"TOTEMS"

Before I begin with my real remarks, I just want to make mention of a few things.

First of all Merry Day-AFTER Christmas! I meant to write, but just haven't gotten around to it. Even though my semester is over, I really haven't had that much time. Work has been out of control. I worked a 20 hour day last Thursday-from 7 a.m. Thursday morning, until 3 a.m. Friday morning. Not only that, but I had to be back to work again Friday morning by 9 a.m. No excuses though, I have been a very naughty girl, and good old St. Nick probably should not have visited my house, but since Easton (two year old nephew) slept over, the big man didn't have much choice!

Second of all, remember when I told you that my brother Brady decided he was in love? The impossible has happened. He has finally proposed, and will be getting married in February. It is such an unbelievable occurrence, that it should give some of us women out there a tiny bit of hope. Boys are just lame and sometimes just need a little patience and sometimes a threat to spark their interest and make them realize that they are dumb and should probably just listen to what women have to say to begin with. It would probably save them a lot of time and kissing up (or just kissing us).

So now, the real post. On Friday, Christmas Eve Eve, I drove Jaime to the airport in Salt Lake City. Her flight was not until 9 p.m. that evening, but with the mass of people headed to the very same location because of the apparent holiday which was upon us. Jaime, being the very smart girl that she is, knew she needed a little extra time to make sure she didn't get into a bind with the extra security and random extra screenings and such which was apparent she may have to encounter. We needed to arrive no later than 7 p.m. to account for all of this extra stuff.

Neither one of us wanted to travel in 5:00 rush hour traffic, so we decided to leave Orem at 3 p.m. and just hang out until she had to go to the airport. There was just one problem though. Once we arrived in Salt Lake, we didn't know what to do. Not enough time for a movie, so we thought we would walk around the mall so I might actually get some form of Christmas shopping done. That plan back-fired in a hurry because apparently the malls are undergoing a major remodel and so there are like zero stores. I got very annoyed and irritated and Jaime is not feeling very well. We decide to walk over to Temple Square just to see what was going on. This whole thing only lasted about one hour, and we still haven't any ideas of how to spend the next hour. We figured we would drive around and try and find a place where we could get some ice cream or something.

We drove around downtown for a while, without any luck. We drove more toward the airport to find a place closer that might be a little closer. We found ourselves in the ghetto of West Valley, Utah--which is not the place for two young single girls to even get out of the car--even if a very fabulous ice cream shop such as Coney's or Cold Stone were to pop up. Luckily for us there wasn't one, cause I think I would have found something like my tire jack with which to protect myself if any such place were to exist. We drove up and down Redwood Road with nothing but a few fast food places like Wendy's, Carl's Jr. and McDonald's.

One place, however tempted us on this dark and deserted armpit area of the state of Utah. I have spent most of the night trying to find some kind of picture of this place because I don't feel that describing it will give you what it truly deserves. I will take a picture though when I go pick Jaime up from the airport in about a week so you can laugh along with us. Anyway, the place was called Totem's. It is apparently a hotel, a bar, a nightclub, and a western steakhouse restaurant all in one. It looks like a cheap run down motel that you would find in small hick towns in Southern Utah--you know what I mean Shameonyou21. The only difference is that this place had two wooden, carved totem poles on either side of this ghetto, wooden sign that in giant letters with bright lights shining on it read, "TOTEM'S."

First of all this struck the two of us as being very funny. I don't know if that was because of where we were, the enormous amount of caffeine that was in at least my system, or what. As tempted as we were to go check it out, I think this place really just scared the living daylights out of us. So much so, that Jaime suggested we just drive through Carl's Jr. cause it was in more of a lighted area of business. She also hinted that she didn't mind going to the airport a little earlier than originally planned. She said it was because of how close we were, but I think Jaime just really wanted to be around all of that extra security at the airport cause she was wanting to get the heck away from there. On top of it all, I then, had to drive all the way home by myself with nothing but my thoughts of being killed in a drive by, and weird Country Christmas songs playing on the radio about seducing Santa Claus, which then terrified me to the very core of my being. Let's just say I am glad that traffic was light, and that no cops noticed me going 80 the whole way home.