Day 91

My Adventurous Weekend

It started out last Friday after work. I came home, threw my stuff into bags, and hit the road. 

The drive down to Tressa's apartment in Salt Lake was pretty uneventful, but I feel the need to inform all of you that blinkers are standard in cars for an excellent reason. You can drive like a total moron, but as long as you are using your blinkers, those around you are usually given fair warning. If I am going 90, er-hem, I mean 75 on the freeway and you spontaneously decide to make an attempt at occupying the same space that my car is in without signaling, you are taking our lives into your own hands. I looked around me on the drive down there and noticed that on I-15 the amount of people signaling before changing lanes was scarily close to 50%. Just have to throw that out there.

Upon my arrival I was greeted by Tressa, my old buddy Jordon, and my new buddy, Karl, from Tressa's apartment complex. We played guitar hero for awhile. Well, alright, everyone else played guitar hero for awhile. I banned myself from the game after getting booed offstage three times in a row. The final time we were at 99% completion. So, yes, that is possible. A couple hours in, Tressa's cousin, Isaac, and his fiancée, Megan showed up. They'd driven all the way down from Rexburg, so they promptly fell asleep on the couches. The rest of us stayed up talking until a little after one, when we kicked Karl out. As per tradition, Tres and I both just slept in her bed. Or rather, that was the idea. It turns out that both of us lack the discipline to fall right to sleep next to our best friend that we don't get to see nearly enough. So we talked. I had only been lying there for a moment when I heard an excruciating cry of pain from outside the window. It was the cry of a distressed dog that someone had either just locked outside for the night, or decided to slowly torture to death. In any case, the poor creature's cries were pretty consistent through the entire night, as were the sounds of various emergency response vehicles speeding through her neighborhood. It was so warm that we had to leave the window open, though. Between our talking and the general din of the city, it was close to 4 o'clock in the morning when I got to sleep.

Two and a half short hours later, I was up and in the shower. I'd set up a time to meet with my buddy Mark by the reflection pool on Temple Square at 8. I was so excited to meet up with him that I wasn't even tired. Even though it was conference weekend, we met up early enough to beat the rush of people. I met Mark my second year up in Jackson, and I just can't speak highly enough of this kid. He's become like a younger brother to me. He's leaving on his mission to Mexico City, Mexico in almost exactly a month and I just know that he is going to own that mission like a boss. 

He and I spent an hour and a half walking around Temple Square and talking. Mark works on the grounds crew there, so he had some fun stuff to show me, like this smiley face that he planted along one of the main paths. 

He also told me one of the coolest bits of information I've ever heard. 

The LDS Church owns a falcon. It lives in a box that looks like an air conditioning unit at the top of the Joseph Smith Building.

If you look super close you can see the falcon's tail feathers sticking
out of the bottom right corner of his box.

This noble falcon's calling is to keep temple square free of pigeons and other small birds that would cause damage to property and pester people. Mark found out about the Church's falcon one day while he was on the job and a pair of pigeon wings landed next to him. Just the wings. He asked his co-workers what was going on and they pointed up to where the falcon was circling with the rest of the pigeon.

So, now you know.

After I left temple square, I met back up with the group at Tressa's place. We first headed over to the train station to drop Jordon off so that he could catch the FrontRunner.

I think he was going for ninja and it just ended up
looking like I'm shorting him a high five.
Oh, Jordon....

We then met up with mine and Tressa's old friend, Bess, to shoot Isaac and Megan's engagement photos at a super sweet park that was loaded with bridges, benches, wooded paths, and marble pillars. Tres is an amazing photographer with a very nice camera, so she was doing the actual photo taking. 

Bess was the pose coach. She spent a good deal of time directing the couple on how to sit or stand so that it looked cute and natural.

As for me, well, I spent a lot of time carrying gear around. Occasionally, I would contribute something like, "That red door would look good in the background." Other than that, I just tried to stay out of the way.

Being the attention hogs that we are, Tres, Bess and I couldn't leave without taking some "glamor" shots of our own.

Bess is a natural. I obviously require some more coaching before my time comes.

I don't know what it is with girls and feet pictures. We just love them.

Following the photo shoot, we were starving. Megan and Isaac had their hearts set on Indian food, so we went to the Star of India downtown. I decided to let my diet go for the weekend, and got the buffet. I love Indian food... most of the time. I tried a small serving of everything. Anything that we didn't like ended up on the Plate O' Sketchy Items.

I'm still unable to identify some of the items on this plate. I just know that my tongue got a little scared for awhile there. Also, curry does not belong on plain apples. This is a fact.

