The Perfect Insult, by Sir Duke.

Sir Duke, I hopoe you don't mind me putting this on here, it was just too funny to keep to myself.

Well last night (to cap off an already strange evening) we were hit by a heavy storm. I tried watching it for awhile but the wind kept soaking me. After it was over I wandered out of the house to see how badly the area was flooded, it was quite impressive (though the water drops quickly).

While I was checking out the water a neighborhood group of kids came walking by, (I won't get into parents letting their kids outside when the whole area is under flash flood warnings). This general group of guys seemed to be aged 8-12 years of age. We have some new children in the area, a girl who's about five years old trailed by her brother whom looks about a year younger.

As the older boys came up I noticed the younger children leaving their house and running over. The little girl was wearing a polka dotted outfit. Of course the oldest boy in the crowd yells to her, 'You look like a clown'. You could see this made the little girl angry. She marched up to the group and stepped in front of the boy and said 'I do not look like a clown'. After a little more thought she said, 'all girls dress this way'. Then with an angry scowl on her face she said...

'EXCEPT YOUR MOTHER'...

I'm sure the poor boy will end up in therapy, to go up against a 5 year old and lose that bad.. It didn't help that everyone within hearing distance burst out laughing. I'm going to keep an eye on that little girl, I have a feeling she'll be fun to watch.

Thanks.

If you need to call me, Danny has the number you can reach me at.

See post below for explanation.

That 70's Day

Let's see, it's been and interesting and fun couple of days for me, relearned to live in the days before internet and cell phones. For a day at least.

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The last couple of days my internet has been sporadically going on and off. I got the new modem and it worked for a day or so and then went kaput again. So I called Comcast, again, and scheduled an appointment for today for them to come out and look at it, sometime between 8am and noon. At 10 the internet comes back on, and I'm thinking "Great! Now the cable guy is going to get here and it's going to be working fine." He gets here about 45 minutes later and the cable is still working, so he starts checking it. He checks it out back, let's out a whistle and tells me that the decibels (or something like that) are supposed to run between -5 and +5, and will tend to cut out completely at -15. I was running at -14.4. He also told me that the ratio of errors-to-bits should be 1 in a billion, I was running at 1 in a thousand. He opened up the little box on the back of the house, removed some capacitor looking thing, hooked up his gizmo again, and let out another whistle. Bad capacitor thing, bad, bad capacitor thing. The cable is running at about +9 without it. Now that that is all replaced I'm still running above the +5 mark at the modem, which is very good. Now I've got one foot back in the new millineum.
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Yesterday I was at school starting to set up my classroom. Got there just in time to go out to lunch with the whole gang and then came back to work on my new room. It's summer, nobody is supposed to be in the building, so when I ran upstairs to get some stuff from my techie room, I left the door open. With my personal and my school cell phone sitting on my desk. I was supposed to meet Adele at 3:45 to go see the Simpson's Movie (two thumbs up) and at 3:30 I start packing up to leave. Um, where's the cell phones? Nowhere. In a panic I heaqd down to the office, borrow Tessa's cell phone and start calling mine. Some kid, my guess was 9 or so, answers, mumbles some stuff and hangs up. Great. Call the other phone. Same thing. Double Great. By now it's almost 4:00 and I don't even know Adele's number to call her and tell her what's going on. First things first, I call Qwest to cancel my phone, they were incredibly helpful, they even called South Salt Lake Police to make the report, and let me know how to claim my phone with their insurance and get a new one. Then I have to call Verizon to let get my school number shut down. Now it's almost 4:30 and I just know Adele is all pissed off at me for standing her up. So I look up her parent's number in the phone book, call her mom, get her cell number and then call her. She's not mad at all, she figured something like this had happpend when she called my number and got a 9 year old, who just mumbled something and hung up. First time she called she thought I might have been at Danny's house and either Josh or Dylan had been messing with the phone, but after the third time she figured I would have gotten it from them by then. Well, the phone company is sending me a new phone, it'll get here within 3 days. Until then I'm using one of the counselors cell phones.

