In-N-Out and Christmas Music

In-N-Out, Orem, UT

Hi, folks! I MUST report on  my visit to the opening night of In-N-Out Burger in Orem, Utah. Lines! That’s what I was dreading most but when I got there, last night around 6:30, it looked long but I moved through pretty quickly. I met up with some friends who had been in line and when I found out that Rachel wasn’t going to be able to make it in time for us to eat together, I had to get out of line and head to the end. That second move through the queue took about 25 minutes! Rachel arrived just in time for us to order and our friends were just getting finished so we sat at their table. I ordered a Double-Double with no onion or tomato. Rachel a hamburger with onion and no tomato. Wyatt a plain burger with just spread. We had two drinks and two orders of fries. Everything was great! “That is a TASTY cheeseburger!” Though not exactly a Big Kahuna, this is in the upper echelon of the burger kingdom! Both the Orem and the Draper locations opened yesterday and by 7pm, the guy at the door said they both had combined sales of over 8,000 burgers! The West Jordan location should open in a couple weeks and then the American Fork store should open just before Christmas. Yes, there is a lot of hype about what seems to be a silly burger joint, but let me just tell you: you gotta go there and give it a try, it’ll be well worth it!

With Christmas nearing and Thanksgiving at our door and local radio stations switching to all-Christmas Music, we start feeling that tingle! Sure, you can get all caught up in the Wal-Martization of the Season and feel like you’re in a tornado of commercialized greed and stress. Or, you can embrace the Season and all of the feelings and memories that are associated. To that end, KXRT wishes to enhance these feelings and memories by providing a soundtrack for all the gatherings, cleaning, preparations, cooking, parties and even those times you just need to hole-up in your room to escape it all. Currently, we interrupt our music to identify the station or promote our website or voicemail about 4 times an hour. Compared to some FM radio stations who seem to pop in after each song, 4 times is already very light. Starting midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, we will launch our 100% Christmas Music programming. We will cut the 4 interruptions in half, down to 2 per hour! We will discontinue our Sunday show, An Inspired Selection, for the duration of this special. 100% Christmas Music will continue through New Year’s Eve and on January 1st, we will resume our 100% Hits programming for 2010!

To further brighten our presentation, I’m asking you, our listeners, to call up our KXRT Listener Voicemail at 801-788-4916 and leave the world a Holiday Wishes message. When you call, leave your name or your family name and wish everyone or a certain someone a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year or any wish you might have. I will edit them and play them throughout the season! Here’s a simple example of a message: “Hi, from the Marini Family! We’re wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!”.

Let me be honest here… I know to some Christmas Music is old and tired and to some, it’s background music – like wallpaper. But to a lot of us, it’s more than that and really enhances the feelings and memories that we have for the Season. By converting our station like this each year, we sincerely hope that if you are in either of the two latter groups, that you will find some value in setting your computers, laptops or mobile devices to KXRT all Season. We look forward to serving you and your friends and family this Christmas Season! If you have requests, ideas, suggestions, feel free to leave a message on our Listener Voicemail: 801-788-4916 or an email at kxrt-studio@marinifamily.org.

All of the information about KXRT is at http://kxrt.wordpress.com/. If you need help listening, go to our site and click How To Listen at the top!

Merry Christmas!

-Timmy

Holiday Season 2009… Heeeere weeee go!

It’s nuts! I know I recently posted something like this before Halloween but I’m telling you, time does not give us a break! Finally, it’s snowed a bit here in Utah which has helped usher in the feeling of the Holiday Season. I love the snow, but in my older age, it’s become more of an aesthetically pleasing element. In other words, I like snow… to look at. Now that it involves back-breaking shoveling and finger-freezing, sadly, I’m not such a huge fan. Don’t get me wrong, it won’t take a lot of begging to get me on a sled at the crest of a huge slope of smooth, slick white. I do enjoy the off snowball fight as well. But it could take more urging these days.

Here we are at the cusp of a family birthday, Turkey Day, two more family birthdays, Christmas, yet another family birthday and finally New Year’s. Talk about breaking the bank. Not just our local credit union branch, I’m talking about energy, time, and patience as well. This is probably not the busiest among you all, I’m sure there are more families who are much busier.. my heart goes out to you! Thankfully, my dear Mother will be coming into town the week of Thanksgiving and I’m sure she will be a big help with some of those “banks” I mentioned above. Since Rachel and I have joined Weight Watchers, my request for my Mom’s famous fried chicken may have to be canceled. That is one of my favorite meals from my childhood. No, I haven’t brought this up with her yet, I’m waiting to see how to best approach this…

Ruth, my sister in-law, has her birthday just before Thanksgiving. Wyatt and Rachel have birthdays within days of each other. I’m grateful my birthday happens a few months away from any traditionally gift-oriented holidays. Then there are no worries about what I want for my birthday vs. Christmas or whether I would feel guilty getting presents and such just days before getting presents and such again! Of course, that guilt would have only arrived here in my latter years. I’m sure for Wyatt and children like him, it’s pure heaven! Just this past week, he’s gone through Toys ‘r Us and Wal-Mart ads circling what he wants. We told him to code each circle with a B for birthday and a C for Christmas. We looked afterwords and found that even he struggled with this as most circles had two letter codes!

