Categories
Serious Stuff

To live (and leave) in Utah

1 min read

19 months after it began, our adventure in Utah ended much like it began, except in reverse.

We packed out the house we were living in, boxed up the pets in their respective carriers, loaded the kids into one car while another vehicle was towed behind the moving truck, waved goodbye to our neighbors, and off we went, capping off a year and a half of reaching for fresh starts
and frequently ending up with crushing turns of fortune.  As we drove south toward Albuquerque, retracing the steps that had brought us to Utah in the first place, I found myself wondering… had I failed as a father, as the head of the household (as opposed to the shoulders or the central nervous system), or was I succeeding in putting my foot down and making the call to get us out of this insanely expensive state so we could return to somewhere closer to where we had come from in the first place?

I’m still not sure I have the answer to that question.… Read more

Categories
Gaming

Review: The Atomic Arcade

2 min read

I looked up lots of things about the Salt Lake City area months before moving there: schools, housing prices, utility prices, jobs, restaurants, retro arcades.

Retro arcades? Well, yes. I’d think you would have to be completely new to the blog to know that Fayetteville, Arkansas’ own Arkadia Retrocade was quite rightly regarded by the entire family as “the happiest place on Earth”. Before or after the divorce, if we needed a stiff shot of undistilled happy, we headed up I-49 to Fayetteville to visit Arkadia’s vast collection of working vintage arcade video games, where you pay five bucks at the door and get a great big dose of happy.

Both of my boys have been weaned on the classics of the ’80s – Little C is a Q*Bert and Ms. Pac-Man fan, while E is a fan of more elaborate console quests like Super Mario and Legend Of Zelda. Finding a good family-friendly retro arcade along the lines of Arkadia on our new turf is seriously a top priority. I’ve heard a lot about Flynn’s Retrocade in Roy, Utah, but that’s further away from our current home base than Fayetteville was from Alma – it’s at least an hour’s drive north, closer to Ogden than to Salt Lake City. Much closer than that is The Atomic Arcade in Holladay, just slightly east from Salt Lake City. Online reviews were a muddled mix of positive and negative. My overall impression from a brief visit with my kids tended very much toward the negative. … Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

Heroes and Trek and Icons and Trek

1 min read

Greetings from Utah! I know it’s been a while since any blogging took place here, but things have been…busy. And crazy. The last blog entry here was in May. That was before the move to Utah…and sadly, it’s still before I’ve found even so much as a semi-permanent address in Utah. Me and the kids and the critters are now in week three in a hotel room – a very expensive proposition to be sure, and one that’s undoubtedly more expensive than finding a place. Other factors, however, have fought against landing even so much as a tiny apartment, so here we remain for at least another day or two. (I hope that’s all it is.) The room contains two queen size beds, a bathroom, and a television. It also now contains two bored kids and five cooped-up cats and one confused lazy dog. This is a recipe for a pressure-cooker environment in which everyone gets sick of everyone else rapidly. One of the few saving graces: we’ve discovered southern Utah TV station KCSG, a flagship station for the Heroes & Icons Network. … Read more