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So, I got a reminder of what it was like before the days of cell phones and the internet. Nobody (except Danny, because his cell was the one number I could remember) could call me, I didn't have to come home and check my e-mails, and blogging was completely out of the question. Hmmmm, actually it wasn't that bad of a day........

Happy Birthday Madison

I know I'm a few days late, and I'm sorry. But I know you're all getting together tonight for a party, so I hope you have a great one. Unfortunately I'm at work, so I'm gonna miss it. Love ya.

When good modems go bad.....

Well, if you have been wondering about why the site (not L'Adunata, but the mother site srossi.net) has been on and off for the last 3 days, it's because of a bad modem. I called them up and told them the internet wasn't working, they did some troubleshooting (unplug, replug, turn computer off, restart computer and a bunch of stuff on their end) and finally decided it was one of two things : the modem or the cables. Since I replaced the modem just a year or so ago, they decided it had to be the cables, so they scheduled a maintenance person to come out sometime between 8am and noon today. Except that on Friday morning the internet was working fine, so I called them back and cancelled the appointment. I figured if it was something wrong with the cables, it wouldn't be so on-again, off-again like it had been for the last 3 days, and so it must be the modem. I also figured that if it were the modem, it might have to do with being down in the damp basement. So this morning when I woke up and found the internet down again, I went to Comcast, got a new modem, went to Comp USA and got the stuff to move the modem upstairs (and 2GB of RAM for this computer), came home, set it all up and voila - it's working. Hopefully for more than a couple of days. Well, running your own web page server in the basement may not be the most reliable, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for the space I use....have a great weekend

It's still there......

Went up to the property yesterday, it's still there! Overall, it was an incredibly relaxing day. It was warm enough that I walked around without my shorts on. Danny asked me why I bothered keeping my lower half covered, considering I was up there all alone. Well, considering the sun burn I got on my upper half, I'm kinda glad for the psychological block society gave me. Anyway, I went on a couple nice walks and completely planned out Chapter 1 for the Psychology class I'm teaching this fall. I know what I'm going to stress, the projects they're going to have to do and how I'm going to grade them. It's amazing how much work I can get done when there is no TV, internet and other things to distract me. Only 20 more days and I'll have the whole book covered. On the way home I decided to take the Wolf Creek Pass route home. Which, by the way, is a lot longer than just taking SR40 back. But it was something different, and quite scenic. I left the land around 3:30 and got home real close to 7:00, but I did make quite a few stops for pictures. Then I got home, cleaned up and went down to Free Wheeler to bug Danny for a couple deliveries. Headed home and, despite being in the convertible (with a top that doesn't go up) and it raining lightly, stopped in at Albertsons to pick up some aloe vera gel for my sunburn. Made it home before the storm really hit, and fell asleep on the back porch listening to the storm. I was pretty surprised how relaxing the thunder and lightning was for me. Anyway, that was my day, and the main thing is that the fires have avoided our little area. Oh, and if you want to see the pictures I took, click HERE.

Reunion 2007

Well, as I mentioned before, thanks to the internet and some serious boredom, Sir Duke got in touch with us again and we've been going over old times ever since. Well, he's coming into town and has given us the OK to let everyone involved in the Motel West know. He comes into town on August 16th and would like to get together with everyone sometime that weekend. If you are of the old Motel West crowd and are interested in getting together with us feel free to e-mail me.

Should always have a camera on the seat next to me.

Adele and I were going to get together for a Voyager-a-thon today, and since I had brought my computer projector back to school I decided to go down there and get it. I'm at the intersection at 7th East right off the freeway waiting for the light to turn when I notice the power poles across the street swaying. Since there was a storm coming in (supposedly) I thought that it had some mighty winds. Until I noticed the R&B Engineering truck trying to get out of the construction area under the bridge had backed up into the guy wire to one of the poles. Engineers, maybe, Rocket Scientists they're not. That was the first time today I wished I'd had my camera on the passenger seat.

