Random Random-ness

For some reason, known only to the road construction gods, they have decided to tear up 78% of the roads in Holladay. No joke. The best part is, the work begins at 7am, the trucks park in front of your house and traffic barely moves anywhere. I am sure it will look nice in a few weeks, but for now, it is a disaster.

I don't know if you had heard, but Michael Jackson died. With half of the stories in the first segment of the morning news about his death, I am assuming that he died just a couple of days ago.

If I was not already married, I would probably marry my iphone.

2 of the best cereals around? Honey Bunches of Oats and Chex. Some cereals are so simple yet delicious. One of the worst cereals around? Rice Krispies and Cocoa Krispies--the reason being, you have to eat about 14 bowls of it before you even feel remotely full.

Summer is almost over. How frakkin' crazy is that?

The tv show 'Better off Ted' is the first show that could rival Arrested Development in laugh out load moments. Very good stuff. The premise of the show is a research company named Veridian Dynamics that basically does some crazy research but everyone thinks that it is normal. Each episode has one of their commercials and their commercials are the best:

Utah Site: Creepy cool Gilgal Gardens

Ok, so I am home alone with the boys. Brodi ditched us for some writing thingamajiggy so the boys and I are just out partying. We have been jumping on the tramp, biking, swimming, etc..

Back in high school, I heard about a 'creepy' park downtown. I decided to take my kids today and experience another Utah site. Gilgal Gardens. It is located on 5th East and around 730 East, right behind the Wonderbread store downtown. It was the idea of a man named Thomas Child who ended up spending his money and his days finding stone and working on his sculptures for the gardens. It was his way of leaving his beliefs of the mormon church and christianity in a way through art (even if some of it is pretty strange and different art) Though he died over 40 years ago, the gardens is still going strong thanks to donations and volunteer efforts.

The Sphinx is the most well known of his sculptures. He used a sphinx as a symbol of riddles and mystery with Joseph Smith's (mormon prophet) head symbolizing the answer to many religious questions.

This is my favorite sculpture and it is of Thomas Child and it shows his love of masonry and religion, mixing them both together. It is a tall structure. Child is said to be especially pleased with the great look of his coat that 'he' is wearing in the sculpture. I love the colors to it and it is one of the more normal sculptures in the gardens.

Here are various other sculptures which represent different things to him (ranging from the Priesthood to characters in the bible like Job and Daniel). All the sculptures are 40+ years old. Let me tell you...these are all some pretty cool things, but late at night when I would go with my friends, it was rather creepy. I don't know what appears to be a bunch of body parts strewn across a hillside (like the pic on the right), but at night, sheesh.

The gardens are filled with flat walking stones with carvings throughout. Probably 75+ of these stones have scriptures, quotations, etc. carved into the rocks for people to read. After many decades, some of them are fading, but plans are to restore it to its past glory. The gardens are very pretty and well maintained.

If you have a chance, it is an interesting and rather entertaining 30-45 minutes. www.gilgalgarden.org

Once again, if anyone has any ideas of other things to see in the SL Valley (besides DI), let me know as we are ready to do some exploring.

Dexter is coming back...soon

There is a show, Dexter, that we love. But, it is not an easy show. It is the show of a guy that works for the police in forensics. His job is to catch bad guys. His night job is to find the bad guys and kill them. Yeah, pretty dark premise. And a pretty fabulous show. Well, it is back for its 4th season on Showtime and here is the promo for it. Is it so wrong to actually like a serial killer? He is an extremely likeable guy on this show.

If you do not like blood, please do not watch this show. But I will say, it is horribly entertaining.

Utah site: Antelope Island

Over the years, Brodi and I have had a great chance to live in some cool cities. The benefit of living in interesting cities is that you get visitors and you get to go out and see things that you may not go to if you just lived there. London, DC and Denver all had some good tourist sites and fun things to do.

