A smooth and gunky trip to Michigan

I wrote a review on Super Bowl ads in my previous post. It's really long, and you may be totally uninterested, but feel free to check it out and maybe comment on what the best/worst ads were.

I was lucky enough to spend this past weekend back home in Grand Rapids, so my family could see my fiance's new ring, and my roguish goatee. But getting there and back was half the fun! Northwest had the pleasure of being our discourteous carrier, canceling our connector from MSP (Minneapolis/St. Paul), re-routing us through DTW (Detroit), and being generally rude and unhelpful. On the way back to SLC yesterday, our brand new and modern looking CRJ-900 left the gate, taxied out, but then got called back to the gate for being "overweight for MSP". So the plane was perfectly fine to take off from GRR, but would have been too heavy to land in MSP after burning off thousands of pounds of fuel? Shouldn't they, like, check this before booking/loading/taxiing? Instead, they asked 6 people to leave the plane and get on another plane bound for MSP, which was fortuitously sitting in the adjacent gate due to being late.

After hearing the landing gear drop on the approach to MSP, we suddenly bolted back up in the air and circled around. Once on the ground, our plane took a painfully long route to the gate, and then sat there, waiting for some alien breed known as "jetway operators" to actually connect us to the walkway. Our friendly captain informed us that "When it rains, it pours", explaining that we couldn't land the first time because we were approaching too fast (maybe due to the lack of weight?), and then there were no jetway operators because we were so late (DUUUUUHHHH!) Throughout the ordeal, flight attendants and friendly captains continued to "sincerely apologize" for their complete lack of planning- er, for the unfortunate weather and airport circumstances which were nearly unavoidable.

After all this, our 1 hour and 20 minute layover had been reduced to 0 hours and 2 minutes! We followed the MSP signs to the tram, which was to take us to gate C9, only the tram's digital marquee informed us it was "OUT OF SERVICE - PLEASE USE MOVING WALKWAYS ---->" Somehow, we made the connection (because it was late departing) and arrived back in SLC safe and sound. Our luggage even made it.

It was great spending time with family and friends back home. On Saturday, Annie and I had lunch with my old work buddy JJ McSparty at a new downtown joint called HopCat - pretty cool place and a wild beer menu. Then we checked out his condo at Union Square and sat chatting with him and his wife Jujube. Onward to my nephew's 2nd birthday party at my sister's place. We had burgers on the grill and some tasty ribs. Later that night, we hit up Jr P's place for some awesome Wii action (my first!) and to catch up with friends. Annie killed me at Wii boxing, but I did well at bowling and tennis. My arms still hurt today.

Then I got pink eye, again, in my left eye. Seriously, it happened while sitting in front of the computer watching funny videos with the guys at Jr P's house. Disinfect your mouse, Yoshii! And don't rub your eye...

Sunday was spent cleaning my gross eye and putting tons of eye drops in. I blame my predisposition for this ailment on all the people telling me how pretty my eyes are all my life. If I'm going to get a big ego about this eye thing, well, God'll show me what some mucus and dry irritation will do! I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS!

At least we got to watch a super-entertaining Super Bowl, and some more cousins and friends came by to my parent's house for food and fun. Monday, we caught a great lunch at Rose's in EGR with Bradley, and then headed to the airport for all the fun and excitement of cross country travel.

This morning, I woke up with pink eye in my right eye, and both eyes extremely red (pink?) So I'm going to the doctor this afternoon, which means I'm now home writing blogs. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up from the weekend. And yes, I'll make sure to use the red-eye reduction feature.

Have some decency

Thanks to all of you who so discretely commented on the subject of my recent post "Rockin' the 80s". It's PROM. P-R-O-M, like the dance you got dressed up for back in high school.

And for the record, I had the stache for all of 8 hours - leading up to and during the party - and it was shaved immediately after. I have no new career aspirations or secret identities. Please people, my mother reads this blog.

Rockin the 80s

Annie and I went to the IKEA 'holiday party' this week. The theme was "80s Prom".

Here is our Prom Picture.


That is my real facial hair, and what you can't see is the tie maintaining its skinny width all the way down. She was rocking a shiny faux-wrap dress that came together at the hip with a huge round buckle. Totally Awesome!