My Commute

Since I totally forgot to take pics of me and Griff the other day, I thought you'd all be interested in what my commute looked like this morning. The traffic was surprisingly light, but I came over the POTM (Point of the Mountain for you non-Utahns, is the dividing line between Salt Lake County and Utah County. I live in Salt Lake county and work in Utah County.) Click the pics, they get bigger and you can actually see things. :-)

The fog (once again, forgive the RiPhone, and my dirty windshield):
You should be able to see Lehi and the rest of Utah County from here, but the blanket of fog in the valley was pretty thick. Looked really cool. Some of the buildings were poking up out of the fog and it reminded me of San Francisco :-)

Timp in the Fog, looked kinda cool, I don't think you can really tell from this pic...

Timp in the clear with the sun coming up. A little depressing that the sun isn't up at almost 8am, but still pretty...

And for Mom, I did get copies of Griff's first grade pics, SO dang funny. I'll scan it and put it up here for you.

The pic post

I had a few pics on my Nikon that I needed to take off because a friend is borrowing it (yep, I'm that nice of a guy - but he knows full well if he breaks it he buys it, so it's all good.)

These are all chronologically backwards again, but this is just a pic dump post anyway...

With that, let's begin:

The Zoo:
Baby Giraffe, such a weird animal, and it's neck was totally crooked like it needed a serious chiropractic adjustment. Do they have "witch chiropractors"?

I think Griff was tired of pictures by this time. For some reason, he was always 2 cages ahead of us, like he didn't think we'd see everything so he was running to make sure he got it all in. If you're not first you're last! :-D


We all liked the penguins, they were pretty funny. By now we were all melting however, so the standing in the sun was short-lived.

I think the Zebra is back behind there somewhere, but the lighting is jacked up, I need photoshop.

Not sure what's going on here, I think it was at the bear cages? Looks like these two are being monkeys...but that's normal.


The baby elephant is the star of the show, and she was pretty cute.

I think I officially have to announce that Griffin is too big to hold like this anymore. It's like what I would imagine picking up John Stockton would feel like.

After lunch, planning out our group's next move. Paul's MBA class at the U held this event and it was cool, we got lunch and a free pass to the zoo, thanks Paul! Thanks UofU :-D

More planning with Kaja getting interested...

Kaja's soccer match, Jaxon being clingy, maybe he's afraid of the camera? Nah.

Kaja in action on the soccer pitch!

Getting ready to celebrate a goal from her team!

Griff hanging out at Kaja's soccer match.


Griff's team waiting to kick off for the 2nd half kickoff.


Griff in goal, throwing the ball out to his team, well where his team is supposed to be...

Not sure what this pose is, but it's the last match, so go crazy kid!



Cool action shot of the Griffster taking the ball around the opposing team. Judging by where their goalie is standing though, I think he's going the wrong way. :-D

Griff meets Jet

Jet is Payce and Gwen's new dog. He is WAY more mellow than Buddy was but when he met Griff he went a little crazy. Not too bad, but he was pretty excited. Jet is super cute but didn't sit still long enough for me to get a good picture with the RiPhone (this is becoming a theme). I may have to get a camera to carry around since the Nikon is too bulky to put in my pocket, even on my cargo shorts.
Anyway, Griff and Jet are good buds now, I'm sure we'll go over and play as much as possible...

Pearl Jam 09

Paul and I went to Pearl Jam! First time in 11 years that they've been to Utah. I think it had something to do with Utah being very republican and PJ's intense dislike of former President GWB. Pretty dumb if it's true, and they went to AZ in that time frame because we saw them in AZ in 2003, and AZ is just as conservative as UT, so who knows. All speculation aside, here's the skinny on the show. The E-center stinks for concerts. They had seats on the floor - the GA section, if you will, and had them packed in with nasty little security guards making sure we didn't spill out into the aisles, heaven forbid we actually enjoy a rock concert, jeez. Pearl Jam then proceeded to play a lot of odd song choices! They have a new album but really only played 2-3 songs off of it. Paul and I were about to get ticked when they left the stage the first time and had only played about 1 of our favorite songs and 2-3 other good songs. BUT, Eddie and the gang had some surprises for us. They came back for a pretty good 5-song encore, but them came out for a 2nd encore and nailed a few more of our favorite songs - Alive and Yellow Ledbetter, for those who know the band! So, they made up for it in a lot of ways. Here's the playlist:

