Welcome to 2013.

For the New Year

Missed it by || that much.

Man, I wish someone had told me sooner, I could have been a CCP (Concealed Carry gun Permit) holder by now, for dirt cheap.  And just because I’m a teacher.  I read about it in the Tribune this morning, but here’s KSL’s online article about it.

I actually emailed to get in on it, but by the time I’d read my Trib, the class had just about started.

Yes, you read it right, me taking a CCP class, for free to teachers, and I’d even have paid the $46 to get the actual permit.

Why?  Well, why not?  No, I’d never carry a gun around with me, and certainly never bring one to school.  Hell, I don’t even own a gun, of any sort, and probably never will.  I just want the permit.  Just so I can say I’m licensed to carry.  After all, I live in Utah and they give them out like Tic-Tacs.

Campfire!

Brought to you by:

There is a certain special warmth I feel when sitting out in the snow covered wilderness next to a big campfire.  It’s one of the reasons I like going up to our property in the winter.  We can build BIG fires in the winter, when everything is covered in snow, that we can’t in the summer when everything is dry.

A couple of years ago we decided it was time to get rid of a bunch of cabinets we had stored in the shed up there.  We were going to use them in the cabin, but they had become home to the local rodentia.

Not wanting to haul the hantavirus home with us, we figured the best thing to do was to burn them all right there.  So we waited until winter and then had us one nice bonfire.

Fire; warmth and virus killer.  And incredibly fascinating.  I can watch for hours.

No, I’m not a pyromaniac.  I don’t feel compelled to light fires, except when camping.  And I don’t light huge ones unless the conditions are safe.

So, maybe I’m a situational-pyromaniac?

The weather outside is frightful…

…let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Arguments about climate change aside, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a white Christmas here, but it looks like this year we will.

Unless it clears and warms up quickly, which they say it won’t, there will be snow on the ground tomorrow.

As for yesterday, it was clear, and even somewhat warm, so I decided to head out and find some dirt roads.  45 miles west of Salt Lake City I found some.

Well, a lot of them.  And a hill.

And a dry* lake bed.  (*No standing water, but it sure was muddy, and fun).

Fun day, and now I get to play in the snow.  Wheeee!

“well regulated militia”

I want to thank the people who posted these pictures to Facebook…

…because they opened up the comparison, thereby legitimizing society’s right to treat them similarly.

My response on Facebook:

We don't blame guns for violent acts, but since you started the comparison:

1. We require cars to be licensed with the state,

2. we require people to be licensed to drive them,

3. we require people to carry insurance on them in case they do damage to other people or their property,

4. we take them away from people who use them inappropriately and/or to harm others or their property,

5. we impound them if they are stored improperly,

6. we impose fines and/or criminal sanctions against people who allow unlicensed, underage or irresponsible people access to them.

So, please, let's treat guns like cars.

Jeep + snow = fun.

We may not have gotten much (or any) snow here in Salt Lake when that storm came through last week, but our cabin did.

My older brother and I went up there today and had a much more successful trip that the previous one, and maiden voyage, with my Jeep.

There was about a foot of snow on the dirt roads up there, and at first we didn’t thin we would make it up the 3 miles to the cabin.  But we decided to give it a go anyway and headed up.  The Jeep did fantastic.  It made it past the Paxman’s, up the S curve and even the rocky S curve, past the F-U tree and fairly easily down the hill, around the corner and up the hill past Don’s fence.   We had some good momentum going so we went right past our gate and made it all the way up to the south end of the property.

Then we decided to try it.  There is a spot on our private road that goes through an open area.  You need to come out of the trees, take a hard left and go up a badly rutted road that generally has more snow that anywhere else.

It took us three tries, blazing a little further up the hill each time, before we made it past and all the way to the cabin.

Success.  It was a challenging drive, but I loved it, which is one of the reasons I wanted a Jeep in the first place.

More snow due this week.  Maybe another try next weekend?

Um, nevermind.

What would you do on the last day of Earth?

Thursday I gave my typing students a typing assignment.  “If the world really was going to end tomorrow, what would you do today?…Must be G-rated.”  Gotta put that G-rated disclaimer in there or I would end up having to deal with the resulting hysterical amnesia.

Reading through them I found one unexpected trend.   At least 2/3 of them would want to, after doing some crazy stuff, spend the end with their families.  I really didn’t expect that.

Other not-so-unexpected trends included eating all kinds of unhealthy foods, stealing and driving cars, skydiving, and partying with friends.  And a lot of them started out confirming that they did not believe the world really was going to end.

Here are some memorable quotes:

“If the Mayans are supposed to be good at predicting the future, why are they all dead?”

“One, because the Mayans didn’t account for leap years and the second because they also didn’t account for the Spaniards wiping them out.”

