Samantha Farbman - Blog: June 2007

Dinosaur National Monument

Heading back from Red Rocks / Denver, we drove through Dinosaur National Monument - I had never been there before, it is located in t he NW corner of Colorado, sprawling into the eastern part of Utah. Dinosaur was beautiful and remote and peaceful. We pulled into the Colorado part at the tail end of a sunset - and continued on in the Utah part the next day. It was spectacularly beautiful - petroglyphs, mountains, hundred of layers of rock one on top of each other...

Colorado, sunset, dinosaur. nice.
And then onto the Utah part of it all...

How weird is it that Dinosaur Nat'l mon. has rocks that are golden and shaped like a d-saur. (note: that isn't why they named it such)

Damn allergies!

petroglyphs!

Foldsey and Mayer

Well, lame I may be, but when two of my favorite artists play together in the most amazing outdoor ampitheater in the country (Red Rocks), I gets excited. My brother found the concert and suprised Gregg and I with tickets for our collective birthday. We arrived very early and scored 7th row center, out of several hundred rows. Much superfantasticness. Even tho it had rained early in the day, The towering rocks and sheer vastness of it all was magnificent. Everyone should have the experience of seeing a show there.

The approach to Red Rocks Ampitheater outside Denver, Colo

Anticipating the big show. much anticipation, since we came mucho early to get the good seats.

Lots of people, lots of rock. both natural and manmade. tee hee.

We drove the 8 or 9 hours to boulder for the weekend - and had the opportunity to catch up with a friend whom I met in Israel - how delightful it was to hang out in public with human beings! We are such shut ins here in SLC!
The opening act (to the opening act) was Brett Dennen, who I had never heard of before - he was wonderful! A little hawaiian, Jack Johnsoney Raggae-y.And he came out barefoot.

Brett Dennen

Then the fantastically amazing Ben Folds - 100x better then I was expecting. Hilarious, full of energy, and so damn good - in fact, the best performance of the night. Good Good Good. I can't wait to see him in concert again.

And then, John Mayer - who I was hoping would just be an acoustic, sitting on a chair - but instead it was a 8 or so piece band behind him, and a bunch of jamming out. Also, I was unfamiliar with much if Continuum, his new album - so I wasn't as plussed as I would have been, had he played all my old favorites (3 x 5 and comfortable - altho' he did play Why Georgia) with a guitar and no backup. Still, enjoyable though.

Good ol Johnny Mayer. Born In Bridgeport, Ct. (Your hero, me of course, was ALSO born in CT)

Excavation

Hello friends, family and all your creepies that read blogs of people they don't know...
Last week was out birthday week. You will have to wait until later posts to read about that tho;
To kick off the week, we hired excavators and dug up our backyard in preparation for the addition we plan to build. (build ourselves!)
They brought in a track-hoe, or so they called it, and wrecked our yard up good. In the process, we found some old bottles, some dating back to the 1920's, and some bone, which we have yet to submit for DNA testing. Speculation is much more fun though, isn't it!?
This week we will pour the foundation.

What we started with...

Gregg's worky outfit

Removing a very heavy concrete block and pole..

A collection of items found in our little dig.
Some date back to the 1920s, say the internet

Digging a walkway for extending the crawlspace

And..the finished product...

Bones of unknown origin, also found in the digging.

Housey update

Things have been developmentally disabled onthe house front - as we decided to scratch our earlier plans, and go ahead and add 16 feet to the rear of our house. It would enable us to leave all the other rooms intact, instead of coming up with absurd ways to make more space when there ain't that much to start with. So, the excavators come tomorrow, and then onforth we shall go.

On a happy note, mother suprised Greggy and I with a 40 inch Samsung, shiny black flat screen HD LCD tv. suprise suprise! It is fantastical. And even more fantastic is the $20 stand I found at the thrift store to rest it atop. Because there is nothing like resting a pricey tv ona brown box of unpacked books!

Also, IKEA opened its SLC doors in the end of May, so we picked up a nice new couch and ottoman, and a one dollar table from teh scratch and dent section (plus $20 of legs to hold it up)..
We are in business!

We took time out on the 10th for Gregg's birthday, and we will again this weekend for mine - to Colorado to see John Mayer and Ben Folds at Red Rocks Ampitheater.

But, I have had a very few stressful weeks, so when it came time to take a sledgehammer to the back room in our house, I was game. Game and a half in fact! Boy did that feel nice. Gregg ripped up the floor the next day - and boy, you really never know what you will find - we had layers of interesting flooring to feast our eyes on!

Also, Salt Lake City supposedly picks up extra trash on teh side of the road for spring cleaning once a year (I say this because they were supposed to do this yesterday). There are huge piles of sofas, and debris everywhere awaiting rescue. So, we cut down our unsavory shrubbery, and now we have a roadside jungle awaiting pickup...

I painted the window this week, but I had a lot of sanding to do to remove layers of ugly paint. I didn't get all the layers off.

Our roadside jungle

Our newly naked-ed house

The suprise layers of floor below our back room's carpet...

What a gorgeous subfloor, eh! Vinyl heaven!

Felt good to wreck those walls!

More heavenly subflooring.

And speaking of heaven, our new tele.

And my new kitchen floor mat.

Wrecking mothers tubbly wubbly

What more fantastic a way to practice for upcoming home construction then on mother's bathroom! Mother put Gregg and I to work. Initially we were going to do a nice new tile floor for her, as a thank you for her help with the downpayment on our new housey....but, being my mother and all....ideas began to brew. Us women are ever looking for them greener pastures.
Mother decided the avocado tub, pot pot and sinky had to go. And, she also decided that it was time for a whirlpool.
This involved a significant amount of wearing, tearing and smashing of cast iron bathtubs. It also involved much man labor. And a little bit of woman labor as well. Winston, the dog, was unhappy with the uprooting of his bathroom. We stayed an xtra week, but still failed to complete the project in its entirety, but did replace the whirlpool, tear down two layers of wallpaper and respackle, remove and replace the tile, assemble the new sink and countertop and stop a faucet that has been leaking for decades. Now, onto our own abode....