SALT LAKE CITY BABY!!!

That's right, Tommie and I are back from our jaunt in Salt Lake. We had a great time hanging out with Tommie's brother, Kenny, recording Tommie's newest album and just being tourists.

To the left, you can see we visited Temple Square-haven of the Mormons. It was an interesting visit. It felt like what it might feel like to be a visitor in a VERY big Baptist church actually. We had a few people explain a few different things to us and overall, we thought it was interesting, but not a place we spent all day. We did try to look up some genealogy in their library though. That proved to be incredibly difficult and not at all aided by the fact that our "helper" was a Mormon "sister" from Fiji. She apparently was doing her 2 year service there in Salt Lake but had yet to perfect the intricacies of speaking English quickly while explaining a complex online research system. Funny. Seemed like all the "sisters" in the library had similar issues.

We also had our first encounter with the ever-popular SLC fast food chain, SCONECUTTERS. This restaurant, open 24hrs a day, purports to serve you any number of ethnicities of food on a, you guessed it, scone. Tommie, for instance, had a "sloppy scone." I had a "sconeburger." We could have also enjoyed "french dip scone," "scone gyro" or a variety of other options. Interestingly enough, the doughy substance on which they placed our food seemed to resemble less a scone than it did fry bread. Either way, we were very pleased with our lunch choice-if not simply for its uniqueness-and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. (plus they had horseradish in packets like ketchup and mustard...could things have gotten ANY better for me?!?! I think not...)

I would also like for you to "meet" Amos, Maple's nemesis for the weekend. He is a 4-month-old Boxer puppy that belongs to Kenny's roommate. He was VERY eager to play with Maple. Unfortunately for our little weiner dog, he has little concept that his enormous paws should probably not whap Maple in the head as an invitation to play. She did her gremlin growl almost every time she saw him. Needless to say, they were separated most of the weekend with one being outside, the other inside or one in one room and the other upstairs. Actually though, I stayed at Kenny's place on Tuesday to do some work and was left alone with the two pups. After leaving Amos outside for most of the morning and being subjected to his pathetic lonely cries, I let him inside and let the two dogs go at it for about 10 minutes. After that, they seemed satisfied that they had let each other know where they stood...then they both proceeded to place their heads in my lap at the same time and fall asleep-with Amos snoring loudly of course. So, the story has a happy ending-Amos and Maple became friends. And then she left the next day and doesn't have to worry about him anymore.

The studio and the people we met involved with Tommie's album were incredible and we have some great pictures from that, but I'll save that for Tommie to share and post. So look forward to installment 2 of SLC Baby to show up here any day now.