salt lake city days 3, 4, and 5

the credit for this amazing shot of the mormon temple goes to brit randolph. i left my camera at home, but don't think i could have captured it as well as she did. i think she brightened it a little with picasa, but the fog is amazing.

wasn't feeling so good friday morning, thus the blog entry from that morning. i finally made myself walk to the conference center where i took in some poster sessions and a talk on using technology to teach students with aspergers. i went to lunch alone and ended up running into cindy, a doctoral student at kansas who went to georgia college a few years ago. a friend of hers is in the doctoral program at vanderbilt, which is in nashville. turns out she's doing her research in the school district i want to get a job in. i gave her a copy of my resume and she put me into contact with the special education directors. we'll see what happens. dr. childre and dr. jackson say i should do grad work at vandy... i'm not sure i'm cut out for it, but we'll see what happens. everything from the week is kinda running together. brett, emilie and i went to eat with the juniors at hard rock friday night. the dork that i am named 18 out of 19 songs that they played. i think the other one was the ravonettes, but i took it as an "i don't know."


(brett and i do not take serious pictures. i was holding up brit's name tag. i have no idea why he held up the ketchup.)

i had the idea that we could all go to park city on saturday to see the shops, art galleries, and olympic park. it ended up being brett and davis and i going on our own. i would have gotten an suv because they were cheaper and a lot more stylish than a ford minivan had i known others had already gone without us, but it made for a lot of jokes when i picked cindy and the juniors up for lunch. i became "soccer dad," and i watched my children closely with the stow-away curving child mirror.


here's my wonderful parallel parking job at lunch. there might have been two feet of room up front. (i did not touch either car.)

we went to park city after our presentation and lunch, and the drive there was breathtaking. i love georgia and think the area around camp is some of the prettiest i've ever seen, but snow covered mountains are something else. driving into park city makes you realize there are a lot of really rich people in america. there are some huge houses in those valleys and on the sides of the mountains.

we spent most of our time in park city looking at amazing art in the many art galleries. davis pointed to a bronze bear sculpture that looked like it was laughing as it broke wind. sure enough, the piece was titled "instink." we soon discovered that it would be really easy to spend a lot of money if you had $100,000 or so to burn on a saturday. if they have art for sale by an artist i've heard of, you know it's worth a lot.

on the way back to salt lake city, we stopped at the olympic park. sadly the place closes down at 4 o'clock (on a saturday) so we didn't get to ride the insanely long zip line down the slope. we got to see the ski jumps and bobsled track from the parking lot, and play in the snow along the road up to the venue. it made a good conclusion to the trip to utah.

davis and i went to see the benchwarmers, i took brett to the airport, and after making an appearance at the senior girls' dinner, i called it a night. woke up at 6 to pack up, return the rental van, and get a little breakfast before heading to the airport with davis, kaci, and ashley. delta lost my bag, and after waiting for a long time to file a claim, i finally made it home to athens a little after midnight.

it's easy to define life moments by songs. i heard this song i really liked the other day, but didn't know who sang it. it was playing in a end of a movie when i walked in the hotel room, so i waited until the credits got to the music part and was shocked to find it was crooner michael bublé. not usually my style, but "home" is a dang good song. so we go downstairs for dinner thursday, and they're playing a michael bublé concert dvd. i heard the song about 5 times while in salt lake city, and yesterday it really fit. i was ready to come home. albums that are great for flying include coldplay's "x&y" and death cab for cutie's "plans."

more pictures to come. and probably more stories to tell as i remember them.

*i was going to complain about having to wait for over an hour looking for my bag and standing in line to file a lost luggage claim, but i just got a call from the macon airport saying that they have my bag. they're going to deliver it late tonight.