I experienced the notorious Merritt Mountain Music Festival, which I covered for the paper. For four days I explored the festival grounds, hung out in the media tent, enjoyed my backstage privileges and took up close and personal photos of the country artists while they performed on the main stage. If you look just below Dierks Bentley’s hand in this photo, you can see me with my camera.

That same weekend, I performed some folk songs from Merritt’s downtown stage with Johnny Cash looking on in the background. One day I’ll be able to tell my kids that I’ve performed in the Country Music Capital of Canada.

• Later that summer, I made my theatrical debut as Lilly Priest in “Happy 100 Merritt,” a play to commemorate the city’s 100^th anniversary. It was definitely a step out of my comfort zone, but at least I can cross that one off the list.

• By the time August rolled around, I needed a break. So, I hopped on a plane bound for Hawaii where I visited with some Temple Square sisters and explored the island.

• About six months later, I was able to go on another adventure and visited my home and native land (South Africa) with my family. We visited family, went zip lining, rode elephants and ate lots of biltong.

This list is by no means exhaustive — just a quick glimpse into my life over the last year and a bit. Stay tuned for more adventures to come.