“I would be on the Barney show, with Ellen.”

“I would steal (my teacher’s) glasses and wear them.  All day long.”

“use my sister’s car and go driving.  Yeah, you heard me, DRIVING WITHOUT A LICENSE.  I am a bad boy.”

“So this concludes, if the world is going to end then the triumphant (student’s name) will just spend his night on the beach of Newport, sitting in his stolen dark red Ferrari.”

“spend all my money on a pet panda and a pet polar bear.  We would ride off into the sunset till we got eaten by zombies.”

“I would throw burning guinea pigs off the grand canyon.”

“get some Chinese food and ice cream and just party with the babes till the end.”

“Capture a bull and lead it to a china shop.”

“Maybe I’ll just sit on my roof waiting for the world to end.”

“I would take a nap between 5:00 and 5:30 P.M.”

“I would probably go outside and start singing the Psych theme song.”

“I would eat 50 fat boys and ice-cream sundaes".”

“Steal a wicked awesome Titanium body Corvette.  I would then wreck it against a brick wall.  I would dye a sheep orange and then cook it over a bonfire.”

“I wouldn’t let the end of the world stop me.”

“Drive to the zoo and ask a monkey for a high five.”

“I would go and raid Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and buy a hippopotamus from Santa Clause.”

“I would slap my enemies with fish.”

“buy a spaceship and 100 years worth of food and building material.  Then I would fly to the moon.”

“I would learn how to juggle chain saws and bowling balls.

“I would get a pie and stand on top of a small building and throw them at people that walk by.”

Now I have a list of things to do in 2013.

Been nice knowin’ ya…

Industrial Disease–TP 226

Bingham Copper “Mine”.  When I hear the word “mine” I usually think of a hole dug into the ground.  Small, cramped and just barely held up by rickety old wood beams.

Not this one.  It’s just a big hole in the ground, that can actually be seen from space with the naked eye.

This used to be a mountain, and now it goes down into the ground about as far as it used to go up.

All so we can still drop our pennies on the ground just to decide they’re not worth the trouble to pick up.  (ok, also to help move the electricity to and within all the electronic devices we adore.)

Weather this week.

End-of-Worlders Beware

Just for you.

And you’ll know who you are.

Last Weekend.

Was a lot of fun.  No.  More like, as my big brother kept saying, an adventure.

My older brother and his wife drove their Dodge Durango up to our land.  (100 miles of highway then 3 miles of dirt road).  My little brother and his wife drove their Jeep Cherokee.  I came up in my newly acquired Jeep Wrangler.

It was warm enough that we took the doors and top off my Wrangler and went to see what hills we could climb in it.

As we were traveling over hill and over dale we were touting the awesomeness of the “legendary Jeep off road capabilities.”

After lunch my little brother and his wife headed home in the Cherokee.  The other three of us were going to hang out until dusk and then head into Heber for dinner.

Less than 10 minutes after they left, we heard my brother coming back.  One of his wheel bearings had started to go, and he didn’t feel comfortable driving back to Salt Lake that way.  Since he and his wife had to get back to relieve grandma of the kids, we packed up everything into the Durango and my Jeep and took off.

On the way down the hill my Jeep started overheating, so we went to the rest area and filled it up with water.  15 miles later, just past Current Creek, it overheated again.  Now we decided to pull out the thermostat, hoping that would keep it cool all the way home, and it might have worked if we hadn’t messed up the gasket.  Water was pouring out even after we put the whole thing back together.  Crap.  We had to leave my Jeep on the side of the road, out in the middle of nowhere, and pack everyone into the Durango.

I hated the idea of leaving my Jeep on the side of the road overnight, my brothers agreed, so we took my brother’s big old Ford truck with his car trailer up and brought it down.  By the time we got home it was 11 pm, so since the other Jeep was safe on our own property we decided to get it in the morning.

8 am the next morning we were on the road again.  Since the truck and trailer wouldn’t make it all the way up the dirt road, we found a good place to turn it around and started walking up to our cabin.  With GPS in hand, we decided to cut the 2.5 mile drive in half by walking straight through the woods.  Great idea, except about halfway up we started seeing fairly fresh cat tracks.  Big cat tracks.  Apparently big enough to take down a deer, which really gave a rise to our adrenaline when we found the picked-clean remains of one.

Big sticks in hand, we made it up to the cabin untouched, drove the Jeep down to the truck and got it home just past noon.

Fun stuff.  Go up in 3 vehicles, make it home in one.  2 Jeeps down, Dodge Durango saves the day.  Midnight run to get the Wrangler, bright and early run to get the Cherokee.  And a(n imaginary) run in with a big, hungry cat.

All in all, and adventurous weekend.