The Twilight Report

sgmrt: utah

2010-10-10T15:41:00

It’s Christmas Eve and I am eating funeral potatoes. Only in Utah would I be eating a dish named for the grieving of a corps. Plus potatoes. Given that they are served at other occasions, it seems just a tad grim for me. My step father is from the Salt Lake City area so we have a house here and my car has been patiently waiting for me while I was in Australia for four years. Hence my road trip is going to start here in the Mormon Vatican.

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SMB Tuba

2006-03-18T02:52:00

I was down at Circular Quay yesterday with Torbin and Judy (friends of my mother's) and I heard someone playing the Super Mario Bros. theme on a tuba. It reminded me of my friend Tyler who is a sound designer for EA. On our sojourn through the botanical gardens, we ran into a guy who works for Condi Rice, who was apparently down here at the time.

There were helicopters buzzing about like mad all day. Torbin and Judy opined that they were there to offer protection to the sec-state. After her time in Sydney, she went down to Melbourne to watch the commonwealth games. I watched a little of the games on the TV. England and Scotland compete separately for these games, and Australia dominates the swimming and the bicycling.

I took a number of pictures of the opera house when I wasn't being rudely shooed away by foreign tourists with their own, apparently more important, cameras:

(...many pictures behind this cut)

Off

2006-03-10T22:00:00

Well, I'm leaving Utah finally this afternoon. In LA for the weekend where Tyler and I are going transform into trains and drive around. Then I will be down under! Amazing!

skiing

2006-02-27T02:20:00

I went today.

Snowbasin

2006-02-21T16:49:00

Don flew in this weekend and on Monday we went to Snowbasin. I only went skiing once last year, and my technique has degraded as a result, but I'm starting to get my second wind. The mountain was mostly blue and black. With the exception of two gondolas and a high speed quad, the lifts are old school triples which zoom around and catch you at breakneck speed -- it reminded me a bit of Pajrito. Snowbasin opened in 1939, and is apparently one of the oldest ski resorts in the United States.

The first time we went up in the gondola there were two young girls (omg) discussing wedding rings and weddings (and nothing but). The second gondola was with three young military men discussing where they had served (all locations were stateside as far as I could tell) and how they had spent their 60 days of leave after they had finished at "the academy." I found the contrast between these two rides both refreshing as well as being disturbingly narrow. I imagined riding up in a gondola with a bunch of IBMers/ex-IBMers and one or two non-IBMers. Actually, minus the gondola, that pretty much describes every party that I attended during my years at New York.

There is a Australian "joke" which goes like this:

Q: What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
A: Can't wash your hands in a buffalo.

The "humor" is derived from the fact that the way that Australian's pronounce the word basin can be indistinguishable from the word bison to non-Australians.

We went to Antelope Island last weekend which surprisingly does not have any antelope, but does have a large number of bison. Don (my step father), who likes to repeat silly jokes, has been using every opportunity to tell this "joke" ever since.

Therefore: from now on I am going to refer to Snowbasin as Snowbuffalo.

Salt Lake

2006-02-07T01:37:00

I made it to Salt Lake City! I'm tired.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

2004-12-25T05:09:00

Yesterday we went up to visit my mother's friend and mentor, Clare, at her rustic cabin home which looks over Bear Lake. Last July I took a photograph which now is on the welcome page of my web site up there. For "Christmas" dinner, we had fish. Although I am not a fan of fish and I did not have seconds, it did taste pretty good. We also drank lots of Australian wine; that probably helped.

(The Sublime)

In short, our range of topics was both wide and deep, and intellectually stimulating.

Then we drove back to Salt Lake City where we attended the annual Christmas Eve party for Don's (my step father) family. Gosh... where to begin. (The Ridiculous)

Daybreak Bear Lake

2004-07-29T12:02:00

From my Utah vacation: