Big Dam Head

I just downloaded the newest Google Earth software and have been doing a little virtual tourism. As I was strolling down the main drag in Amsterdam I noticed something strange:

I only hope I'm immortalized on some 3-D rendering somewhere in that big digital world. Keep an eye out.

Welcome to the Department of Caffeinated Beverage Control.

Only in Zion:Taxing Caffeine. Any other place and I would think this was a statement by a legislator in the pocket of a tobacco lobbyist; not aimed at actually taxing caffeinated beverages, but to reduce cigarette taxes. But, no, this is Utah. Although the legislative session did legalize homebrewing (that's right, I'm a bootlegger) and will probably do away with the wacky private club law, it's still quirky enough someone would actually stand up and seriously suggest this in front of a group of lawmakers. I chuckle thinking of all the local soda junkies making the run up to Wyoming for cases of tax-free Dr. Pepper.

Ketchup.

Wow. What a lazy, neglectful blogger I've been. I have been hibernating most of the winter, but I did crawl out of my cave a time or two to have some fun. I spent Christmas in my hometown in New Mexico with my whole family plus my brother-in-law and four crazy dogs. It was good to be home and have everyone there, too.
In January we managed to take in a few films at the Sundance Film Festival. We didn't manage to get any shows in Park City, or go up there to do the celeb-gawking thing, but we saw two films in Salt Lake and another in Ogden. The first was a documentary on New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof called Reporter. The cameras followed him to the Congo, along with a pair of young people who had won an essay contest to travel with him. It was a good picture, with many moving scenes, but I wasn't sure if it was about Kristof or the Congo, and I don't think the producers did either. The second film we saw was Cold Souls. I put the link because explaining it would take far too long. It was darkly funny and overall a pretty enjoyable film. Sophie Barthes, the French director, took the stage afterward to answer questions, and she seemed pretty cool. The third film was screened at the Egyptian Theatre in Ogden, which is a great old theater in very good repair. The grandeur includes high walls decorated with faux-Egyptian art and an elaborate organ that rises in front of the stage. It was manned by a white-haired gentleman who entertained us as we waited for the film to roll. The film was Lulu and Jimmi, a German film about a German girl who falls in love with a black man from the States. What follows is a deluge of nonsense. I wanted the organist back.
On to more recent events, last weekend Lindsay and I traveled to Indiana for the wedding of her friend Lynelle, a former coworker of Lindsay's from her days in Anderson, Indiana. We stayed with another friend and former coworker of hers, Avon, who works the land in a hundred-year-old farmhouse he shares with his wife Doris and chocolate lab, Hershey. We ate Avon's wonderful cooking, I learned to play euchre and Doris taught us the Colombian tradition of putting a little cheese in your hot chocolate in the morning.
The wedding was at a charming rural church and the bride and groom were sent off in a horse drawn coach after the ceremony, which is the only one I've ever been to which included a roast of the couple before the vows were exchanged.
I also learned about the peculiar names of Indiana towns. There is a Mexico, a Peru, a Santa Fe (pronounced 'fee'), an Alexandria, or Alex for short, which is of course pronounced 'elec'. Incidentally, Alex is the home of the worlds largest ball of dried paint. Book your tickets now.
On Sunday we traveled down to Indianapolis and met Lindsay's sister Katie, who drove in from Illinois, for lunch in hip little boho district of Broad Ripple. We spent the afternoon checking out the little shops. After Katie left we toured around Indy for a bit before returning to Broad Ripple for dinner with Lindsay's friend Melanie at a Belgian brewery where we shared a bucket of mussels and a cone of pommes frites, which fit snugly into a hole in the table for that purpose. After dinner we checked out an English style pub. We spent the night at Mel's and flew home the next day.
On Thursday we went and saw Todd Snider at the Murray Theatre. If you've never listened to him, he's a real treat. Great storyteller and hilarious lyricist.
That about catches it up. Right now I'm doing laundry.
Here's a photo of us with Avon and some funny hats:

Swept off to Colorado for Thanksgiving

The Ladybug is moved by an installation at the Denver Art Museum.