When I got to the school and nobody was there, I realized that even though the custodians work all summer, they do get the 24th off. Bummer, so much for Voyagerizing. What I do see is some guy digging in the lawn out in front of the school. He had a metal detector with him and was sweeping the lawn, digging wherever he ran into something. As you can see I did get some pictures, but only because I was parked and could get in the back of the car. Figuring that the custodians wouldn't like coming back to their lawn all dug up, I called the Granite Police and told them what was going on and that I didn't know if they wanted to do anything about it or not, but just wanted them to know. I think they agreed with me that it wasn't a great idea having people dig at the lawns 'cause, well, they said "We don't want that going on". Part of me wanted to hang out there to watch when they showed up, but Adele was waiting for me (we went to Ogden instead), so I left.

Later this evening I was on my way to Dan & Rae's house to play cards and as I'm driving down 15th East I notice this big soap bubble floating down the middle of the street. It was at least a foot across and lasted long enough for the big truck in front of me to slow down and drive around it. At least a full minute from the first time I saw it until it burst about 3 feet from the front of my car. I gotta keep my camera on the front seat of my car, that would have made an awesome picture.

Thelma & Louise go hubcap hunting.

I'd thought I'd lost the hubcap forever in the 'splosion of ought-7, but Adele saw it on the side of the road on her way to work the next day. She called me to tell me that she thought we could get it, if we went sometime after midnight when the traffic was less likely to kill us. So or course I agree to this and we planned to go last night after she kept her plans with her mother. She was supposed to call me around 11, so I decided to take a nap so I wouldn't be totally exausted for work at 7 this morning. About 8:30, Shannon (my roommate) knocks on my door and says that Adele is here and she has a surprise. I get dressed and come out and lo & behold she and her mother have my hubcap. Seems that she had told her mother about our plans for the late evening, and her mother got excited and decided they ought to go get it themselves. Something about being in the mood for an adventure. So there I am, half awake, and Adele, her mom and a severly beaten hubcap are in my kitchen. I laughed so hard. I laughed even harder when I heard the whole story about it being her mom's idea, her mom driving out there and pulling over to where she can get it, Adele getting out of the car, running down the freeway to pick it up, running back to the car and mom peeling out back onto the freeway. Kinda like that scene in Thelma & Louise when they blow up the gas truck, without the explosion. Cool.

'Splodin tires and replacements.

This afternoon I headed over to Danny's house to see what I could do with the LTD. He had all the tools I needed set out in the garage, including the compressor. Took me about an hour to get the two stuck bolts off, put on the spare and even reinflate it. Bring it down to Discount Tire and get 3 new tires put on (I replaced the front ones a couple months ago, but I did get a new spare) the car. Took about an hour and $300, but the car rides much better now. And I can trust it on the freeway again, 'though I didn't drive it home on the freeway because it was 5:00. Never would have made it up to speed anyway. Well, if you want to see the pictures of the exploded tire and the pictures I took while waiting for the tires, click HERE.

The answer to all my problems

After last night, imagine how excited I was when I got this e-mail this morning. I just know this attachment "check.pdf" will be some description of a windfall for me and how to get a check for several thousand, if not hundreds of thousands, dollars. Maybe I'll open it and see exactly how much I'm getting. Sure gonna help with the repairs of the LTD. Yeah, I have no idea who Barron T Mildred of zdajb@uchile.cl is, but if it were somebody sending it as a scam or a way to infect my computer they would have included some bogus story rather than leaving it blank, right? So, it must be safe. And honest. Well, I'm gonna go open it up and see how lucky I got this morning.

Or maybe I'll just delete it. One blowout a week is more than enough....

Blowout on I-80.

