Yesterday was our three year anniversary. We drove to Park City to have dinner at a little Japanese place called Shabu. The funny thing about Park City is apparently the city basically shuts down in between busy seasons. Meaning if they are not pandering to skiers, Sundance-ers, or the summer crowd most of the fancier places are closed. It was a nice drive anyway, and we ended up at the Hapa Grill just outside the outlet mall there in the Redstone plaza. It was decent, not fantastic, but the company was great.
Anyway in celebration of our three years, I say congrats to us. We have already had some fun adventures together. We have been to Tampa, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, Boise, Denver, Philadelphia. We have another Denver trip coming up next month, San Francisco is on the list, and maybe one day we will make it all the way to Moscow, not Idaho.
So a few months ago I wrote this post about how Lydia and I met. She was supposed to do the same and we would post them together. But I don't want to sit on it any longer, for fear of forgetting I have it. Lydia hasn't written her post yet. As the Marketing Specialist at Whole Foods in Downtown SLC and the chair of the new Sugar House Farmers Market, as well as orchestrating the sponsorship of the Red Butte Concert Series by Whole Foods she hasn't had a lot of time to write her version of the story. Don't worry, it will get here at some point. For now you have only mine to read. So here it is.
Thanks for playing.
In late 2005 I was working at Barnes & Noble in the Sugar House area of Salt Lake City. I was taking a news writing class at the U and my advanced open water scuba class. I had sold my house and was living in a dump of an apartment in the avenues. I was in a bit of a limbo. I didn’t want to go to my new singles ward, because I didn’t plan on staying in that apartment for too long, so I was still attending my old ward. My friend Jeremy had told me to check out his ward, so I did. I liked it enough to want to move into the ward boundaries.
I started attending the ward with the permission of the bishop, because I wasn’t living in the boundaries yet. I had already made some good friends and felt I had a place there, Bishop agreed.
Soon enough I moved officially into the ward and was eventually called to be the ward clerk.
I was working three jobs for a while which severely limited my socializing time. I quit working at Fox 13, because my school work was suffering. So now I was down to two jobs. I was making money at First American Title, and I was supporting my book habit working one night a week at Barnes & Noble; which also meant I wasn’t very up to date on events at the store. Even so, I think this particular event came together on fairly short notice. I came to work one Tuesday night to find former President Jimmy Carter was doing a book signing at our store.
Even though I only worked once a week at B&N I still thought I knew everyone who worked there. On the night of Jimmy Carter’s book signing when there was some sexy young thing I had never met trying to tell me what to do; I was a little put off.
I asked a co-worker if she knew who this new girl was. She did know who she was, but not why she was here at our store. The assumption was that she was here from another store to help out. Apparently a week or so earlier the Presidential Secret Service had been there to run background checks on employees that would be in contact with Jimmy Carter. Since I wasn’t there that day, I didn’t get to have my stats run by the secret service. But since this girl was the Community Relations Manager at the Murray store she got to be involved. I just wish someone would have told me “hey, this is so and so, she will be here helping run the show tonight.”
So, I noticed her, she was attractive, interesting, but I didn’t really think anything else about it. I went home that night and continued my regular schedule.
Until a couple of weeks later I was cornered by this girl in church. She says to me, “You work at Barnes & Noble don’t you?” “Uh, yeah,” I get that all the time. Still do sometimes. My favorite was the day around Christmas time a woman came in, saw me, and asked me if she had just seen me working at the store in Murray.
Anyway this girl, the one who cornered me in church, was named Lydia Martinez.
Lydia was still trying to find her place in the ward too. She had tried out the Spanish branch and ended up coming with her cousin to our ward. And as I was involved in putting together the ward calendar and ward list I got to call Lydia and harass her about having her name and number in the list. It was this conversation which led us to our first date. It wasn’t my intention to ask her out. I even had someone in mind for the extra Jazz ticket, but somehow while I was on the phone with her I asked if she would like to go to the game with me. She reluctantly said yes. We had a good time, Lydia read my palm, we had dinner after the game and I took her home. That was the beginning of a great friendship. We didn’t go out again for another six months. We saw each other and talked at a lot of church functions and built our friendship on that.
When my roommate at the gateway came to me one Monday or Tuesday and said “I’m moving, we need to be out by this weekend.” I was a little in a panic. I managed to find a nice two bedroom townhome in the Sugar House area very quickly and Lydia kindly helped me move. She was the only one who helped me move that time. Thank you, Lydia.
It would be a year or so later that Lydia and I would get married, but that was how it started. I suppose I have to thank Jimmy Carter and his Secret Service guys. Now when anyone asks us how we met, we say it was Jimmy Carter that brought us together.
Sunday took us to Canyonlands and several short hikes, but with a hidden gem in the middle of it all. First we took the short trail South of the visitor center to see Mesa Arch. This is literally about a quarter mile loop, but with a fantastic view. 
Next we hiked out to False Kiva. A little known ruin, that you wont find unless someone shows you where it is. False Kiva is a Class II ruin and has semi protected status. You wont find it on any of the maps, but if you ask a ranger, they will tell you about it. The trail is tricky to find, so take precaution if you go looking for it. 
Later that evening, we headed out to The Grand View Point overlook where rangers provided eclipse glasses for the main event that evening. It just so happened that we were in the right spot at the right time to see a solar eclipse. And what better place to watch it than at a great location like Canyonlands. 
