The Maui Stamper

Crystal and I left Maui on Monday night headed for Salt Lake.  It’s a long trip no matter how you look at it, but we are excited to be here and we’ve had a great first day.  (Convention officially begins tomorrow – today is the “travel recovery” day.)  Downtown Salt Lake is swarming with Stampin’ Up demonstrators, and I’m sure the regular shopkeepers are used to it but the newbies must be wondering what the heck is going on.  We’ve done our part to enrich the local economy – it’s the least we can do!

While we waited to board the plane on Maui we worked on some swaps.  Crystal did most of the work, I just pretended to help.  If you see us around convention, check and see if we have any left – they feature the exclusive Macadamia Nut Hershey Kisses!

Our upline, Janet Wakeland, sponsored a guided tour of the Great Salt Lake for about 30 demonstrators this afternoon.  We learned a  lot about the lake – including the fact that the entire Salt Lake area was once under 850 – 1000 feet of salt water!  There was a chance to float in the lake, and many did so, but to be honest the combination of the brine shrimp (aka Sea Monkeys) and the briny water “dampened” our spirits for a float.  Instead we wandered over to the dock where one of our tour guides was catching brine shrimp and pointing out the spiders that eat the flies that come to feed on the brine shrimp stinkiness.  There were a LOT of spiders.  I am a firm believer in spiders as long as they stay outside where they belong.  These spiders were outside.  So was I.  It was a very delicate balance and I was extremely grateful that the spiders stayed on their side of the weeds.  Because there were a LOT of them (did I already say that?)

These are NOT spiders, they are the RemARKables!

This is how we ended the day.  Crystal put the finishing touches on the Hershey Macnut Swaps and I called room service.  Because this is a very very strange town.  I had hoped to order a glass of wine with our late lunch, but the restaurant did not serve.  When we finished our shopping we headed to a well known grocery store, but grocery stores only sell beer.  The sympathetic clerk directed me to a liquor store just a few blocks away (it was 6 blocks – and Salt Lake City blocks are 1/4 mile).  The liquor store was closed.  I got back to the hotel just in time for our first organized swap and then headed upstairs to Maui Stamper Central (aka our hotel room) and called room service.  This is what my bed looked like:

I’m not going to tell you how much we paid for this but it was worth it.  And all that hauling around downtown brought my daily Active Link Activity Points Plus earned for the day to a grand total of 9.

I win.

Convention begins tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll do my best to share all that I can with you.  Wish you were here!