The other day I call Adele (also known as Pam, the Spanish teacher I met my first year teaching) to tell her that the LTD is not only legal and insured, but that I had just had a bunch of work done on the front end and I had deemed it road-trip worthy. So we decide to take it for a drive up to Ogden and get dinner at a little place across from where she works. Today we stop at the Tesoro on 33rd and 23rd, grab a couple of drinks for the road (just soda) and head out. Everything's going great, it's not too hot anymore (this is around 7 pm), the car is running great and Adele is having fun with the camera. We head up 23rd, enter the freeway heading west and cruise past 7th east. I'm in the middle lane as we get to the State Street exit, so we can veer left and merge into I-15 north. Ever wonder why it's referred to as a "tire blowout"? 'Cause when it blows out, it's an explosion. I thought the whole back end of the car had been blown off. Happened right as we got onto the bridge over State. After I said it, I did it, and then took my foot off the gas, (without slamming on the brakes) and started moving over to the right side. Completely, utterly on cruise control, running on instinct because I don't remember thinking anything until we got stopped in the break-down lane. But we made it safely. I got out on the passenger side, found out that the tire that blew was also on that side, meaning I'd at least have the car between me and traffic when changing the tire. Except that when I got the spare out, although in excellent condition, it was flat. So I called Rae, who came to our rescue and brought us, and the tire, to the Chevron to fill up the spare. Stroke of good luck : the tire held the air, it's flatness was due to sitting for so long, not a leak. We get back to the car and I start to take off the lug nuts, which are on there pretty tight. Real, real tight. I have to stand on the lug wrench to loosen the lug nuts, and 2 of them still refused to loosen, just started rounding the nuts. This is where I decide "F" this, I'm not fighting these lug nuts on the side of the freeway, with the sun already setting, cars whizzing past us at 70+ and honking their horns like we've chosen to be there. (Yes, like I was happy to be there). Called a tow truck and had it towed up to Dan & Rae's house (anyone that knows my driveway knows why I had it towed there). So, now it's sitting down at their house, I have to figure out a way to get the tire off (shouldn't be too bad there), then take it somewhere to get new tires put on the back (don't trust the other one now) and figure out what I'm going to do about the damage to the car - click HERE to see the pictures. And thanks to Dan, Rae and Adele, who all made what could have been a disastrous experience not so bad. It's great having a family and friends that I know I can count on, love ya all.

Gateway and "Earth Spins off it's Axis"

Dan, Rae, the kids and I took Traxxxxx (how many x's are there supposed to be?) down to the Gateway to let the kids play in the fountain. At first Josh and Dylan didn't much care for it - ended up the kids watching the adults play in the fountain. Dylan finally did warm up to it - to the point of getting upset when we decided it was time to go get dinner. If you want to check out the pictures, click HERE.

"Hatch sides with committee Democrats in subpoena of White House, Cheney's office" or "Earth Spins off it's Axis, Devil Starts buying Long Underwear and Smoking proven to cure Lung Cancer"

I noticed an article in the Trib from a couple weeks back when I was cleaning up the newspapers for recycling. Couple of excerpts from the article:

The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush's controversial eavesdropping program that operated warrant-free for five years.

In fact, the Judiciary Committee's three most senior Republicans - Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, former chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa - sided with Democrats on the 13-3 vote last week to give Leahy the power to issue the subpoenas.

We're talking Orrin Hatch, the guy that whose nose was so far up Ronald Regan's rear that he found the guy's pollups. Regan could do no wrong. George Bush the First could do no wrong. And up until now G.W. seemed unable to do wrong. Man, if a Republican president can fall from Orrin Hatch's grace, he must be wallowing in one big mess.......

