Strange things are afoot at the Eyemasters.

This is the second time in a row it’s happened.  I go through the eye exam and afterwards the doctor looks at me perplexed and says “Well, your prescription has changed.  Your eyesight has gotten better than last time.”

The doctor says it’s not unheard of, but he had no real explanation for it.  But I think I do.  I’m convinced there’s a rip in the time-space continuum in my basement and every time I go down to get something out of the freezer my eyes are aged back 6 months.

Or maybe not.

Colonoscopy

Well, I finally made the appointment.  A year late, but I just wanted to wait until I was out of school so I wouldn’t have to use 2 sick days.  I’ve heard the preparation the day before is a lot of fun.  Gotta stay home, close to the toilet.

I kinda feel like Cartman in the first episode of South Park.  If I show up and anyone in the office looks like that guy on the left, I’m leaving.

Havin’ a rough day?

The theme for this week’s Thematic Photographic is “rough”.  I decided to go with car problems that would make it a rough day. As I’ve said before, I started carrying a camera around with me everywhere I went during my senior year in high school.  These are all pictures of incidents I just stumbled upon and was lucky I had the camera with me.   Click on the banner to see more rough pictures, and if you have any of your own please join in.

Jungle cats.

You’ve heard it a thousand times.  “You can take the cat out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the cat.”

The cats met the neighbor’s dog today.  I was up on the roof putting new pads in the swamp cooler when the neighbor came out with his dog.  At the time the cats were in the back yard busy attacking the old pads I’d thrown down on the ground.  They must have smelled the dog, because they lost interest in the pads and meandered under the gate into the neighbor’s yard.

Neighbor said that Sophie was raised around cats, and if they did start chasing each other and she got them cornered she’d just look at them like “hey, why’d ya stop playing?”

That and, for the most part, that I firmly believe outdoor cats have to learn to deal with dogs one way or the other kept me from stopping the meeting.

So, neighbor, his friend and I sat out there in the blazing sun for about half an hour watching the drama unfold.  I missed the perfect picture, one where Alan reached out his paw as if to touch Sophie to see if she was real.

It was an adorable pose, and what made me decide to go in and get the camera.  Unfortunately it was never repeated.

But still, they kept sniffing each other, getting close and then retreating.  At this point the cats had gotten pretty comfortable just laying in the grass letting the dog check them out.

Sophie came at the from the front, then went around and came from the west.  Then she decided to circle around the garbage can and come at them from the back.  That’s what got them up out of their grass bed and start to move around her.

Pretty funny, adorable stuff.  And maybe by the end of the summer, they’ll actually be playing with each other.

Clouds with tails.

Gravestone rubbings for the new millennium.

When I was 11 years old living in Lexington, Mass., I went out and bought some rice paper and a big block crayon and got into doing gravestone rubbings.  For the life of me, I can’t remember what got me onto that hobby, but as you can imagine, there were some interesting gravestones there.

Yesterday I went up to the Heber City Cemetery with Paperback Writer and, with my digital camera, did some new-millennium gravestone rubbings.

Remember, clicking on any picture will give you the full sized version.

Kai

Trip with another friend: Paperback Writer

Writer and I like to take little day trips around our area during the summer, mostly for the photo ops.  Today we went up to Midway and Heber, both in the Heber Valley about 45 minutes south-east of Salt Lake.  I’ve been driving through Heber for the last 20 years going to the property I wrote about two posts back, but the only time I can think of ever getting of the main drag was when I went to pick up my kittens.  Writer’s mother grew up in the area, so she knew of a few great sights to see.  I’m going to leave the Heber cemetery for later, but here are some of the other things we saw:

Finally!

A night that was warm enough to leave the swamp cooler blowing air all night. 

Blast from the past.

The last couple of days my best friend from high school has been in town staying with me.  We get together every year or so, whenever business brings him into town.  This time it wasn’t business, his father just passed away and he had a week before summer term started at the university he teaches at.  So, he came down to ski, so his kids could visit their grandparents (his ex-in-laws), and so we could just decompress for a couple days.

We reminisced over the old days, compared medical situations, discussed past and present (neither of us have a present) romantic interests, went up to Duchesne to see the property my brothers and I have and then visited local haunts from our adolescence.  You get the details to the trip to Duchesne and a couple haunts.

