My 2013 Christmas Card

Merry Christmas!

I'm putting this post together at pretty much the last possible minute to have any hope of getting it out by Christmas. Typically I'd like to have gotten this finished a week or more ago, but this year my December was anything but typical, and I got quite a bit behind on a variety of things. More on that in a bit.  But if this is less thorough than it was last year, I guess that's probably why.

In terms of where I'm at these days, I continue to work for Intermountain Healthcare as a Medical Informaticist. My job level was changed from "staff" to "senior" this year, but as best as I can tell, the only result was that I'm no longer one of the only 2 staff informaticists, and I get a few more days off.  I've been in my house for just over a year now, and other than some things I'll mention in a bit, it's been a great year. Fun to be able to have people over for movie nights, or to watch a game, or whatever.  I was called in October as the 2nd counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency in my ward. I continue to be unmarried and available, though the folks in my ward are hard at work at finding other single mormons for me to date. :)

As is my tradition, I wanted to share some photos of the past year and tell a bit of what's been going on with me, along with some of my favorites things from the year.

I started out the year buying a new camera with some of the Christmas money I got from my parents, one with a fancy 20x zoom lens. That's been a fun addition throughout the year.



In January, we got lots of snow at my house (and the rest of Salt Lake as well), and one snowy night, I went downtown to see what turned out to be my favorite concert of the year: An acoustic show by Augustana, which turned out to just be the lead singer and a fellow musician playing guitar, piano, and accordion. It was a relatively small crowd, in an intimate venue, and we were able to be pretty much right up front.



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Best Book (Fiction): Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Best Book (Non-fiction):  Moneyball

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I got some couches for my basement in January, and finally had a housewarming party on Groundhog day.




Pounding some angel food cake in Bill Murray's honor

Later in February, I took a week off work and went out to Hawaii to help babysit the grandkids with my mom while Kimi was here in Utah looking for a house to buy.  Mostly we stayed around the house and played with the kiddos, but I did manage to get to the beach one afternoon, went snorkeling one morning with George, and Lucy, mom, and I signed up for a "whale watching" cruise, that ended up mostly being a "whale looking-for" cruise, though we did briefly see a whale fin or two for maybe a few seconds.



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Best Song: "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" by Fall Out Boy
Runner-up: "Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

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As football season ticket holders at the University of Utah, we were offered the chance to buy tickets to the first round of March Madness games that the U was hosting at Energy Solutions Arena.  It ended up being 6 games, I think. 4 on Thursday and 2 on Saturday. 3 of the first 4 games we saw were upsets, so that was kinda fun.





The weekend before Easter, I made my first ever trip to the Moab Jeep Safari. I have some friends who go every year, and this year, I made it down Thursday night to hang out Friday and Saturday.  I actually only ended up going on one jeep trail with them, but I got to watch a bunch of jeeps going on the Moab Rim Trail which was within walking distance of our campground, and it was fun to hang out with some friends.




This one didn't end well.  There was a loud noise when it came back down and then it didn't work any more.

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Best TV Show (Comedy): Community
Runner-up: Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Best TV Show (Drama): Breaking Bad
 
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In April, I made it down to Phoenix to visit Julie for a weekend.  I'd planned on going earlier in the year, but then family was in town and it didn't work to go until it was already as hot as I'd care for things to be. :)


I didn't take many pictures, except at the Maricopa County Fair, where we saw this baboon, who at one point was in a Super Bowl commercial. How the might have fallen.

In May, those of us Tripps living in Utah at the time (mom, dad, Natalie, and I) planned a little weekend trip down to St. George.  We hiked Angel's Landing at Zion, saw Brian Regan at Tuacahn, and had a pretty nice time.







We had such a good time, we almost felt bad that Ben didn't make it home from his mission to Hawaii until June. :)





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Best Album: "Days Are Gone" by Haim
Runner-up: "Let's Be Still" by The Head and The Heart

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At the end of June, I took my first trip to Capitol Reef National Park (Utah's least visited National Park, apparently), and went on a fun hike with some friends there.  It was called Upper Muley Twist Canyon, and featured a great view of the Waterpocket Fold, a geographic formation that runs for about a hundred miles.





In August, we made one final pilgrimage to Kaneohe to spend time with our Hawaii-dwelling sibling and his family, so we could attend my niece Lucy's baptism.  Ben, sadly, couldn't make it, as he'd just started a new job with the Utah Athletics department, but we somehow managed to enjoy ourselves pretty well without him. I've blogged more about this already, but here's a few photos:


One of the two octopuses (octopi?) we found while snorkeling


Watching the sunrise at Bellows Air Force Base beach


Group shot


One last wave goodbye


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Best Video Game (Online): Card Hunter
Best Video Game (iPad): Simpons Tapped Out (I guess I really didn't play too many games this year)

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As mentioned before, we had season tickets to the Utah football games again this year, and despite not having the best season ever, we still managed to enjoy some good times at the games. You can see more of my football stuff from this year here.


Ben hard at work


I might not look like much now, but I'm drinking milk...