Lindsay and I were lucky enough to wrangle a bit of time off for the Thanksgiving holiday and drove over to Fort Collins, Colorado to spend it with my sister Kitty and her husband Chris, who live there. We left after Lindsay got off work on Sunday and so got in late that night, while Kitty and Chris were still off at a wedding in Phoenix. They returned the next day in time to go to lunch, and we toured around Old Town Fort Collins with Chris while Kitty was at a meeting. We also got a look at Chris' gym, where he trains people to be quite kickass using Russian kettlebells and CrossFit workouts.
On Tuesday Lindsay and I went down to Denver, her first time in the Mile High City, where we spent most of the afternoon at the Denver Art Museum, a fairly new and impressive building with many nice exhibits. We especially enjoyed the works of Daniel Richter, a German painter who, unlike Joel Schumacher, can make neon colors dark and moody.
We spent a little while walking the 16th Street Mall and browsing shops, and before we knew it we were out of time.
Back in Fort Collins on Wednesday, we did some more wandering around Old Town with Kitty before touring New Belgium Brewing, which has grown significantly since I last did the tour in 2002.

Me and mah sista at NBB

As we were touring NBB and sampling the beers, Chris was working his CrossFit-toned butt off preparing a wonderful Thanksgiving feast for that evening, which we enjoyed excessively.
On the day itself we basked in a lazy morning while Chris was off running the 5K Turkey Trot with his gym clients. Lindsay and I worked in a quick visit with my friend Nick and his wife Sarah, who live around the corner from Kitty and Chris in Ft. Collins. In the evening we went over to Chris and Kitty's friends Aparna and Lam to enjoy another Thanksgiving dinner, an outdoor fire and some word games.
It went by fast, but it was a very nice vacation.

FC is a big bike town, but this dude took it an extra step in is 'lectric yellow dart.

******BEER GEEK STUFF*******

Across from the art museum is Pint's Pub, an English-style brewpub that, in addition to 250 different single-malt Scotch whiskys, boats cask-conditioned ale made with this "Frankenstein" system. A 5Bbl brewhouse hand-built by the brewers and pub owners. The kettle is an industrial kitchen steam kettle topped with a custom-built copper dome. The mash tun is a modified dairy tank, as are all the fermenters. I had a Dark Star ale off the beer engine. It was pretty good, but I suspect the firkin was a little old because it tasted a bit oxidized.

Brewhouse 2 at New Belgium Brewing. Note the mosaic tiles around each vessel.

The Merlin kettle in Brewhouse 2. This German-built beauty sheets the wort over a steam-jacketed cone, flash boiling for short boiling times and crazy-high energy efficiency. New Belgium have an impressive environmental record. The 85 percent of brewery energy need that is not supplied by methane captured at their in-house water treatment facility (yeah, really) is pumped down from a Wyoming wind farm.

Old-school wort chiller turned decorative fountain at NBB. I would not have recognized this had not my boss Chris Haas recently showed me a photo of a working one he saw at a brewery in Germany. Cold water is flowed through the copper pipes while the hot wort flows down the outsides from the upper to lower resovoir, simultaneously being chilled and aerated.

Wynell Charles Watson 1920-2008

Grandpa passed away last Thursday. I flew down to Texas to be with the family over the weekend and attend the memorial service on Monday. While it is sad and we miss him, we celebrated a long and full life and shared many good memories of the man from whom I got my middle name. In the photo, Grandpa, I, and my brother Chris have a good time one year ago at my cousin's wedding.

That's not an antelope!

We spent the day on Antelope Island, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, and while we did run across a few pronghorn, the highlight was a pair of these guys just a few yards off the road.

The Lady of the Lake emerging from a wade, stepping through the foam and brine flies.

Ensign Peak

Here's the Ladybug standing atop Ensign Peak last evening. Over her shoulder you can see the Utah state capitol building and, farther right, the Salt Lake Temple. The peak is a very accessible, quick hike and affords very nice views of the entire area.

In Utah, the Fourth of July comes twice a year

I've learned something great. Every 24h of July, the state of Utah celebrates the arrival of the first Mormon settlers to the Great Salt Lake Valley. There are parades, rodeos and it's a state holiday, so many Utahns get the day off. The result is very much like a second Independence Day, with barbecues, games and fireworks. We went to a get-together put on by some people from the Tribune. My friend Clay was in town again on his way home from some field work and he joined us for the world's largest pasta salad, some bouche ball, both public and private fireworks and a little lime Jell-O. Lindsay and I didn't do much on the Fourth, outside of watch the fireworks in the park, so it was pretty nice to have a second go and a real good time.