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

The Good:

Bizarre night at the Chevron today. It started out with unusual good. One customer returned to the store just to let us know that the wind had blown our milk crates all over the driveway on the side of the building. Even more surprising was Coppenhagen Guy. I know I've mentioned him before, but he was a really arrogant customer that kept coming in even after accusing us of lying about our backstock of Coppenhagen. He used to walk in and demand, as he walked past the counter to the drink fountain, "Give me 3 rolls of Coppenhagen pouches". Didn't matter if we were helping someone already or not. Well, today he comes in, waits in line and when his turn comes up asks, politely, "Could I get 3 rolls of Coppenhagen pouches, please." I almost plotzed. We didn't have any rolls left, so he asked about our singles. Didn't complain about their date or that we only had 4 rolls. Just said he'd take them all and then thanked me once the sale was done. I was amazed.

The Bad:

The fates that were smiling on us in the beginning of the evening quit smiling halfway through the night. There's nothing more depressing than having someone prove that there was a basis for a stereotype. Taxi Drivers. In general when they come in to the Chevron they're gruff, demanding and not very friendly. This one comes in today (City Cab #21, for the record), comes up to the counter with a soda and mumbles something. I ask him what he wanted and he mumbles again. So I lean closer to hear him better and he gets all pissy. Loudly says "Grizzly Mint" and then gets on my case about not being able to hear him because I'm so close. I tried to explain that I was close because he was being so quiet, but he just keeps going on about me not being able to hear him. I stop talking, figure if I say something it's going to be something I wouldn't want to print here, and he's a jerk so it won't help anyways, so what the hell. Take his money, give him his change, bag his crap up and hand it to him. Then he says something about how I need to go get earplugs (how the hell are earplugs supposed to make me hear better?). I look him straight in the face and say "bye" turn to the next customer, put on a big friendly smile and ask "how are you doing tonight?"

The Ugly:

Nothing specific, but there's no way we went a whole night without someone ugly coming in.

It's Official

I got my "Official Letter of Acceptance" from the University of Utah today. I am now officially a U of U student, specifically in the Masters of Education program, starting this fall. And the even better news is that Gibb was also admitted, so we're going to be going through the program together. It's been a long time since I was a student, I"m looking forward to all night study sessions, midterms & finals and the best thing of all - student loans! Yeah. The program is designed for teachers who will still be teaching, I'll have two classes a week in the evenings, and it's project based, so I won't have a whole lot of tests. I'm still hoping on getting the scholarship I applied for, so even the money part might not be an issue. But no matter what, I'm planning on having some fun with it, and it'll help me with my STS position with the district.

Milford Flat Fire : in perspective.

Danny writes :

For those of you who have been wondering what the 340,000 acres in central Utah that has burned from the fire known as the Milford Flat Fire would look like, the red rectangle represents what 340,000 acres covers on the wasatch front. Please feel free to pass this around. Danny

All I can say is : Holy Crap. You don't quite get the feeling for how big it really is when it's way down there, out in the middle of nowhere. Gibb's cousin was driving down there when it was jumping I-15. They, wisely, decided to flip a "U" turn and head back to the nearest town. When they got there, they had to find a tire store - it had gotten so hot it melted the tread on their tires. (The picture to the left is not their truck, but another one that got caught in the cross fire.)

Click on the picture if you want to see it full size.

Is lookink for Moose and Squirrel......

Alex, Marijke and Maddy are off to Mother Russia tomorrow morning, bright and early. Here's wishing them a safe and successful trip, may God be with them, and hopefully He'll forgive me for the picture here. (Alex and Marijke too). See ya when you get back.

07/07/07 : Lucky day for taking pictures. Maybe.

Saturday, on the infamous 07/07/07, I left the house around 3 to go up behind the capitol and take some pictures before they build all the houses on that spot and it's unaccessable. Well, I got the pictures, stopped here and there to get some other pictures on the way down, ended up at Liberty Park, way out in Delle, Utah and finally out on Standbury Island for the sunset. Even went through Grantsville on the way home for dinner. Took a ton of pictures, click HERE to see some of the better ones. I decided I really love the new Nikon I bought, and really love to take pictures. Something about capturing a moment in time that will never be here again. Ot it could just be the really cool clicking sound the camera makes.