Christmas is a big event at our house as we generally have Rachel’s sisters over, her Grandma, and some friends to round out the guest list. This year looks to be the same plus we have Rachel’s sister Mary and her husband, Mark from LA joining us. Mary works for fast food legend In-N-Out Burger and will be in town to be a trainer for the new locations opening up here locally. We are very excited to have them joining us. Folks usually come over Christmas Eve, we party a bit, play games, head to bed and wake up Christmas Morning to watch Wyatt have his big moment! Sure, we get presents too but Wyatt, as usual, is the major spectacle.

Deborah, Rachel’s sister who lives in Texas will also have a birthday. Since she’s been in TX, these haven’t really been big events but still worth a mention cuz we love her!

New Year’s is a pretty fun time. We snack ourselves to death, drink some bubbly (sparkling cider), kiss and go to sleep. Then we get the next day to just chill (usually clean house!).

That’s kind of what we got going for us this coming month or two. I’m catching my breath now and all I did was type! Once we get through all this, there is a bit of a break in the action for a month or so and then in mid-February, we hop in the car and drive up to Washington to welcome home my youngest brother, Chas, from his full-time two-year service as a missionary for the LDS Church in Cleveland! I’m really excited for this trip as it’s been since my Father’s funeral in November of 2006 since I’ve been up there. I sorely miss home. I hope to have some job interviews lined up while I’m there. Then we can begin our transition back to the lovely green of the Pacific Northwest!

One more note, on the stroke of midnight, after you finish your Thanksgiving meals, KXRT goes all Christmas! This will continue through Christmas to New Year’s Day. All the info is at http://kxrt.wordpress.com.

-Timmy

Timmy LIVE! – 11/14 8pm (MST)

Yessiree! The next Timmy LIVE! show will air on KXRT this coming Saturday evening at 8pm Mountain. I’m working on preparations now and am excited to announce that our Featured Artist will be the late, great Elvis Presley! I will have lots of facts and information to share as well as some of his biggest hit songs. This will also be the beginning of his best songs being played in regular rotation on KXRT!

Here’s a general outline of the next Timmy LIVE! show on KXRT:

• 8:00pm – 8:30pm: Timmy LIVE! Top 5 Countdown
• 8:30pm – 10:00pm: Your Calls, Featured Artist Info and Songs, Your Calls, Hot Music & Your Calls
• 9:00pm – 9:05pm: Timmy’s Hot Deals Check (Woot!, 1Sale, SlickDeals)

Here’s the information you need to take part:

• High Quality Audio Stream: http://216.83.140.146:8850/listen.pls
• Low Bandwidth/Mobile Stream: http://216.83.140.146:8550/listen.pls
• USTREAM.tv Video Stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/timmy-live-on-kxrt
• Studio Phone Lines: 1-801-788-4916

See you all this coming Saturday night at 8pm!!

-Timmy

Quick Survey – Favorite Day

Use the Comments section for your added input or reasoning!

-Timmy

KXRT – BHB 2009

If you listen to KXRT, our little internet radio operation, you’re in for a big treat! No tricks! Coming October 31st to KXRT it’s the Big Halloween Broadcast 2009!

All day we will be playing great Halloween music, ghost stories and more. At 6pm, we will be playing 100% Spooky Sound Effects to set the mood for the evening. Then at 7pm, we go 100% Live! We’ll have our USTREAM.tv video feed up and running and will start taking your calls. We would like to hear your Halloween stories and your scary ghost stories. We’ll also talk about your best or worst costumes you’ve worn or have seen. You can also wish your friends and family a Happy Halloween, live on the air! Finally, at 8pm, we will play the entire original 1938 Mercury Theatre production of The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles!

Here’s some basics you’ll need to best enjoy BHB 2009:

New Halloween Theme!

Just a quick note to announce our new Halloween theme! ‘Tis that time of year where things get fun! Look for more themes as the rest of 2009 proceeds!

-Timmy