DAVID ARCHULETA!!!

That's right friends, in person. When we lived in Murray, before the American Idol Season, this kid showed up at our Christmas party to sing a few songs. You hear good voices, but with his we couldn't imagine him not having something on a grander scale than just our local gathering.

Sure enough, we saw David Archuleta on youtube for his starsearch performance, and then shortly thereafter on American Idol.

Well, the guy(he's 19 now I guess) wrote a book! And my wife and I couldn't help ourselves. We went to the signing at the new Deseret Book flagship store in downtown Salt Lake City on South Temple.

From the next block we could hear this screaming echo out over the city, and we almost lost heart and turned back, but we pressed on... (please note that we went to the REAL Salt Lake Soccer game a while back because he was singing there also. And please further note that I could not hear anything but the screams of excited girls on all sides of us at that game. So I'm serious about almost turning back. In fact, here's a picture from the concert at the REAL Salt Lake game...
This was not a posed shot. That's what I looked like the entire time. And no, we didn't bring the little nubbins with us for that. Would've blasted her little eardrums out.)

As for Deseret Book, to a lesser degree we saw the same kind of excitement from hundreds of predominantly female young fans.



The line inside...



The man himself...



And lest we forget that this is a restroom blog, I give you...



The commode.

Notice anything in particular? How about this... Look at the size of the crowd waiting inside the store in line. Then look at the restroom again. One stall, two urinals. Now being male at a venue dominated by young females gave me a clear respite as far as the restroom is concerned. I was the only one in there.

It was a nice restroom, with the automatic features you'd expect, and being a brand new store, everything seemed mostly clean. That capacity kind of scared me, but didn't end up as any kind of a problem.

A solid Good rating for this visit, with noted surprise that capacity didn't end up being a problem. I'm curious how the distant restroom for the opposite gender fared during the signing.

Anybody else seen David Archuleta in person?

A Toilet Lift!

With this large a pause inbetween postings, you'd hope it would indicate a normalization in my own lifestyle... but this is not the case. I just accidentally lost about two weeks worth of restrooms to rate(one of them the Sugarhouse Park restroom from the walk, which was a real winner). But I'm back with one that made it through.

My wife and I tried Marie Callenders a little while back, on Main Street in Bountiful, just north of 500 South. It was fairly good food, although their pies were not in form that day, unfortunately (since the pies are, after all, what they're known for).



The aesthetics seem good as long as you don't look too closely. And I shouldn't really try and go too in depth, but the paint was old and faded and cracked in places, and the environment was worn down. Basically a place that could have used a remodel several years earlier.

But as I said before, it isn't so much that you'd notice right away. I had to go and see the extreme condition of the restroom before I was shocked into seeing the remainder of the details.

It was gross, old, and made me uncomfortable enough that I decided to wait until we got home (we didn't live more than a short drive away). And I don't usually like to include pictures of the actual toilet (don't ask me why), but here I decided it needed to be done.



The toilet has a lift! Wierd! I've never seen anything like this before, and it was wierd. And it was dirty, with grotty tile and dirty edges, and overall ickiness.

The rating was gross, although now we do know that if you want the kind of features that you thought only existed for vehicles, think again! Even your toilet seat can get a lift! And if you make it chrome... well, let the mere thought suffice.

I'm assuming it is to accomodate a more seasoned clientele. Am I the only one who hasn't seen this before?

(I'll be back soon with another post.