Be My Valentine...every day! Ya big ol' SL-UT!!! Wait...what??

Tuesday, February 9 - Our heart-shaped gouda cheese plus a ton of other goodies from Kenny's Farmhouse in Kentucky arrived today as an early Valentine's Day gift for both of us!

Thursday, February 11 - Tonight we tuned into the first of a series of three Brett Dennen livestream shows.  Tonight he was performing his entire album "Loverboy" from a ski lodge in Taos, New Mexico, and it was great...
 ...and on Thursday, February 18 - he performed his entire new album "See The World"...
...and on Thursday, February 25 he performed a "trail mix" of some of his best songs.
We enjoyed them all and we love ya, Brett!  

During tonight's Brett Dennen show we enjoyed a pretty and tasty chocolate heart cake that Ashlee picked up recently at Trader Joe's! 

Friday, February 12 - It's Date Night...at home..thanks, Covid.  So instead of going to a theater for a Friday night flick, we rented and streamed Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, the brand new Kristen Wiig comedy off of Apple.  It was silly, but kind of fun.  In fact, it was a real "tit-flapper"!!  

Saturday, February 13 - Ashlee picked up this awesome little Valentine's-themed cake today that she had ordered from a local teenage baker.  It was light and delicious! 

Sunday, February 14 - Happy Valentine's Day!!  Unfortunately, our plans for a Valentine's Day brunch at The Farmhouse in downtown Nashville, and a virtual concert from The Ryman with Drew and Ellie Holcomb both had to be postponed due to inclement winter weather in the area.  We hope to get out to The Farmhouse soon to try their brunch, and The Ryman show has been rescheduled for Thursday, February 25th.

Ashlee instead made us a great dinner from our new air fryer.  And Drew and Ellie did give a free half-hour acoustic show from their house via Instagram tonight that was really good.

 
We followed that up with another free performance by Johnnyswim on YouTube called Live from the Backyard which was a lot of fun to watch.  We enjoyed watching both shows on our new, big screen TV in the den via our Amazon Firestick.

Monday, February 15 - Our newest (and youngest) cat, Dudley, had his first encounter with a reasonable amount of snow/ice on the ground today.  He wasn't a big fan of it, and came back in the house on his own pretty quickly.  None of the other three were interested in going out at all! 

Wednesday, February 17 - Ashlee snapped this pretty pic of our snowy home tonight.  The snow and ice continued to accumulate over to well over 4" in the last couple days, the roads are a mess, and the temps are frigid in this first (and hopefully only) major winter storm of the season. 

More fun with snow...balls.  These little solar-powered light balls that I got Ashlee for Christmas just on a whim have turned out to be really great.  Even covered in snow and ice after a cloudy day, they continue to glow and change colors.  Another great pic by Ashlee.  

Friday, February 19 - We celebrated the end of a long snow-bound week by finally getting out our new Solo Stove that Ashlee snagged on Black Friday back in November.  We enjoyed a few winter-style beers and munched on some delicious Kenny's cheese and sausages from our recent Valentine's order.  The new stove did great in keeping us relatively warm despite the temps never getting above freezing today and even dropping even more as the sun set.  

Saturday, February 20 - We fired up the Solo Stove again tonight and had a great Blue Apron dinner sitting around it that Ashlee prepared.  It was sweet sausage and peppers hoagies and cheesy roasted potatoes.  We also had some hot spiced tea spiked with with Maker's Mark 46 bourbon that was excellent.

Sunday, February 21 - We got together with our friends, Danny and Brenda, and planned a private movie screening at the AMC Thoroughbred Theaters in Cool Springs tonight along with a dozen  more of our friends.  It's a great offer that the struggling theater chain is doing right now to promote more visits during Covid.  Brand new movies are kind of pricey, but old classics are only $99.  

We chose our classic favorite, The Big Lebowski, of course.  This one has great sentimental value to the four of us since we went to a Lebowskifest in Louisville way back in 2011.  Everyone had a great time with a few of us even dressing up as characters in the film.  We might try and do this again with another classic movie in the coming months as Covid drags on.
Thanks to RedBubble.com artist, earlofportland, for use of the great film poster image.

Tuesday, February 23 - We finally came back to our local Roxy Theaters tonight to catch a $5 Bargain Tuesday showing of one of the current Oscars leaders for Best Picture, Nomadland.  We both really enjoyed it and thought it was insightful, interesting and a little sad...all the ingredients for a Best Picture winner probably.  

Sunday, February 28 - After a three-year hiatus, one of our favorite bands, Alpha Rev, were back together tonight with a free livestream show on YouTube in support of To Cure a Rose, a foundation started by lead singer and band founder, Casey McPherson, to help his 5-year-old daughter who has a very rare neurological disease.  We were more than happy to give a $50 donation to this worthy cause.  The band sounded great, especially with our favorite fiddle player, Brian Batch, back in the group.  

Friday, March 5 - We had another pandemic date-night Friday night at home and enjoyed the silly long-time coming Eddie Murphy comedy sequel Coming 2 America premiering today on Amazon.

Sunday, March 7 - We spent the weekend in Chattanooga working on the Carroll house in hopes of getting it turned into an AirBnB rental  Things are really coming together despite needing a couple more months of weekends to get everything ready.  

Wednesday, March 10 - We FINALLY got our new king-size bed delivered and set up today from Ashley Furniture.  We are very happy with it as are the cats.  The first to try it out was Doris, who has very picky tastes, so once she approved it, we knew we were good to go! 