Bad Batman

Like many of our peers, Lindsay and I have been rather excited for the release of the newest installment of the Batman franchise. She was away for the weekend with her family in New York State while the throngs waited in line for the opening day showings, but we got out last night to catch it in a theater in south SLC. We went for an after dinner showing at 9:40 and decided to get some ice cream from the rather well-equipped snack bar. We were sharing, so we upgraded to a 'double' for 75¢ more, and were rather flabbergasted as we watched the young man load an impossible amount of chocolate fudge brownie into the paper cup. The lad at the register was a little slow ringing up the purchase so we were a few minutes late for start time. We ducked into the theater marked "The Dark Knight", me trying to balance the tower of ice cream while searching for a pair of seats. The house was quite full, but we saw two seats together in the first row behind the rail. The film was already rolling, so I felt pretty bad about pushing my way down the aisle, whispering 'excuse me' over and over, and the people I was slipping past seemed more annoyed than typical. I was a little surprised the previews had already passed because we were only five minutes late, but most of my attention was spent vainly trying to contain the drips flowing from Mount Dreyers in my left hand. I thought the beginning of the movie was rather strange, seemed rather serious and low-key for the first scene of an action blockbuster. It finally crystalized when Lindsay leaned over and said "I think we're in the wrong theater." I changed my 'excuse me' to an 'I'm so sorry' as we threaded our way back through an even more annoyed row of moviegoers. We crossed the hall to the theater in time to catch the previews in the theater we were supposed to be in all along. The movie was great and we had a good time. This was just a story of me feeling like an ass.

Peacock at the Tracy Aviary

Afternoon in the Park

Tuesday is Lindsay's Sunday as her work schedule goes, and the weather was very nice, so we decided to take the moto to nearby Park City for the afternoon. Although the only way in is Interstate highway, it is still a very beautiful ride through the mountains east of town. As we rolled in we stopped at the Olympic Park outside of town and toured the museum, which included examples of equipment, displays of medals and the spooky looking puppets from the 2002 opening ceremonies. The place was also full of activities for kids, pretty sweet ones, I must say. We didn't watch the asphalt bobsleds, but we did spend some time watching kids slide down warm-weather ski jumps and doing flips and tricks into a large swimming pool. Looked like a whole lot of fun. After a bit of that we rode on into historic Main Street and had lunch at a bistro followed by a scoop of homemade ice cream at the local parlor. Aside from a slight sunburn and a traffic jam on the way back, nothing to complain about.

New couch

Our new couch from RC Willy. Its name is Rebel Tomato. Why? Because the official color is Rebel Tomato.

Bells Canyon

Here's a shot of a mountain lake from a hike Lindsay and I went on yesterday at Bells Canyon. Really pretty area and a fun hike.

Sellers, Chalkers and Painters

I started this Saturday out with a trip to the opening day of the Salt Lake Farmer's Market at Pioneer Park downtown. There weren't many actual farmers because it's a little early for produce, but plenty of nice arts and crafts. I picked up some bread from a local bakery and a few other things then read in the shade for a while. When I was ready to move on, I walked over to the Gateway Center, where Lindsay works at the Tribune, and met her for lunch. Before I saw her I found myself in the middle of the annual Chalk Art Festival, with many talented artists creating their temporary masterpieces on the sidewalk.

Dave Allen and Mike Sutter put some final touches on the greatest of Muppets in a rare shady spot on the Gateway cement.

After lunch I got a call from my friend since first grade Clay Painter, who was in town from his home in Wyoming visiting family. We spent the afternoon hanging out at my house, playing chess (to a bad outcome, from my side of the board) and catching up. When dinner time came around, Clay's wife Holly and their adorable 15-month-old daughter Emilia got back to Salt Lake from Park City and Lindsay got off work, so we all met up and went to dinner at the Blue Iguana, a nice local Mexican place. We followed up dinner with a little gelato at a place in Sugarhouse Lindsay and I have visited before.

The Painter family, in front of a very Italian backdrop

Nice Saturday, nice weather, nice market, nice art and a nice time with old friends.

Live from the Beehive, the DNM rides again

Ok, so technically I'm in Las Cruces at the moment, but I've spent the last week getting settled in a beautiful apartment in the Sugarhouse district of Salt Lake City. I'll finish up my tenure here in the land of green chile and >4% beer and sometime around mid-May I'll once again be Displaced. I'm very excited about this new adventure, and so is Lindsay, who starts her new job at the Salt Lake Tribune on Wednesday. As for me, I've got a couple of leads on jobs in SLC, both in the craft beverage industry, and I'll be sure to announce what comes of all that. Back soon.