Some brick, some mortar, some both.

Gilgal Gardens.  We discovered it when I was in high school, back then it was just someone’s fenced in back yard.  It was overgrown with trees and bushes, in the heart of Salt lake City.  It had (still has) all sorts of weird carvings, sculptures and paths of rocks with scriptures carved into them.  New to Salt Lake, and not LDS, I knew nothing of the meaning of it all, but my friends and I were still drawn to it, always in the middle of the night, for it’s spooky, isolated, otherworldly atmosphere.  I won’t go into details, I still know very little of them, you can get that by clicking on the name at the top.  But now it is a city park, all cleaned up, groomed and only accessible in the day.  Not the same atmosphere, but interesting none the less.  Here are the brick and mortar pictures from a recent trip there.

Check out more photos for this theme by clicking the banner below.  And for cryin’ out loud, add some of your own to the mix…

I’m having a metal breakdown

I heard it all.  From a terrorist attack, pipe bomb to an explosion.  The only thing for sure is that an old Ford truck caught fire in the drive-thru at the McDonalds in Sugarhouse.  Probably just a simple engine fire since the only official on site was a security guard, No F.B.I., no C.S.I., no Homeland Security.

But a fire there was.  And at 7:30 PM tonight, the truck was still there, in the drive-thru, and the entire McDonalds property was fenced off.  I could still smell the charred wood.

Now, I’m not a big fan of McDonalds food.  I’d say it’s been over 3 years since I’ve eaten there, and I really don’t miss it.  But I feel bad for the people who work there and hope and pray that nobody got hurt.

And on the “small world” note, this McDonalds happens to be on the exact corner of the original Free Wheeler Pizza.  In fact, we had to move out of the original store because McDonalds bought the building so they could put this restaurant there.

So, there’s the burnt metal of an old ford, the dangling metal of the building’s gutter and, of course, the chain link fence surrounding the whole thing.  That’s my connection to the Metallic theme of:

Ego stroking

I like compliments on my blog as much as the next person.  But insincere blatant pandering just to get your link posted on my blog isn’t what I’m looking for.  Especially when it’s a comment on a year old post and your username link is to a website for discounted viagra.

“Your blog is outrageous! I mean, Ive never been so entertained by anything in my life! Your vids are perfect for this. I mean, how did you manage to find something that matches your style of writing so well? Im really happy I started reading this today. Youve got a follower in me for sure!”

My vids match my style of writing?  I post a few vids here an there, but anyone who has visited here more than once knows my forté is photographs, not video clips.  And the post this comment was to didn’t even have a video on it.  I suppose I do have a style of writing, but I have a degree in math and technology, I don’t think about style, I just write.  Let alone trying to match my vids with it.

Despite all that, I’m still glad they were so impressed with my blog.  It’s nice to know it’s so outrageous and the most entertaining thing in people’s lives.

But what get’s me is that this person didn’t follow through and become a follower.

Dawn of the dead.

From the moment that Free Wheeler Pizza was conceived, in the middle of the night by a half dozen inebriated out-of-Staters dismayed at the lack of food delivery service in the Salt Lake Valley, it’s been a counter-culture kind of place.

It has attracted employees from the likes of law-school students to a guy who used to hang himself vertically by meat hooks for relaxation.  And everything in between.  They either lasted 2 days and forced the place out of their memories, or several years and their ears still perk up when they hear the words ‘Free Wheeler’.

The most recently acquired partner wanted otherwise, he wanted to portray a more corporate image.  That may or may not have resulted in the recent, thankfully temporary, demise of the business, but it did cut me out of their payroll business for a more professional payroll service.

Now, after a couple of weeks on the Coroner's slab and a quick resurrection, things have changed.  The newly acquired partner is off to greener pastures in another state and the original partner is back at the helm.  New partner still holds financial interest in the business, but he’s going to be a semi-silent, long-distance partner.

The first order of business for original partner was to get me back on the payroll, doing the payroll.

Yup, I’m once again gainfully employed by 3 different companies, and a part of the Free Wheeler business.  Makes me happy.  Not just that I’ll be bringing in a little more money, but that the people of Free Wheeler (employees included) were happy that I would be processing their paychecks and coming by at least once every couple weeks to drop them off and shoot the breeze for a couple hours.