Thursday, March 11 - Our friend, Amy, is celebrating her 50th birthday this weekend and she and her husband, Jeremy, invited us out for a visit to their home in the suburbs of SL-UT...you know, Salt Lake City, Utah.  We visited the big ol' SL-UT almost 19 years ago in late March of 2002 (pre-blog) and loved it, so any chance to return sounded good to us!  I had some flight credit on Delta Airlines to use and they are the only ones with a direct flight from Nashville, so we snatched up a couple seats, strapped on our masks, and took off westward.   The photo above is of Amy (and Jeremy's foot) tubing on a river through a cave in Belize back in 2010.  It was a harrowing trip that we all survived, but we won't ever forget it and has bonded us forever.  I ordered some playing cards with this image on them for her as a gag birthday gift also.  

The 3+ hour flight was smooth and uneventful.  We appreciated Delta Airlines still adhering to the middle-seat-open policy during Covid (Southwest has abandoned that idea and is filling up their planes to the max).  We arrived in the brand new SLC airport fairly late, and Amy and Jeremy picked us up and we headed to their home in Draper on a mountain a half-hour outside the city itself at an elevation of about 6,100'.

Friday, March 12 - The view out of Amy and Jeremy's front door is pretty spectacular.  While in a development, they chose well since this space across the street from them won't ever be built on to block their view of some of the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains.
We slept in a little and then headed over to the One Man Band restaurant in Lehi for some brunch.  This eclectic little place has been around a good while serving breakfast all day with a unique ordering system of old-style phone receivers at each table to call the kitchen direct.

We walked off some of our breakfast over in nearby Provo Canyon with a half-mile jaunt to the base of Bridal Veil Falls.  This 600'+ beauty was running a little slighter than we expected given all the snowfall recently and warming temps to create run-off.  As the pic shows, it was a little brisk with the wind.

A few miles further up Provo Canyon was the cool Sundance Resort made famous by iconic actor, Robert Redford and his same-named film festival over in Park City.  It was a great day to ski and snowboard and the place was busy.  We did neither, unfortunately, but had a nice look around this rustic, fancy area.

While Robert Redford actually recently sold his land at Sundance, his legacy remains here at the Sundance Resort and probably will for a very long time to come.

We headed over to Park City for dinner and a look around.  The little picturesque town was very busy with skiers and other tourists like us.  We luckily found a table for dinner at Flanagan's Irish Pub on the main drag.  The food and libations for very good.  We enjoyed the "winter lights" of many trees in the area on the drive out and back toward Draper.

Saturday, March 13 - We woke up to a surprisingly big blanket of new snow this morning up on the mountain.  Jeremy got to show off his snow-plowing skills more than once today.  The first time was to get their driveway clear for us to head down the mountain again for brunch at Bohemian Brewery in Salt Lake City.  This heavily-influenced German brewpub had some nice beers and a great brunch menu.

To kill some time until an afternoon tour at a local distillery, everyone agreed to my obsession of  seeing weird roadside things in person, and let me check out the real-life UP movie house in a new development west of town.   It was very detailed and very cute.  

We jumped into a last-minute afternoon tour and tasting at Outlaw Distillery, a young, very small, but talented, maker of amazingly good spiced rum, bourbon and a few other interesting libations including one made completely out of honey.  We would have bought a bottle or two if we weren't flying back and not checking bags.  Amy and Jeremy made up for that by buying three bottles.  The funny thing in the picture above is that our tastings were served in a rectangular Mormon Church serving tray...which you can't buy...no questions asked on how it got here! 

We came back to their house on the mountain so the girls could get ready for a themed ladies night for Amy's birthday and found another blanket of snow had fell during the day (9" total was the final tally), so it was Jeremy and his "humdinger" snow-blower to the rescue again.

The theme for Amy's birthday girls-night-out was The Roarin' 20's, so this flapper just had to get a selfie with the "humdinger."  

The drive back down the mountain late today to drop off the girls for their night out was a little harrowing.  The snowy conditions had lasted much longer than forecasted, so the decision was made that everyone would stay in downtown SLC tonight in a shared hotel room so as to not risk driving back in these conditions in the dark...plus everyone could get their drink on!  There was even a possibility the road could be closed by the time we got back late tonight.  So the cheap room at the nice downtown Homewood Suites was kind of a no-brainer.
While the girls partied their way through SL-UT (no pun intended) tonight, Jeremy and I met a friend of his for a tasty dinner and then hung out a bar until very late drinking beers and telling lies.
We all met back up at the hotel a 3 AM (thanks to spring forward) and called it a night.

Sunday, March 14 - We chased away the sleepies, the hungries and the hung-overies (?) this morning with a visit to Donut Boy which has been named "Best Donuts in Utah."  Might as well find out if it's true.  Despite our limited contrasts and comparisons, we can say these are pretty damn good.  The consensus was the apple-pie one was the best of our shared half-dozen, but I give the banana cream pie on a very close second.

Since we were on the northwest side of town, we decided to run out and take a gander at The Great Salt Lake itself.  The weather was great today, but the area was relatively quiet and peaceful.

The Great Salt Lake ringed to the north by the snow-topped Hogup Mountains is an mazing site.

Before dropping us off at the airport (which has great views as well) for our flight home, we had a good  lunch and some libations in downtown SLC at Bewilder Brewing to close out our visit.  Thanks to Amy and Jeremy for their hospitality and giving us a chance to revisit such a beautiful area.  We hope to come again some time to experience it even more.
Our flight home was a little bumpy as we skirted around a blizzard in Denver that luckily didn't affect our flight other than the aforementioned shakes.  We got home late and were happy to see all of our sweet cats and our new king-size bed!