Early Birthday/Life is an adventure
<—-Wrote a poem for class that is back one entry. I’d like opinions on it for those who enjoy that kind of thing. It isn’t soppy romantic and it doesn’t rhyme so you can stop your eye rolling. (Yeah..I saw that.)
Zac and I had a fun and unexpected day yesterday. My birthday isn’t for another week but we went ahead and celebrated early because he realized that the Golden Dragon Acrobats were going to be in town. We’re both crazy about Cirque de Sole so he thought it would be a neat present.
We left for Salt Lake several hours before we needed to thinking we’d go check out this new shopping center in the middle of downtown. Well, we did but it was awful. It was the essence of everything I think is wrong with the world. Well…not everything but a good chunk of it. It was all outdoors and spread out over about 4 blocks in the middle of downtown Salt Lake. They had created a creek to run through the middle of it to give it a more outdoorsy feel. It was beautiful but it was comprised of nothing but clothing/shoe stores and ridiculously expensive, high end accessories. There’s a Tiffany and Co and a Rolex store…. We walked around half it then found a map, realized that there was nothing there we had any interest in and looked for food. We ended up at the Cheesecake Factory only to discover there was an hour wait. AN HOUR. I don’t wait an hour for any restaurant so we took off. We weren’t even there long enough to be charged for parking.
It ended up being a good thing though. We found much more interesting ways to spend our time. We had dinner at the Red Iguana. It is a hole in the wall Mexican place that is a little outside the center of the city. It was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Lainea had suggested we go when she was in but that ended up not working out. It was the only non-chain restaurant I knew by name in the city so we decided to check it out. It was awesome, definitely the best Mexican I’ve had in ages.
After that we went ahead and found a place to park on the U of U campus even though the show wasn’t for another 3 hours. We were just short on ideas for anything else to do. Just as we took off walking toward the theater it started pouring. Zac had the foresight to bring an umbrella so we were somewhat shielded. Long on time and short on ideas we found the Fine Arts Museum on a map of the campus and walked to that. We got there just a half hour before they closed but paid for a chance to check it out and be spared some time in the rain. It was a neat place. Unfortunately we didn’t discover the classical section until 5-10 minutes before close so we had to rush through what was definitely the best part of the exhibit. I hate to modern art bash but so much of it makes me roll my eyes. There were one or two really clever exhibits and the rest were so cliche that I regretted the $7 entrance fee. The best of the modern pieces were definitely by the faculty though. I suppose that’s the way it should be.
After we were ushered out of the museum by a really stern woman at 5 minutes past 5pm we headed back out into the rain. We remembered a little restaurant/pub we had eaten at the first time we were in the city and decided to walk toward it. It ended up being closed so we rounded the corner and found a little pizza place that was downstairs under a pharmacy. They served beer so I had one while Zac satisfied himself with dessert. We still had an hour before it was reasonable to head to the theater.
I loved the pizza place. I sat there looking around feeling nostalgic about the few times I hung out on the campus of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. It had THAT feel to it. If you’ve ever been to a hole in the wall on a college campus you know what I’m talking about. It was obviously a basement and not a restaurant in a past life. The walls were bare brick that had been written over hundreds of times by hundreds/thousands of students. The newest decoration was from more than a decade ago. There were Beatles posters, artsy photography from the early 90’s, a "Normal is Boring" poster….The place was completely packed. There was hardly any lighting and what was there was half burned out. There were large groups of friends drinking and eating appetizers, a few couples using the noise as an excuse to lean in close to each other and even a largish party of senior citizens having some kind of gather in the middle. Hanging out there and walking around the campus made me regret for a moment that I never went to a university. I feel like I missed out on something that I only ever caught glimpses of when I visited the campus in Knoxville. I’m sure though, like most things, that it seems more glamorous from the outside. Then again, who knows? I have a totally different set of memories from what would have been that time in my life and I don’t regret (most of) them.
After we’d killed as much time as we could there we took off to the theater. The show was amazing. The control those acrobats had over the minutest movement of their body was astounding. The show was two hours long and it felt like minutes. Another cool thing about it was realizing that John F Kennedy had given a speech there when he was a candidate. I enjoy knowing things like that. It makes me feel a little more connected to history.
There were shuttles to take people back to the parking lot so we didn’t have to walk any further in the rain. The night was wonderful. I reflected many times throughout the evening on how perfectly happy I was at each individual moment. I loved trucking all over the place through the rain. I loved that Zac is such a naturally happy person that the little impediments in our day (the crappy shopping mall and the weather) were adventures for him instead of barriers. I know we shouldn’t compare our exes with our husbands, boyfriends, ect but I contrast him often to Mike because I so enjoy the difference between them. Mike would have been miserable yesterday. He’d have been annoyed by the mall, the difficulty parking, the wait at the restaurant, the shabbiness of the Mexican place, the weather, the shabbiness of the pizza place….and to Zac it was all one great big adventure. He loved every moment as I did. He also sees what I see in places that are "shabby". They have a character and a life to them that you will never find in a Cheesecake Factory.
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Other things of consequence:
-Zac found a really nice microscope at the thrift store (DI for the locals). We had a cheap one we’d got from Hobby Lobby but it wasn’t great. You could see movement in it but couldn’t clearly see anything that was still. It did, however, tell us that Zac does already have swimmers which is exciting but it’s going to be great to see more with the new scope. It’s missing a few lenses which he found cheap on eBay but it will be next week before they’re here.
-I started at the other location last Monday so I am finally working at the clinic that I love so much. It was a great first week despite the fact that I was sick for most of it. (And still haven’t fully recovered…ugh).
-I watched my coworkers dog for what was supposed to be a weekend and turned into being just a few hours. That poor dog. He’s a one year old DEAF great dane and he’s had almost no training of any kind. There
was nothing I could do with him. He apparently only "listens" to her boyfriend. (And Zac,he had some moderate amount of control over him but he’s still on weight restriction so I didn’t want him messing with him). I tried keeping him outside in the yard and he tore two holes in our fence. That was my last straw. I apologized to her profusely but there was just nothing that I could do with him at all. With time (ie – not having to leave him alone and go to work) I think I could have helped him but I just didn’t have the freedom to do that. I feel bad for her and the dog.