After lunch, I made my second trip of the day to Temple Square for a second, smaller photo shoot of Megan and Isaac.

This naturally led to a second, smaller photo shoot of us, as well.

Tres and Bess were under the impression that I was taking a picture of them.

After that it was time for me to go to my grandparents' house in West Valley. I was greeted with fudgy mint brownies of DOOM. That's what the logical, diet oriented part of my brain called them. The rest of my brain shut down from pure joy. That with a hearty scoop of ice cream served as my dinner. After "dinner", I chatted with the grandparents Hansen for awhile, and we had a conference call with my aunt Cindy. I then tried to help them a bit with their computer that has recently acquired the internet. Then I showed them how all the kids take pictures of themselves, these days.

We chatted for awhile longer, before my lack of sleep caught up to me in a solid sort of way and I had to go to bed. Before going to bed, I couldn't find my contact case, so I just used a couple small cups. I fell asleep to the sound of a spring rainstorm outside the window.

The first thing I discovered in the morning was that one of my contacts had made its way to the edge of the cup. Part of the contact had dried up overnight. I finally found my contact case, but I was now out of contact solution, so I decided that I would just put them in the case with water for then, and ask my aunt for some solution when I visited her later, so that hopefully the contact could be saved. Until that point I was going to be stuck in my awesome spectacles that I got several years ago on clearance at Sam's Club.

As I was getting ready, my grandma came in to ask if I'd looked outside. When I went to the window, this was what I saw:

I was disappointed, but not too concerned about driving in it. I was fortunate enough to learn how to drive in exactly this sort of stuff. After saying farewell to my grandparents, and with my trusty Mapquest directions in hand, I hit the road for Lehi.

I quickly discovered that all of the Southbound freeway signs were completely plastered with snow. I had no way of identifying my exits. By nothing short of a miracle, the only readable signs that I encountered were the ones for the roads I needed to take. Eventually, I made it safely to my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Wyatt's house. Their 3 year old daughter, Brynlee, is the princess of my mom's side of the family, and with good reason. She is the cutest, funniest girl you could make up.

Right after I arrived, she grabbed a tomato off the counter and offered it to me. I told her no thank you. She insisted that I take it home so that I could eat it later. I told her that I would just eat a tomato from my home when I got there, then I turned back to speaking with my aunt.

A short time later, we hopped into their car and drove to the Grand America Hotel for brunch. On the way there, I reached into my bag for my camera. Imagine my surprise when my hand was met not with my camera, but with a tomato. She really wanted me to have that tomato. I handed it back over to her mom.

I had never been to the Grand America before. It is a pretty swanky place. This was the best buffet I've ever had. There was a huge variety of food, and everything I tasted was fantastic. After we were seated, a jazz band comprised of a guitarist, drummer, and bassist (the legit kind, not the guitar kind) set up right next to our table. I was busy wondering if I was the only one in the restaurant who realized they were playing a light jazz version of a Nirvana song, when my cousin started moving around next to me. We then had this conversation:

Bryn: Steph, do you like to dance?
Me: Yeah, I love dancing!
Bryn: Well, then dance!
Me: How am I supposed to dance right here?
Bryn: It's easy! You just wiggle your tummy!

She went on to demonstrate to me how you dance in your seat. The band got a huge kick out of her, too.

After brunch, we went back to their house, where my other aunt, Karin, met us. I spent some more time talking with everyone, and showing them the pictures from the Color Festival. A couple of hours later, it was time for me to go to my last stop, Nicole and Jeff's house in American Fork.

Nicole has been my friend for a very long time. She's the one who saved my virtue one time. She is a very sharp and witty person who I would love to do a podcast with, if I could ever figure out how to set that up on my computer. She is also the proud owner of a pony named Chip. Chip was doing so well with "being shot", right until my camera came out, then he struggled a bit with making his enormous legs cooperate. But still, for his size, I was impressed.

While at their home, I had my first ever experience playing the Kinect. I definitely like ti better than the Wii. I had a lot of fun with it, however, by some weird fluke I beat them pretty badly at bowling. They didn't seem to happy about that, probably because of how much time they've spent practicing. What can I say? Everyone has a talent in life, mine is Kinect bowling.

After a few hours, it was time for me to leave the Salt Lake valley. The drive home was even less eventful than the drive down there.

Thus ends the story of my adventurous weekend. It was an eventful couple of days. Even though I am still recovering from a talking induced sore throat and lack of sleep, I would do it all over again in a heart beat.