Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The First Visitors

Two of my very good friends have officially won the title of "First Person to Visit Danielle in SLC". If you can't figure out who those two people are, or wouldn't know anyway, it's Gil and Balaji. Okay, so they didn't entirely come up here just to visit me, but they wouldn't have come if I didn't live here. :)

This past weekend (yes, I know the weekend was over several days ago, I'm sorry) the band Live played in Park City, about 30 minutes from here. Gil and Balaji had tried to get tickets to their show in San Francisco, but they sold out very quickly. Gil mentioned this on the phone to me one night and I said "oh, I think they might be playing around here sometime, you should come up here". I was half joking, but this weekend they showed up. It was a great weekend, even though Gil and I were both fighting off colds.

They got in Friday night and we went to see a midnight showing of The Big Lebowski at the Tower Theater a couple blocks away from here. Yes, Philly people, it really is called the Tower Theater, and yes, I know Philly continues to haunt me here in SLC. :) Then we crashed for the night, hoping to get a lot of sleep to prepare for the concert. We entirely failed in that regard and managed to sleep in all the way to 8:30am. Completely terrible. I blame it entirely on the Canadian goose that crashed into the plastic fence belonging to the townhouse development next door at some ungodly hour. Well, Gil and I woke up first and I dragged him straight outside to see the mountains that you can see from our porch. It had been dark when they landed, so no mountain views the night before. He was quite amazed. He quickly realized why I like it so much here. We also dragged Balaji out there and he was also amazed.

Once we were all ready to face the day we headed to the Living Traditions Festival downtown, got lunch, wandered around the festival a bit and then headed to Temple Square. Temple Square was interesting. We met one very nice missionary girl who was VERY jealous of us going to the concert that night. Then in the visitor center we met another missionary girl with WILD eyes. Seriously folks, she looked possessed. And she was, by the spirit of Christ through the words of Joseph Smith and the other prophets. She was frighteningly committed to her religion and to spreading her religion. We got away as quickly as we could. Then we headed back to the car to go up to This is The Place monument. That's where Brigham Young was leading the Mormon settlers into the valley and saw the valley and said "This is the right place" and that's how the Mormons ended up here.

Saturday night was the concert. I have to say, that is the second best concert I have ever been too. The first being a completely amazing Barenaked Ladies concert that Sarah and I went too. But, Live was amazing. Ed, the lead singer, really knows how to play the crowd. He was really enjoying himself and did a great job. We were singing and screaming and jumping up and down. It was so much fun. After the concert we went to a place called Dee's, which is basically a Denny's. It was awful. Gil, Balaji and I felt so old. But, it was amusing.


Sunday we did manage to sleep in and then sorta wasted time at the house. This left us with about an hour to spend up at Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. But, we had fun. The above picture was taken there, as well as the next one. We walked in the lake, which is indeed very salty. When my legs dried they were covered in salt dust crystals, even after showering them off. Then I rushed the guys off to the airport to catch their plane. As soon as they left my cold caught up with me and I spent the rest of the day lounging around feeling rotten.

That's about the most exciting thing that's been going on with me lately. There are other possibly exciting things, but I can't talk about them yet. I don't have any plans for the holiday weekend, except probably some packing and organizing to get ready to move into the new place on June 1. I'm really looking forward to the new place and the new mattress set I'm going to invest in.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

City of Rocks, Idaho


This picture will make my good friend Carolyn very jealous if she sees it. It made me jealous watching these guys. It definately made me want to get more into rock climbing so I can go out there and do that. This picture was taken at City of Rocks National Reserve in south eastern Idaho. It's in the middle of nowhere. I had to drive 28 miles on a dirt road to get there. Dust from this dirt road made it's way into every crack in my car and I spent almost an hour on Sunday cleaning it. However, it was well worth it. The place is amazing and I definately want to go back and do some climbing and maybe camping and hiking and such.


This is a larger picture of the rock that these guys were climbing. There are amazing rocks and climbing spots all over this park. It's an internationally known place to rock climb. There is everything from intermediate to extremely difficult climbing in this park. It's so cool. And the best part is that it's only 3 hours from where I live now. This is also amazing. I love being out west and being close to all this amazing stuff. I just find the west so much more varied and wonderful. I love it.

Work is going very well. I really like my job. Other than that, BIG NEWS!!! I got the apartment of my dreams. I found this perfect beautiful little apartment that has 1 bedroom and a loft (I've always wanted a loft). It's got hardwood floors and a gas stove and a washer and dryer and I'm in heaven. It's in a great neighborhood, very close to where I am now and close to a great park. I will move in June 1st. I signed the lease tonight, so it's official. Woohoo!!

Oh, also, I don't think I mentioned that I leased a car. It's a cute little Toyota Corolla. I really like it. I will post a picture up here as soon as I get a chance to take one. It's very fun to drive and much better on gas mileage than the truck. It will also be nice to have a four door vehicle when Balaji and Gil come to visit. That way no one has to squish into the little back seat of the truck. I'm so excited to have visitors. I got an air mattress at Target last week since they were on sale. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the visitors, other than the Live concert which is the main reason they are coming.