Celebrating an upset victory over eventual PAC-12 champion Stanford

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Best Concert: Augustana - Acoustic show (see above)
Runner-Up: Guster/Ben Folds Five/Barenaked Ladies

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In October, George and Kimi and the kids moved back to Utah.  They've been doing their best to adapt to the cold, but the rest of us I think are more than happy to have them living closer. It's been lots of fun to be able to see them more frequently and have little get-togethers without it needing to be a huge event.  The night before Halloween, Natalie, Ben, and I drove up and helped carve pumpkins with the kids.



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Best Movie (Action): Captain Phillips
Runner-Up: Gravity
Best Movie (Comedy): Monsters University


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Toward the end of November, my dad let us know that he'd been having some chest pains, and that his doctor had recommended he get a stress echo test done.  After that test, an angiogram was recommended, and after that, the doctors all seemed in consensus that he ought to have a cardiac bypass surgery.  This all in the course of a few short weeks.  He ended up going in for was eventually was a quadruple bypass the day before Thanksgiving, and despite any worries we might have had, the surgery went as well as could be expected, and after about 5 days in the hospital, he was home again, and on the road to recovery.  On Christmas Day, one of his presents will be that he can have his car keys back and start driving again.  Very grateful he was able to have his problem detected before having a heart attack and that his recovery has gone well so far.


Out for his first post-surgery stroll along with his physical therapist and a rack full of pumps, drains, and other good stuff

The day after dad headed home from the hospital, serving in my volunteer capacity as vice-president of our Home Owners Association, we discovered that the fellow who has been managing our finances and most of our other affairs (the treasurer's long-time live-in boyfriend), has been embezzling from our bank account.  That was a pretty crappy/busy week as I spent every waking hour gathering information from our bank, and various creditors, and then working to do all I could to get our affairs in order, and work with various organizations to try to see what we could do about things.  That is only just now starting to slow down a bit, mostly because I've done what I can do for the moment and am waiting for others (the bank, our insurance company, the police, etc) to do what they can do.  I did about 2 weeks of full-time work on that (in addition to my other paid full-time job) and that's why I'm just now, on Christmas Eve, getting around to putting this Christmas Card post together.  Definitely not something I ever envisioned having to deal with, and it certainly hasn't been too easy either. I'm grateful that things aren't worse than they are, and it's been good to have friends and family to talk things over with as I work through them.

I'd hate to end the year on such a dour note, and thankfully things have settled down enough that I've been able to get things ready for Christmas (I had to shop at stores this year instead of getting everything ordered online in time), and I've been able to spend some good quality time with my family this week with more to come soon.  I'm grateful at this time of year for the principles of the gospel that help to guide me and keep me out of trouble for the most part.  Despite some troubles that have come primarily from one person's actions, I continue to see plenty more good people doing what they can to help.  And after looking back over the last year, it's really hard to let a few bad weeks keep me from feeling what a great year it was.



Thanks to all of you for your friendship and love. Here's to another great year!

Heart-warming music on a cold night

Friday night, in the midst of a chilly snowpacked weekend, I picked up my friend Valery and we headed downtown to see an acoustic show from the band Augustana.  I'd (briefly) seen them in concert many years ago at the U as part of a show with several other bands, and there were some issues with the sound and on the whole they didn't get much of a chance to put on a decent show.

This time it turned out that an acoustic show included just the lead singer (Dan Layus) and another guy (Dave).  From what I've read on Wikipedia since the show, it looks like the original band is not playing together right now and Dan is just out doing his own thing with a few new guys, Dave being one of them.

For some reason a few jerks thought it would be cool if they took some chairs and set them up on the dance floor in front of the stage while waiting for the show to start. Obviously they'd be asked to move the chairs so not sure what they were thinking, but I suggested to Val that since we'd probably be standing for the show, we might as well stand in the front, so we went and stood in front of the folks on chairs, and actually ended up sitting on the front of the stage for a bit while we waited. In any case it resulted in our having a great spot to enjoy the show from, and for me to put my new camera to further use.

A girl (Lauren Shera) opened the show and had a nice voice and played the guitar well, but none of her songs really stuck with me. Probably would have helped if they'd turned up her vocals a bit more so we could hear her better over her guitar.  She played 8 or 9 songs I think.


Lauren Shera



Dan and Dave came out and did a few set up things (including Dan taping lyrics for several new songs to the stage and floor speakers), then disappeared for a few minutes (Val and I were wondering if its like a team warming up before a game and then going back into the locker room for one last pep talk. Don't know.) before returning to put on a fabulous show.





On the whole they played over 20 songs, with Dan mostly playing guitar (and sometimes the harmonica as well) and singing, and Dave accompanying on the piano.  A few times Dan went to the piano and Dave played some accordion.



Dan started the night not talking much, but after a half an hour or so, he seemed to warm up to us, and shared stories of braving the icy roads driving down from Boise that day. He seemed very grateful that we'd come out to see the show and talked several times about how he's been sober for 2 years  now and you could tell from the emotion in his songs that he's very happy with being a family man.  He had several new songs that mentioned his wife and kids and his own personal "comeback story".