Happy days are here again, skies are clear and blue again…

Mo’ metal, and funny kids.

Chronological, so I’ll start with the kids.

Three moms came to our school to bring their kids lunch.  They were dressed in color-coordinated 50’s outfits, (their cat’s eye glasses matched the color of their respective 50’s dresses), because they had just been to some Halloween gig at the local elementary school.  They decided to camp out on the bench in the ‘grand hall’ we have out in front of the cafeteria, they wanted to embarrass their junior high kids a wee bit.

One of my T.A.s went up to them and asked: “Excuse me ladies, can I help you find your way back to the nineteen-fifties?” 

Then after lunch, in my last keyboarding class we were doing some timed typings.  One of the students got a little frustrated and exclaimed “I can’t do shift!”

And finally we get to the metal part of this post.

At the Chevron tonight a Nissan X-Terra smashed into pump #8.  Someone in the back seat got out, surveyed the damage and then they just took off.  I had the foresight to write down their license plate before I even knew for sure they were going to leave, I figured if they were going to leave they’d do it as I was walking out there anyway and if they weren’t going to leave having the plate number wouldn’t hurt.  They left.  I called the police, made a report, they found them and gave them a whopping ticket for hit-and-run, plus we got all their insurance information. 

Anyhoo, here’s the metal pictures, that little hose part that sticks into your car when you fill up.

Moral of the story: If they’d just given us their info in the first place they wouldn’t have to pay a huge ticket.

Thematic Photographic: Metallica

Well, as often happens, things do not work out the way I was planning.  I thought “Metal?  Cool.  I’ve got some old Ford LTDs that have more metal in one of their hoods than there is in my entire Escort.

Well, I came home from school yesterday too tired to choreograph the shuffling of the cars to get good pictures, so I put it off ‘till today.  Except the temperature dropped so much that today’s high was Monday’s low.   Again, not the day I want to be moving cars around.

As I was pondering the photographic dilemma I was in, I noticed a lot of metal things around my house.

The pressure valve on my bigger espresso maker.

An old thermostat I found in my house.  It just sits on the wall, I’ve got a plastic programmable one controlling the furnace.

A Coors can from back when you needed a church key to open the things.

Looking at the top of my one-cup espresso maker.

The I.D. plate from the original furnace in my house.  When I replaced it 6 years ago, the furnace people said it looked like it was installed in the 30’s or 40’s.

My wall mounted can opener I got on a trek out to Eureka with Writer.

The inner workings of an old gas stove I have in my kitchen.  Like the thermostat, I have a newer stove that I use, this one isn’t even hooked up.

And finally, the oven thermostat on the same stove.

If you want to see more metal, and hopefully join your own into the mix, click the banner below.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

I call him “Copenhagen® guy”.  He’s in his late 40’s or early 50’s, chews Copenhagen® tobacco and has a serious Napoleon complex.  Although he doesn’t come in often anymore, he’s been buying his tobacco at the Chevron since before I started working there.  And he’s always arrogant, condescending, rude and impatient.

The other day he struts in and commands “4 Copenhagen pouches.”

There’s only one tin up in the display, so I look under the counter to see if there is any more.  I grab a roll of what happens to be Skoal® pouches, not recognizing the difference since they are both brown and I don’t chew the stuff.

“Those aren’t pouches” he barks at me.

Looking at the roll in my hand, right to where it says “Pouches”, I respond with “what?”

“Those aren’t pouches!”

“Says ‘pouches’ right here.”

I his best condescending “are you too stupid to understand what I’m saying” tone, he replies “Not Copenhagen pouches.”

“Oh, not Copenhagen, now I see what you meant to say.”  I wanted to say “Well, why the $*&# didn’t you say that in the first place?”, but I knew that I was going to ruin his day by having only one tin anyway, so I just let it go.

He bought his one tin and stomped out, dissatisfied with our store once again.  Dude, if we suck so bad, why do you keep coming back?

On a lighter note, here are some pictures I took that same day, of the evening sun shining on the Wasatch Mountains.

And one final picture I just took a minute ago, that was just too cute not to post.