Rossi Family Picnic

Family picnic went off well, food was great, family was great. Well, except for poor Landon who wasn't feeling very well. If ya wanna see the pictures click HERE, and hopefully we'll be doing this again next year.

More on the house

The beginning of this week I spent tiling the back step. The tiles came right up to the level of the cement threshold I build, so I had to add a metal one - which meant cutting down the door so it would fit under.

1st Annual Rocky Mountain Region Rossi Family Picnic

Do you know how hard it is to find a picture of just Alex, me, Lisa and Danny? I wanted an old picture of the family for this post, sans the people who have passed away (since they won't be there this afternoon), and immediately knew that was going to be impossible. So, I decided to cull through my many family pictures in an attempt to at least get me and the 3 siblings I grew up with. Me, Lisa and Alex. Me, Lisa and Danny. Me, Danny and Alex. Just me and Alex. Just me and Danny. Just me and Lisa. Just me. Just Alex. Just Lisa. Just Danny. You got the idea 5 sentences ago. Anyway, in a second I'm headed out to an undisclosed park to join in some festivities with the family. We are sad that Jeff & Amy & Co. will not be there, and parts of other groups will also be absent, and missed. But, we'll make the best of it, and still have a hell of a good time. (Especially since Dad's cooking!) See ya all there......

Tag, you're it, without the tag.

Got this tag from Amy, of the "Rossi Posse" fame, and thought I'd go ahead and fill it out and post it here. I didn't tag anyone specific, but if you feel like answering also, please do.

4 Jobs I've had.
1. Free Wheeler Pizza – driver/cook/manager/owner & still doing their payroll.
2. Ray, Quinney & Nebeker in conjunction with UP&L - document analyst
3. Evergreen International Airlines – parts clerk
4. Granite School District – teacher; Churchill Jr., Brockbank Jr, Granite Park Middle & currently Granite High School – Math, Psych & S.T.S.
4 movies I could watch over and over.
1. Monty Python Holy Grail
2. Cool Runnings
3. The Whole 9 Yards
4. Dazed & Confused
4 Places I've Lived
1. Princeton, N.J.
2. Lexington, Mass
3. Grenoble, France
4. Salt Lake City, Utah
4 Favorite TV shows
1. CSI
2. Law & Order
3. Without a Trace
4. Roseanne
4 Place I've Been
1. London, England
2. Cervia, Italy
3. Seattle , WA
4. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico – best vacation EVER.
4 Favorite Foods
1. Steak on a BBQ
2. Lasagne
3. Veal (or chicken or eggplant) Parmesean
4. Anything my Nonnie cooked.
4 Websites I visit daily
1. My blog
2. Friends’ blogs
3. My Credit Union
4. Google
4 places I'd rather be
1. Puerto Vallarta
2. Duchesne, Utah – well, the family property near there
3. Alaska (only if it’s summer)
4. Sleeping
4 friends to tag
1. Anyone who wants to go ahead and post their answers on here, or anywhere else.

More pictures by moi.

Just put up a bunch of new pictures I've taken. Yeah, some of you might be bored with all the pictures I take, but ever since that photography class in high school I love taking them. And if I do say so myself, some of them are pretty good, check out the sunset pictures. Anyway, click HERE if you want to check them out.

Happy Birthday Raffi

(july 1st, that is)

November 26, 1939

From "The Salt Lake Tribune", November of 1939. One of my roommates was unpacking some stuff that had been packed with a bunch of Tribunes from this era, and he gave them to me. I've been reading through them, finding a lot of interesting and amusing stuff, that you will probably end up seeing here on these pages. Like, how much do you think a "new" 3 bedroom home would go for? With a 2 car garage, young fruit trees on 2/3 of an acre close to 39th So. on 20th East? Or how much was Grand Central charging for a lb of Top Sirloin? Package of Kellogg's Shredded Wheat? And how about a fully equipped brand new Pontiac Special "6" Torpedo? Just some of the fun, and totally useless, information I'll be bringing you in the future.