I was able to get good videos of Augustana's two biggest commercial successes, "Boston" and "Sweet and Low" (the new camera shoots in 1080p):


Worth watching (or skipping) to the end for some kind words for us "good people" who'd come out to see the show.



One song I didn't record but that I loved was a new one called "Love in the Air", that was just upbeat and happy and also featured some high falsetto backup vocals from Dave that had everyone chuckling.  Luckily someone else recorded a very similar rendition at a different show and posted it on YouTube.  Hopefully whenever they get this song recorded and released it sounds a lot like this:




"It's al-ri-hight!"


A little grin from Dan

I wasn't sure if they'd do an encore at such a small, intimate show, but after lots of cheers and requests, Dan opened up his guitar case again, scolded us playfully for not being satisfied with 20+ acoustic songs, and sang one last song.  Definitely a fantastic show, and at $15, a relative steal. I'd definitely pay to see them again.

August of Awesomeness: Counting Crows Outlaw Roadshow

After several years away from the great state of Utah, my favorite band, Counting Crows, was back in town on Saturday night and I was lucky enough to get to go see them. If anything its a testament to how long I've been blogging that I actually blogged about the last time I saw them back in '06. This year they've dubbed their tour "The Outlaw Roadshow" and have hand-picked some bands to tour with them. So there were 3 opening acts before the main event. All of the bands were pretty good. I especially loved Kasey Anderson & The Honkies and Tender Mercies (featuring 2 of the Counting Crows). Field Report was pretty good, too and above all interesting to look at. They all wore business suits, and one of the guitarists looked strikingly like a former bishop of mine.

Kasey Anderson & The Honkies - Apparently Kasey has relatives in Salt Lake and mentioned enjoying Jazz games in the Salt Palace and going to the Galleria when he was a kid 

The lead guitarist was pretty great 

Field Report

 

The guy on the left was the one who looked like my former bishop 

 During Field Report's set, Adam (lead singer of Counting Crows) was just chilling back on the corner of the stage, sometimes singing along

Tender Mercies -- the guitarist on the left and the piano player in the back are both  members of Counting Crows. Another band was supposed to be on the tour but had something come up, so the Crows got the rest of Tender Mercies to come on part of the tour.

As Counting Crows don't have quite the following the once had in the late 90s and early 2000s, by arriving 30 minutes before the opening acts started, I was still able to get a nice spot in the all-general-admission-standing-only audience, about 5 people back from the stage and 7 or 8 from center stage. It was a pretty great spot and I was able to take quite a few pictures that I was really pleased with. Also Picasa has added some new toys for playing around with your photos (probably to compete with Instagram or something), and I was able to do some fun things with some of the pictures using those, too.

Their newest album, Underwater Sunshine, is made up entirely of cover songs, though the songs are primarily ones I'd never heard of before. But thankfully their 2 hour set included a nice mix of songs from all their albums, including August and Everything After favs "Rain King", "Round Here", "Perfect Blue Buildings", and "Anna Begins". They also played "Long December" which has always been one of my very favorites. And of course, seeing Counting Crows live is never quite like listening to their albums because they're always doing new arrangements of the songs and mixing in bits of other songs that they like in the middle of their own songs.

"I am the Rain King"

 

Call for Audience Participation

Here's my (less than high quality) record of "Long December". Warning: There is a little swearing (including one F-word) when Adam messes up around 2:30 in the video, in case that bothers you.


Here's the full setlist as best as I could keep track of it while also enjoying the show:
Rain King
Untitled (Love Song)
This Desert Life
Four Days
Hospital
Black & Blue
Anna Begins
Mercy
Mrs Potter's Lullaby
Perfect Blue Buildings
Children in Bloom
Good Time
Look at Miss Ohio
Long December
Round Here
(might have missed a song or two here, can't be sure)

Encore:
Le Ballet D'Or
You Ain't Going Nowhere
Hanginaround

For the last two songs they brought back all 3 of the bands that had played earlier and had them on stage singing along. 

 All in all a pretty fantastic night. As they left, Adam said "We'll be back", so hopefully it won't be another 6 years before they make it back. :)

More photos here.

They Might Be Still Alive!

One last post I wanted to get up here before I head out for the islands and miss the snowstorm that's hitting town this weekend:

A couple years ago I went to see They Might Be Giants in concert and had a great time. When I saw they were coming again, its was an easy call to buy tickets again.

And then it turned out that Jonathan Coulton was opening for them.  Granted he's not the most famous of singers, but among a certain population, he definitely does alright. That's right, I'm talking about nerds.  He's most famous for a song ("Still Alive") that's sung over the credits of a video game. :)  I thought that was the only song of his I'd heard, but at least one other song was familiar to me. Anyway, the Salt Lake nerd crew definitely showed up in full force for this show.  In addition to the aforementioned video game song, he also sang a song about an mad scientist in love, and my personal favorite was a zombie song where we, the audience, got to be the zombies. :)





They Might Be Giants then took the stage and put on a show that was a little less mellow and a little more rockin than the last one I went to, and while it was hard to top their last concert, an anniversary show for the first album I ever owned, it was still great fun and I'd definitely go see them again.