Salt Lake City is a pretty cool city...but since we live here and we haven't had a lot of people come and visit us here, we often don't go and check out new things. Well, that is changing baby! I want to find some hidden gems and some not-so-hidden gems and go and see these sites. It started this weekend with Antelope Island. I have seen this island every single day of my Utah life, yet I had not visited it.



We made the drive out there (exit 332, Syracuse) this past weekend. It costs $9 to get your car and off you go. A couple of facts about the island: Its home to around 600 bison (several of which we saw and one of them is pictured on the right). The island is over 28,000 acres and is surrounded by the Great Salt Lake. The are actually many smaller islands (I believe 10 of them) that are all around Antelope Island, but Antelope Island is the biggest and the only one with true access. The roads on the island are very nice and well maintained.






So, what to do? We got there and took a little bike ride all around. This was difficult because Beckham still is not too sure how much he wants to ride a bike. He looked stylish with his helmet on, but he wanted me to push him or he simply wanted to watch Carter ride around. Carter is becoming a biking pro.








The visitors center is pretty cool with all the information on the age of the rocks on the island (millions of years old) to the wildlife (bison, deer fawn, birds, etc.) and there is an exciting movie. They have a gift shop there as well and they keep it well maintained. It also has some nice views of the motorway to get out to the island and some of the beaches.










Probably the best option on the island is the hiking. We were able to do some pretty cool exploring. It is very desert like with few, if any, trees. There are some good high points on the island as well for nice views over Davis County. You also get the chance to see some of the bison and deer fawn hanging out grazing.







We did not do the swimming as the bugs were out in full force. You can see the Great Salt Lake water is receding a bit as the shores when out quite a bit until you get to water (the view on the left is one of the beaches, so you can see that the beach line goes out quite a distance to finally get to the salty water). There are many salt fields all around, but the actual Antelope Island is surrounded by water but as you go across the water closer to Davis County, you run into the salt fields.






We spent about 3-4 hours there, but if I had planned better, you easily can spend a day with hiking, biking and swimming out there. We were hungry and had to stop at the closest McDonalds for the boys to play and eat.

So, any suggestions for me on where to visit next? I have some ideas, but have you gone anywhere in the Salt Lake area that we need to try out. Give me some ideas.

Sorry, No Pictures

So, my zipper broke while at the office today. Let me tell you, when it is 1pm in the afternoon and you have a zipper that doesn't work, so your fly is open for all the world to see...well, lets just say that I spent most of the day at my desk.

Utah site: Alta to Brighton Hike

My family has an annual tradition that the family has done for over 30 years now...every July, we have the Alta to Brighton hike. We all get dropped off and we have 2-3 adults who then drive to the other side to leave the cars. We then do the hike.

Brodi was not able to come, but I took Carter and Beckham. About 10 minutes into the hike, Beckham decided he didn't want to walk, so I plopped him in the backpack and continued on with the hike. I have been getting in better shape, but I was not ready for a moving 35 pound lump of human boy on my back. But it went well as I lugged him up the hill for about 30 minutes and then all of a sudden, he decided he would hike. He ended up hiking for the next 90 minutes. Thank goodness for that little boy...my back was not going to last. He was a little trooper. Carter basically ran the entire way. That kid has too much energy.

After over 3 hours of hiking, we came home and headed out the door again to my sister's house for another 3 hours of swimming. Carter has been taking swimming classes this summer so he was having a great time showing me how he can swim by himself. Bekcham likes it, but he has yet to decide how much he likes it.

Great weekend, now I need a holiday to get a break from the holidays.

Fixin' it well

After a short 1.5 years, I finally put a faceplate on our light switches. I did not even have to hire someone to do it. I have no idea why the color is so off in the picture of the one without the faceplate, but it also looks like I painted too...which I didn't. I hate painting. A lot.

I also changed the flapper in our toilet so that our toilet works right now, instead of slowly leaking water in the toilet which led to our toilet flushing itself about every 10 minutes.

Feel free to call me HandySam whenever you want. I can be a metrosexual and a handyman. Pretty impressive.