I’m going to warn you now, this post has 29 pictures that go along with it.  You’ll have to click below to see the rest of the post, this new feature on my blogger interface lets break the post in two pieces so you don’t have to spend the time waiting for all the pictures to load unless you want to.  Hope you enjoy.

Happy Father’s Day

Signs from a friend.

A friend of mine who doesn’t blog, but reads mine, sent these from a recent trip to Sacramento, California.  It seems that someone on the City Council or in the Streets Department has a sense of humor and didn’t want to print up a bunch of those boring, oh-so-expected speed bump signs.  Instead they came up with these:

Thanks to Sharkbait B for giving me these to share, and thanks to Carmi for giving us the forum for it.  Click on the banner below if you want to see other “signs that make you wonder”, and possibly post your own.

Kinley

 

 

“Went to a garden party…”

I walked over to the park today, expecting to see the pond well over it’s banks thanks to the recent warm weather.  Since several creeks in the city were supposed to be hitting levels high enough to reach bridges over them, I was surprised to find the pond at it’s normal level, the sidewalk around it was completely dry.

So I decided to get a picture of how it should look and show everyone the comparison with my picture in the last post.  First, the picture you’ve already seen:

And the way it should look, and does today:

I don’t know for sure, but one possibility is that this creek gets it’s water from lower elevations, which would have melted a lot sooner.  I know that the creek they were talking about on the news was from one of the Cottonwood Canyons, where 4 ski resorts reside, meaning that it gets it’s water from some of the higher elevations.

Or it could be because this creek is regulated by several reservoirs upstream, where the Cottonwood Canyons don’t have reservoirs (or just small ones) in them.

Or maybe it’s just because all those seagulls have been extremely thirsty the last couple of days?

Blockin’ up the scenery, breakin’ my mind.

For this week Thematic Photographic is exploring “signs that make us wonder”.  If you are interested in joining in or just viewing all the different takes on this theme, just click on the banner at the bottom.  Otherwise, here are mine.

I don’t know whose butt it is, but it’s arriving at 4:25 and leaving at 6:15 PM.

This sign made me wonder “Ya think?”  (That drain at the bottom of the picture is in the road.)

I wonder, I wonder.  Why must every sign in the western states be littered with bullet holes?

Makes you wonder, is it missing an e, or is there just an extra n?  And if it’s the latter, why would the Red Cross be collecting them for the Big Apple? (This was a sign some of my students made for the victims of 9-11).

Ya gotta wonder, what is so interesting out there that it’s worth braving snakes and scorpions?

**Math nerd joke alert!**

I was on Google looking for some famous math quotes for my bulletin boards at school.  My counselor friend there and another friend have taken it upon themselves to set up my bulletin boards and wanted some quotes to put up. 

Among the other quotes by Albert Einstein, Plato, Leonardo Da Vinci and others, I found this amusing one:

“In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection." – My dad.

Now, I know he’s been a math professor since before I was even born, and I don’t even know if he meant it to be funny.  But, knowing Calculus and his sense of humor (having inherited it), I couldn’t help but get a hearty chuckle from it.  And, of course, a little pride in his being quoted on several sites alongside those other people.

Little floatie in my garage.

Yesterday I started finishing up the back porch.  I insulated it last summer, but never got around to enclosing the insulation.

This was ok for a while, but it started to sag, and even worse, the cats have been scratching at it.  Not good.

So I headed off to my home-away-from-home, Home Depot, and got a bunch of cedar planks.

Of course, the cats had to help.

Alan tried to get me the tools I needed.

Denny was the supervisor.

When I was cleaning up in the garage I looked up and saw this piece of foam just floating there in mid air.

I looked all around it and couldn’t see what was holding it there.

Ruling out any supernatural event or the odd anomaly in the Earth’s magnetic field, I figured it had to be on the end of a spider web, but for the life of me I couldn’t see it.

Until I went to pick up something from the floor and looked up at it from below.

Viola, finally the thin piece of, what I assume is, web showed itself. (Click on picture to enlarge so you can see it.)

‘Far as I know, it’s still out there floating over Old Blue.

Another series of YouTube videos students introduced me to.