thanks, I understand the blocking problem with STP, but from reading about GLBP, it sounds like I can have my redundancy and load balancing without using VARIANCE and EIGRP. true? I would still need EIGRP, but GLBP would present only a single router to the layer 3 access switch. Am I missing something about how GLBP operates?

As Edison correctly notes, if both your access and distribution devices are routing, then GLBP offers no benefit. However, GLBP can assist with L2 load balancing, so for instance if your access was L2 and distribution L3, you could use GLBP to have traffic use both uplinks, for traffic flowing to the gateway, for the same subnet.

NB: Using GLBP might cause asymmetric path issues.

PS:

BTW: You might not need to use EIGRP's variance command if the paths have equal cost.