Latest Jeep mod.

This weekend I Plasti-dipped the grille of my Wrangler.

Plasti-dip is a spray-on plastic coating for all kinds of purposes.   Automotive do-it-yourselfers use it most often on tire rims to cover scratches or just color them.  But I’ve seen it on hoods, doors, bumpers and once an entire truck.  It covers and protects – the sun won’t fade the paint under it and light scratches are in the Plasti-dip, not the paint. And when you get tired of it, or want to change the color, you can just peel the plastic right off – the paint is as good as it was when covered.

The drawback is that scratches and dings will cause it to start to peel, unless you re-spray the area pretty quickly.

Anyway, I’ve seen white Wranglers with black grilles and liked it a lot.  Not wanting to permanently paint my brand-new grille, I Plasti-dipped it.  What do you think?

⁰IIIIIII⁰

Survived the first week.

Only 174 more days to go!

The two hardest things about going back to school for me are 1) getting up early and 2) getting used to being on my feet all day again. (Exhaustion is why I haven’t been around the blogosphere at all this week.)

I hate getting up early.  I love waking up, looking at the clock and being able to roll over and go back to sleep.  This alarm clock thing is for the birds.

But – other than those two things, this week went quite well.   My biggest class is small by Utah standards, where 36 in a math class is normal and 75 in a P.E. class is not unheard of.

The mix of students in my classes is quite good, meaning that I don’t have one period that is chock full of kids that play off each other and cause the class to be hard to keep on task.  I’ve got some of my favorite students from last year back in my classes, and some really cool new ones.

Looks like it’s going to be a good year (knock on wood).

Delle, part 2–this time I’m not alone.

In this post I told about going out to Delle to explore some of the dirt roads out there.

The problem with going alone is that I tend to avoid the harder and more remote areas, if I’m going to get in trouble I want some back up.  So a week ago my older brother and his friend Tom joined me out there.   We went quite a bit further than I did alone, went up some steep, rocky hills and eventually to the top of the mountain.  It was a beautiful, clear day and the views were amazing.  These are some of the pictures from that day.

Note:  Tom took all the pictures of us driving.  He was nice enough to climb up, or down, the more challenging hills and photograph us as we drove them.  Thanks Tom, you got some great shots.

The reflection of Stansbury Island on the lake was beautiful.  This picture doesn’t quite do it justice.

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Thematic Photographic–Shooting Strangers from Afar

Snowboarder catching air this January.

The poor guy whose job it is to clean up the mess visitors leave on the beach on Antelope Island.

Mom and daughter (I’m making an assumption) headed back from the Great Salt Lake shore.

Swimmers attempting to swim in the Great Salt Lake.  This is not an easy task since the lake can be up to 3 times as salty as the ocean.  This not only makes one a lot more buoyant, but the salt can sting every orifice and cut or scratch on the body.  This can be a benefit since it can cure any infected cut or scratch.  The other problem is that the lake is 33’ deep at it’s deepest, so to get in enough water to even try real swimming, you have to walk quite a ways out.

Mondayest Monday of all Mondays.

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December 4, 1967 to August 11, 2014.

It’s been over 20 years since I saw him last, but for about 7 years he was a big part of my life.

He was the sysop of The Motel West BBS, and through it he brought together an incredibly eclectic group of people who became close friends.

This group came together right after my business went belly-up, and through the insanity that bred in this group, helped me keep my sanity during my mom’s declining health and after her death.

Thanks to Facebook and a current friend of his, I found out that Mark Alder passed away August 11 of this year.  His obituary doesn’t mention what happened, and since the only contact I’ve had with him for a while has been through Facebook, I have no idea whether this was sudden, an accident or expected.

Mark, rest in peace and thanks for the laughs.