Main Set: Of the Girl, Breakerfall, Hail Hail, Severed Hand, The Fixer, Low Light, Marker in the Sand, Even Flow, Unthought Known, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, Got Some, Given to Fly, Immortality, Satan's Bed, Amongst the Waves, Do the Evolution, Blood

Encore 1: Bee Girl, Just Breathe (stupid song, see below for explanation), Red Mosquito w/ Ben Harper, Daughter/Sympathy for the Devil/W.M.A., Supersonic, Spin the Black Circle

Encore 2: I Believe in Miracles, Crazy Mary, Alive, Yellow Ledbetter

One down side was the goof who got up on stage because he had written a letter to the band, and went ahead and compared his love for his girlfriend to the energy one feels when you go to your first Pearl Jam concert (really? How touching - barf!!!) then he actually asked her to marry him in front of all of us. I mean really? Paul and I were seriously worried that this was going to eat into real music time. Luckily it didn't, jerk. We were all yelling for her to say NO, she said yes and Eddie saranaded them with some song I didn't care about. :-D

So, we left the concert not completely satisfied with our experience, but they ended on such a good note that we didn't really mind. Though, anyone who schedule shows in that venue when the weather is still good enough for Usana has to have their sanity questioned, it's ridiculous. Here are some pics, though the RiPhone's camera kinda blows.

This is actually the huge finale, but the pics loaded backwards, and I don't have time to fix it right now. They had a bunch of different signs in back, and they were constantly changing, kinda cool

Mike McCready blowing us away with Alive. The guy can play some serious guitar!

Eddie Vedder on Alive, the guy went almost 2 full hours and never faltered or sounded bad once (no thanks to the sound system at e-center - it is not good, my ears didn't even hurt. :-D )

The RiPhone doesn't do self-portraits so great with the touch screen and this is the best I could do, I'll keep working on it...

Stella grill

I realize I haven't posted anything for a while, so I figure a restaurant review is an easy enough post. I got a recommendation for Stella Grill in Murray - it's on about 4300 South and 9th East. I forgot to ask for a recommendation on dishes so, this was a complete experiment.

I asked the server what the specialties were and apparently they're not really famous for any one dish so he recommended several. We started with this really good goat cheese appetizer (very tasty but not as good as the rosemary flatbread at Trio - my absolute favorite) then had the red trout salad and the pork chop, with chocolate pie for dessert. I'm usually not a huge fan of trout but this dish was really good, highly recommended. The pork chop came with some funky fried mashed potatoes (not deep fried, like lightly pan-fried or something) that were AWESOME. The pork chop itself was just good, and reminded me why I never order a pork chop at a restaurant, I was left wishing I had gotten the open-face hanger steak sandwich - ALWAYS go with your first instinct! Then the chocolate pie was just ok, I've had way better.

The service was top-notch, very fast and friendly, the ambience is excellent, very calm and relaxing, the prices are very reasonable (nothing over $17) and the food is great (pork chop notwithstanding). I'd give Stella solid 4 out of 5 stars and I'd certainly go back. Thanks for the recommendation Chal!

Moochie's!

I was in SLC and decided I'd drop in to Moochie's for a Philly Cheesesteak. This is another "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" recommended location. They did not disappoint again - that's 3 in a row.

The philly cheesesteak is a sandwich that is often just made however a restaurant wants and they call it a philly cheesesteak. There really is only one style of real philly cheesesteak, and that's kind of "roach-coach" style where the steak and the other ingredients are all cooked up on a grill together with some melted american cheese (or Velveeta, but I don't like velveeta). This place actually grills up the bun on the sandwich filling, and it is scrumptuous (spell?) I only got a 6", and that was plenty! I also got the macaroni salad because it looked good, but I'll tell you right now - if you go, anything besides the sandwich is completely superfluous! I almost didn't even want to drink my water. They do have their own jalapeno sauce, which I tried on the last 2 bites (I Was so into this sandwich that I totally forgot about the sauce!) and it's good but completely unnecessary.

So, there is something wrong with my blog right now and it looks screwy and isn't giving me an option to upload pictures. Who knows. I'm sure it'll be fixed soon and I'll show you how delicious this sandwich is :-D I'll be going back ASAP for the meatball sub that looked ridiculously good, and I don't even like meatballs!!! For the philly cheesesteak, Moochie's gets the 4.5 stars. Great sandwich, not as good overall as Lone Star's fish tacos.

Big Griff on the skateboardie :-D

Griffin had on his flip-flops as you can see, so riding the skateboard was challenging except on his bum.

Jaxon loves Griffin's skateboard and calls it the "skateboardie." So, that's what we call it now.