Now, some might be interested to hear what I’ve been up to. The answer is, of course, heaps, but let me outline some of the major points of interest.

Firstly, I’m in SLC now, staying at Lisa’s place. I should get her to to a guest blog entry while I’m here about how great I am. It’s really very nice of her - she’s moved into her boyfriends place while he’s away, and dad and I have the run of the house, so to speak.

The most exciting thing I did today was spam-proof the blog. A lot of you don’t see it, I’m sure, but when people find their way here via a search engine - the most popular search is “texas holdem rules” by the way - then that page becomes appealing to spammers, who leave long boring comments about viagra, ciallis, casinos and warehouse sales. This has the biggest annoyance effect on me, because I get emails with each comment, and today I cracked and installed the mt-blacklist plugin. I’m sure you won’t notice any difference, but I will.
Let me just quickly outline some highlights of the last few days or so … we went to Universal Studios in Los Angeles, and the Shrek ride was great. The Spiderman Rocks” show was really, really terrible. Laughably terrible. I was so embarrassed and pissed off just to be sitting there. Anyway …

We also spent a couple of days in Denver, CO, visiting Dad’s friends that he made at the Rotary Convention in Brisbane last year. They really went all out entertaining us … John took days off work to show us around, etc … and when we expressed our disbelief at his hospitality, told an excellent story about his recent visit to Russia. He’s heavily involved in his club’s project to help out a particular town in Russia (I forget which one) and when they arrived at a farmers house for dinner, a magnificent 4-course feast was served to them, each course a large meal in itself. He realized later, of course, that to provide this feast, the family would likely go hungry for the next 2 weeks or something, and he now uses that as the benchmark for entertaining. We were not at all disappointed. We went to Bear Lake in the Rocky Mountains, we had dinner at their country club, we toured the universities their friends were the Deans or President or so on, and were generally treated like VIPs. It was great.

And Salt Lake City … Lisa’s hospitality has also been amazing. She’s been driving us around, moving out of her apartment so that we could have it, even leaving us a fridge/cupboard with snacks and stuff in it. She’s been wonderful. The number of errands I’ve had to run prior to the show starting on Sunday (tomorrow) is amazing, and Lisa’s helped me do it all. Thanks Dude!

We got here Thursday night, and I worked till about 4am on Friday morning, then slept to 9-ish. We mucked about with errands, annoying the UPS driver with our frequent trips in and out, and his frequent deliveries to the aprtment, in and out. Got everything sorted out eventually and had a lovely lunch at Squatters, perhaps the best bar in Utah. (I’ll bet you didn’t even know that was a category). More errands and mucking about that afternoon and dinner at the Red Lobster. I was sooo ready for bed that night.

And today, ran some more errands. Dad got a massage so that he’d have some chance of comfort on the plane home on Tuesday. I’m not home till Friday week. And even then, for 4 days. Open house on Sunday 04/Apr anytime from 11am. Come and say hello, and I’ll feed you (maybe). It’ll be good to see you all again - I’ll have some free time after Wednesday, so hopefully I’ll be able to give a reasonable update then.

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