Salt Lake City!

No, I did not become Mormon.... I think I scared the missionary girls away when I was taking pictures in Temple Square. Anywho, Joe was in SLC for the AIChE conference for a week, so I joined him mid-week to take a mini-vacation from my crazy life in Dallas. It was great to not have any responsibilities for a few days!

On Thursday, I walked around SLC on an afternoon-long personal Photowalk... got a few okay pictures, but mostly it was great to be outside, wearing a winter coat, walking for exercise and not sweating my butt off! I was also sent on a mission by Joe to find 'something edible that is quintessentially Salt Lake City or Utah to bring back from the lab'. I asked at the Visitor's Center, and they sent me to the Hatch Family Chocolates, who are also local celebrities because of their TV show, The Little Chocolatiers. Why "Little" you may ask? Because they're little people of course, which, if you know Joe, would make his day.

-The Mormon Temple and Tabernacle in Temple Square

-Flower on my walk

On Friday, Joe and I rented a car and headed out to Antelope Island to check out the island and its wildlife and possibly go hiking if it wasn't too cold. We had a beautiful morning for our drive up there. It was the week of the annual bison round-up so there were some bison penned up for the auction the day after we were there and the rest of the bison were traveling across the island, having been released late on Thursday after the round-up. We ran into a couple bison as we were driving down to the ranch. It was super awesome to get out of the car and shoot such beautiful animals, but I of course left the car door open in case it charged and I had to run away to safety.... and yes, we got full coverage on the rental just in case ;)

-View of Antelope Island & its reflection from the causway

-2 of the bison we saw driving around the island

-Joe & I in front of Fray Peak...if you look closely, there are bison off in the distance

-Hello Mr. Bison with the scars on his back..you must be a tough guy

After our trip to Antelope Island, we drove to our B&B in Huntsville in the middle of nowhere, but it does have a Trappist Monastery and the oldest bar in Utah, the Shooting Star Saloon. The bar's famous burger, the Star Burger, consists of two beef patties and a polish sausage (that tasted more like a spicy hotdog). I had the mini-Star, which only had one patty... it was still pretty gross.

On Saturday, we took the scenic route to the airport, stopping by the Olympic Village where it was snowing! Then it was back to flat Dallas. For more pictures from the trip, you can check them out on flickr.

Texas State Fair 2010

I can't believe it's been 3 months since I have found a moment to write a blog entry, but here goes!

Friday night, Joe, Jill, Deb, Suzie and I went to the state fair to sample this year's fried food winners. There were some good ones and some not so good ones and some damn well disgusting ones.

-fried beer

-fried lemonade

-fried frito pie

-eating a corndog (no, I didn't eat all 3)

I'll try and post all the pictures to flickr at some point!

Weird Al Concert

As I wrote on Facebook, we were in the 15th row and looking around the audience I never felt or looked so normal. Even though Joe dragged me there, it was a pretty entertaining show. He had more costume changes than (I presume) Lady Gaga. I spent the night trying to score a few photos of the concert in the terrible lighting that is a concert venue with our point and shoot. And I actually got a bunch good ones!!

-Smells like Nirvana

-You're pitiful... the parody of "You're Beautiful"... he stripped off a bunch of Tshirts and then this was the big reveal when the pants came off.

-This was a song of terrible and cheesy pick-up lines. He actually came into the audience during this song and with our aisle seats, I can now proudly say that my husband was mere inches (while I was mere feet) from Weird Al

-Amish Paradise... his bandmates got dressed up, too.

-"Fat"... the parody of "Bad"

-The encore presentation of 'Yoda' and the parody of "American Pie" called 'the Saga Begins'... Joe's feeding me these titles as I'm typing...

Toobin' in Texas

Over Memorial Day weekend, a group of us went down to Austin to go tubing, aka toobin'. It was a lot of fun and we had a great time on our 1.5h float (and capsize) down the San Marcos river. I'm so glad that I went!!

-floatin' down the river

-I look like I should be in a 5os synchronized swimming event

For more pictures and video, go here!!

Thank you Jacqui & Jen!!

Joe was working late today, so I rushed home before the leasing office closed to pick up some packages that were delivered today. While I was waiting, I noticed that one of the girls had an amazing bouquet of flowers on her desk. After one of the girls helped me carry all 4 packages up to my apartment, I saw a note in the door reading it aloud to the girl helping me with my packages "your flowers are in leasing off" at which point she replied, "oh those are your flowers." They are absolutely amazing!! Thank you so much ladies!!!

Birthday weekend.....

Had a bit of a rough week at work, but thankfully the week ended with a fun birthday. On Thursday night, Joe took me to the symphony to see Carmina Burana. Even after 10 years (my choir performed it on our European tour in 2000), I remembered so much of the music. When I got to work on Friday, I found that my desk had been saran-wrapped by one of my work friends, complete with Easter candy.

-my cube

For lunch, the girls at work took me to out to my restuarant of choice.... La Madeleine. As if that wasn't enough french inspired cuisine, Joe treated me to dinner at Tramontana. I was so excited that duck was on the menu!!

On Saturday morning, Joe bought me flowers at the new fancy flower shop near work. And then we went out to celebrate with my birthday twin, Deb, who had already organized a birthday party at one of the local pubs.

-my beautiful flowers from Joe

-Deb & I blowing out candles

Vacation!

Hello everybody... I clearly haven't been posting much lately, but I finally had time to throw some of the pictures from the cruise into Lightroom and uploaded them onto Flickr. There are plenty more (in addition to pictures from NYE) that I need to get around processing, but I hope these tide you over for a while, at least!

new link to pictures that should work!! Stéph, let me know if it still doesn't work!